I'm not Canadian, so the whole story is kinda not impactful here, but from what I've seen it is complaints that the tomography scans used can't verify if there are bodies down there, just anomalies in the Earth that look like graves. There needs to be an exhumation to verify that Kamloops is in fact a mass grave of indigenous children, which I don't believe has happened yet.
I don't disagree with that. But there are a few nuances here that are very important to note:
1. There's a cultural thing happening here. Indigenous people aren't comfortable with just digging up graves. I do think that some exhumation needs to take place. But some patience and sensitivity are in order. This is going to take some time.
2. Indigenous people have been telling these stories for decades and have been dismissed or ignored. These scans do add further credence to the stories they've been telling us. Yes, we will eventually need more investigation and more concrete confirmation, but to pile on with doubt and dismissal while we are waiting for this sensitive process to play out is an exercise in cruelty.
3. We know, with certainty, that a lot of Indigenous children did not make it home from their time at residential schools. This has been determined through careful investigation by the the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Out of extreme caution and liability risk aversion, Canadian governments haven't just voluntarily admitted to past wrongdoing in Indigenous matters. I know that Trudeau is seen as a spineless virtue signaler, and he is, but his government has fought Indigenous suits in court tooth and nail. Nevertheless they've admitted numerous deaths due to disease and mistreatment. These gravesites simply aren't a surprise to anyone.
4. It is well accepted that these schools were informational black holes of lawlessness. Any predator or sadist in the market for an endless supply of vulnerable children to abuse needed look no farther than a a position within a residential school. And that's exactly what those people did. Which is why a full 50% of the kids who went to these schools were sexually abused. That's without even entering into the systemic cruelty, neglect, and physical abuse. Anything was fair game in these spaces and no one was holding people responsible, investigating suspicious or criminal actions, or even doing any sort of reasonable record keeping. Part of the reason we are in this place is that these schools literally burned all of their death records, along with records of where the children who died were buried. (To add insult to injury, this is a fact that the cynics have tried to spin in their favour whenever they hedge on their proclamations of doubt about whether there are even bodies buried at these sites, by saying that we don't know who these bodies are or how they died. Well, exactly.)
5. The science of the scans is fairly well respected in the context and for what it is. That is to say, no, this isn't an x-ray into the earth that shows us bodies buried there, but while one or two anomalies in the earth that look like graves could be anything, once you get into the dozens or hundreds it's a different story. Anyone I've seen speak who understands the technology (and that's not me) seems fairly well convinced these are graveyards. And the graves are, indeed, unmarked.
Again, some exhumation is probably in order at some point, but let's not fool ourselves into thinking that exhumed bodies will somehow satisfy the cynics. They will simply move the goalposts again and point out that we can't identify the bodies or, often, determine causes of death. Which, again, is true. But why is it true? Because these schools were black holes, for information, for records, and for children.
When people look you (rhetorical "you"; not you, you) in the eye and tell you the atrocities that they've witnessed, corroborated by thousands of fellow witnesses, and you demand evidence, knowing full well that any records that might serve as evidence have been destroyed, and they continue to give you different sorts of corroborating evidence, which you continue to dismiss because it isn't backed up by any records (which, again, have been destroyed), it starts to look like you're not very sincere about getting to the truth.
