Indigenous tribe admits search has found no graves or bodies at former residential schools

(LifeSiteNews) – A Canadian First Nations quest to find graves of hundreds of children on the site of former residential schools, which sparked massive arson attacks on Catholic churches across Canada, has come up empty, the indigenous tribe admits.

The Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc First Nations near Kamloops, British Columbia, said in a press release that a recent investigation found no graves but only “signatures that resemble burials.”

In its statement, the Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc chief said that “some areas were ruled out as burials, while others cannot confidently be ruled out.”

The indigenous tribe had claimed in 2021 that it found graves of 215 children at a former residential school.

Its investigation, which used ground penetrating radar (GPR) LiDAR as well as dog teams and other scanners, cost taxpayers millions, both from provincial and federal money.

The First Nations received around $12.1 million in funding that was supposed to be for “exhumation of remains.” Calls for a real excavation of the anomalies are not likely to happen due to the sensitivity around the site.

The Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc are not giving any interviews to the media “at this time.”

As reported by LifeSiteNews, Canada’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations was reprimanded for breaching an Act of Parliament for sealing records on the yet unproven residential school grave claims and has now been ordered to release records.

As reported by LifeSiteNews, in 2021 and 2022, the mainstream media ran with inflammatory and dubious claims that hundreds of children were buried and disregarded by Catholic priests and nuns who ran some Canadian residential schools. The reality is, after four years, there have been no mass graves discovered at residential schools.

However, as the claims went unfounded, over 120 churches, most of them Catholic and many of them on Indigenous lands that serve the local population, have been burned to the ground, vandalized, or defiled in Canada since the spring of 2021.

Late last year, as reported by LifeSiteNews, Canadian academic Frances Widdowson, who spoke out against claims there are mass unmarked graves of kids on former Indigenous residential schools, was arrested on a university campus for trespassing. He is fighting back with the help of a top constitutional group.

In 2024, retired Manitoba judge Brian Giesbrecht said Canadians were being “deliberately deceived by their own government” after blasting the former Trudeau government for “actively pursuing” a policy that blames the Catholic Church for the unfounded “deaths and secret burials” of Indigenous children.

Canadian indigenous residential schools, run by the Catholic Church and other Christian groups, were set up by the federal government and were open from the late 19th century until 1996.

While there were indeed some Catholics who committed serious abuses against native children, the unproven “mass graves” narrative has led to widespread anti-Catholic sentiment since 2021.