Schools — Residential Schools in Canada, Boarding Schools in the United States

Class: RESEARCH. Compiled documented record. Child transfer is act (e) of the UN Genocide Convention (1948) when done with intent to destroy a group in whole or in part; the systems below are documented here on their own records. Precision on the 2021 Kamloops announcement is mandatory and is given its own section (§3).

1. Canada — the residential school system on the TRC's record

• Scale: The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (Final Report, 2015) documented at least 150,000 First Nations, Inuit, and Métis children who attended residential schools over the system's more than a century of operation (first federally supported schools in the 19th century; the last federally run school closed in 1996). About 139 schools were recognised in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement; the total number that operated, including earlier and unrecognised institutions, is higher.
• Purpose, on the government's own record: Duncan Campbell Scott, Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs, 1920: "I want to get rid of the Indian problem… Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic." The TRC found the system was "a central element" of a policy it described as cultural genocide (see framing file).
• Deaths documented by the TRC (2015): Volume 4, Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, established the National Residential School Student Death Register — "the first systematic effort to record and analyze deaths at the schools." The TRC identified 3,200 deaths (the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students plus confirmed unnamed deaths), while stating plainly that "the actual number of deaths is believed to be far higher" because of gaps and destruction in the records. The TRC found death rates significantly higher than for the general Canadian school-age population, driven principally by tuberculosis and other disease in underfunded, overcrowded, poorly nourished institutions whose condition senior government and church officials knew of — Dr. Peter Henderson Bryce, Chief Medical Officer, had reported in 1907 that 24% of pupils at the schools he surveyed had died, and was sidelined for saying so; his 1922 pamphlet called it "a national crime."
• Abuse claims on the settlement record: of ~70,000 former students alive at the time of the TRC report, the Independent Assessment Process had resolved 31,970 claims of sexual or serious sexual assault, with 5,995 claims still in progress at the report's release (TRC figures, 2015).

2. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation register — after the TRC

The NCTR (University of Manitoba), created by the TRC to hold its archive, maintains the National Student Memorial Register under TRC Calls to Action 72–73.

• Launched September 2019 with 2,800 names of students who never returned home, displayed on a 50-metre Memorial Cloth, with the NCTR noting at launch that an estimated ~1,900 further children were then unnamed and the list would grow.
• September 2025 update (NCTR statement, 29 September 2025): the NCTR "verified 1,143 new names of children who died as a result of the residential school system" for the Register, and updated names, dates, and school information for more than 1,000 students, after notifying families, Survivors, and communities first. The Register is a living memorial register, still being researched; this record therefore cites its dated milestones (2,800 at launch in 2019; +1,143 verified in September 2025) rather than a single "current total," because names are added and corrected over time and no single total was stated in the NCTR's 2025 release.
• What must not be done with these numbers: TRC Commissioner Murray Sinclair's often-quoted speculation that deaths "could be in the 15–25 thousand range and maybe even more" is a speculation he offered as such; it is not a documented register count and is not presented in this record as a finding.

3. Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc, May 2021 — stated precisely, at evidence level

Precision here is mandatory, because this announcement was widely misreported in both directions.

What happened:

• On 27 May 2021, Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc (Kamloops, British Columbia) announced preliminary results of a ground-penetrating radar (GPR) survey of the apple orchard at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, conducted with specialist Dr. Sarah Beaulieu. The Nation's press release used the words "remains of 215 children."
• What GPR actually establishes: GPR detects subsurface disturbances/anomalies — changes in soil structure consistent with, among other things, grave shafts. It does not image bodies, bones, or coffins, and it cannot by itself confirm that any given anomaly is a burial. Dr. Beaulieu's own reporting described the anomalies as targets of interest / probable and possible burials requiring confirmation. The Nation's subsequent statements shifted to that language: in its July 2021 detailed briefing and later updates the anomalies were described as roughly 200 "targets of interest," some later reclassified on further analysis.
• Excavation status, as of the record: No excavation of the Kamloops anomalies has been carried out, and no human remains from those anomalies have been publicly exhumed or forensically confirmed. The Nation has stated decisions about excavation rest with the community and Survivors, and most communities conducting GPR searches in Canada have not proceeded to excavation. (Summaries as of late 2025 note partial excavations at three other school sites found no remains, while remains were confirmed at one site, St. Joseph's, Fort Resolution — a different site from Kamloops.)
• Separately documented, and not dependent on the GPR claim: the TRC had already documented 51 deaths at the Kamloops school (1915–1963) in its records, and the existence of residential-school cemeteries and unmarked burials across the system is established by the TRC's Volume 4 (see §1). Children died at Kamloops and were buried in the region; that is documented. That the specific 215 GPR anomalies are 215 burials is not established as of this record.
• Therefore, in this record: the correct formulation is — "In May 2021 Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc announced that a ground-penetrating radar survey had identified anomalies initially reported as the remains of 215 children and subsequently described by the Nation as about 200 targets of interest / potential burials. No excavation has confirmed remains at that site as of the record." The formulations "215 bodies were found," "a mass grave of 215 children was discovered," and conversely "nothing was found and nothing happened at Kamloops" all exceed the evidence and are not used.

4. United States — the federal boarding school system on the Interior Department's record

Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative, US Department of the Interior (launched June 2021 by Secretary Deb Haaland):

Volume I — 11 May 2022

• 408 federal Indian boarding schools operated or supported by the US between 1819 and 1969, across 37 states or then-territories (21 in Alaska, 7 in Hawai'i).
• Marked or unmarked burial sites identified at 53 schools.
• The report concluded the system resulted in the deaths of over 500 children on the records then reviewed, "hundreds" in the summary language, and stated the Department expected continued investigation to show the number of children who died to be "in the thousands or tens of thousands."
• Findings on method: the system "deployed militarized and identity-alteration methodologies to assimilate" children, punished Native language and religious practice, and used corporal punishment including solitary confinement, flogging, withholding food, whipping, slapping, and cuffing; children as young as 4 were taken.

Volume II — 30 July 2024

• 417 federal schools across 37 states or then-territories; 1,025 other institutions (day schools, sanitaria, asylums, orphanages, dormitories, and religious schools) that advanced similar assimilation goals.
• At least 973 American Indian, Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian children confirmed to have died while attending federal Indian boarding schools — the figure in the task brief is verified against the Department's release.
• At least 74 marked or unmarked burial sites at 65 school sites.
• At least 18,624 children identified by name and Tribal identity in the records reviewed; review encompassed ~103 million pages of records.
• $23.3 billion (FY2023 inflation-adjusted) in federal appropriations, 1871–1969, for the schools and associated assimilation policies.
• The Department stated throughout that the actual numbers of deaths and burials are greater than those documented.

Carlisle — the prototype

• Carlisle Indian Industrial School, Carlisle, Pennsylvania, 1879–1918 — the first federally run off-reservation boarding school, founded by Captain (later Brig. Gen.) Richard Henry Pratt, whose stated philosophy, in his 1892 speech, was: "Kill the Indian in him, and save the man."
• More than 7,800 children from over 140 Tribal Nations attended Carlisle (National Park Service figure; some counts exceed 10,000 enrolments over its 39 years). Students' hair was cut, Native clothing and names replaced, Native languages punished, Christianity imposed, and children assigned out as labourers under the "outing" system.
• Deaths/cemetery: at least ~180–187 students died at Carlisle and were buried in its cemetery (NPS: "at least 180 children are buried"; proclamation-era federal summaries: "at least 187 students died at Carlisle and are buried in the Carlisle Barracks Main Post Cemetery," the cemetery having been relocated by the Army in 1927). Since 2017 the Army has disinterred and repatriated remains to Tribal Nations on request — 41 children returned as of December 2024 (federal proclamation figure).
• Carlisle became the national monument Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument in December 2024. It was the explicit model for the 400-plus schools that followed.

Sources for this file

TRC Canada, Final Report Vols. 1 & 4 (2015) • Bryce reports (1907; 1922) • Scott statement (1920, via TRC) • NCTR, National Student Memorial Register launch (2019) and statement of 29 September 2025 • Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc press release, 27 May 2021, and July 2021 technical briefing (Beaulieu) • US Department of the Interior, Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative Investigative Reports Vol. I (2022) & Vol. II (2024) and accompanying releases • National Park Service / NPCA, Carlisle Federal Indian Boarding School National Monument materials • Presidential proclamation establishing the Carlisle monument (December 2024).