Over the past years the oral stories of our elders,
of our survivors and friends of our survivors,
have told the stories that knew these burials were here.
You're going to notice that there are flags and I apologize, it might be a little tough to see,
but this is now today on Cowessess First Nation
and this is what we call today our community grave site.
It became our community grave site after the 1970s,
when the residential school was stopped overseen by the Roman Catholic church and the archdiocese.
In 1960, there may have been marks on these graves.
The Catholic church representatives removed these headstones,
and today they are unmarked graves.
Of the 751 hits, the [radar-penetrating] machine has a 10 to 15 per cent error percentage.
So we will only go by the hits that we have of 751,
but we do know there's at least 600.
You're going to notice that they are in proper order;
these that lay here are one meter by one meter apart, in some cases.
We cannot affirm that they are all children,
but there are oral stories that there are adults in this grave site as well,
because it was the Roman Catholic church that overseen this grave site;
some may have went to the church and from our local towns and they could have been buried here as well.
This could be triggering to many,
but when you're from Cowessess First Nation or you have attended the Marieval Residential School,
which many have in southern Saskatchewan and Manitoba,
we always knew that there was graves here.
There are many that agree to disagree from Cowessess on the history of this grave site,
but I want to affirm to you, we are talking about unmarked graves,
we're not talking about a mass grave site.
Today in this country, First Nations people and in this instance Cowessess,
we've never, ever swayed away from who we are,
as in the Nehiyawak-Anishinaabe people.
The Roman Catholic residential school has impacted us intensely.
And today we have generations that may have not went to residential school,
but they are feeling the first and second generation of that impact.
All we ask, of all of you listening, is that you stand by us as we heal and we get stronger.
And that we all must put down our ignorance and accidental racism
of not addressing the truth that this country has with Indigenous people.
We are not asking for pity but we are asking for understanding.
We need time to heal and this country must stand by us.