Advice and Guidance from the National Advisory Committee

Finding the Missing Children: Starting the Search Process

Across Canada, First Nations, Inuit and Métis families and communities are working hard to find and honour the children who never came home from residential schools. Media reports often focus on one aspect of the search – the use of ground penetrating radar to try to locate unmarked burials. However, as communities leading this work have emphasized, there are many other steps that must be carried out to ensure that a search process is effective – and that it helps rather than harms the Survivors and their families.

Finding the Missing Children: Archival Research and Oral History

We know that thousands of First Nations, Inuit and Métis children never returned home from residential school. Finding the answer requires careful research, including interviews with eyewitnesses and examining a wide range of records that may contain part of the story.

Finding the Missing Children: Carrying Out a Ground Search

When children died in residential schools, their bodies were rarely returned to their families and communities. The Truth and Reconciliation wrote about hundreds of graves on or near residential school sites that were never marked, or that have since been lost. Technology like ground penetrating radar provides powerful to help locate unmarked and lost burial sites. However, every technology has its limits and the search process is more complex than many people realize.

In this short compilation, leading voices involved in the search talk about how ground searches are carried out and its challenges.