A recent Monday Methods post may provide more context to the residential school story and the reasoning behind the establishment of a genocidal system.

To briefly answer your numbers questions, we don't know. All available evidence, from oral histories of survivors to written accounts of internments to initial ground penetrating radar surveys of a few schools, indicate a substantial number of unmarked graves associated with the residential schools. Of the Canadian schools analyzed thus far (Kamloops, Marieval, and Cranbrook most recently), ground penetrating radar suggests more than a thousand internments. We should, conservatively, expect numbers to rise well into the thousands for schools across Canada. The cemetery at the most comprehensively researched school in the United States, Carlisle Indian Industrial School, contained 180 graves, with roughly another 60 individuals who died on Outings (job placements in the surrounding community) or were so sick they were sent home to die. The Native American Boarding School Healing Commission has identified 357 boarding schools in the United States. We don't yet know if Carlisle is representative of what we will find at the other 356.

I'm a demographer by training. I love stats. I love numbers. But they never tell the whole story. This is very recent history. As more ground penetrating radar surveys are completed, and more internments discovered, the scars left by a complicated, painful history open anew for indigenous peoples. Those numbers are their ancestors. I strongly encourage anyone interested in the history of the boarding schools to read about current healing coalitions, as well as Truth and Reconciliation Commissions.

If you are interested in learning more about the residential school system, and the complicated stories behind the sensational numbers making headlines, please see the following sources...

• Education for Extinction

• Boarding School Blues

• Boarding School Seasons