Warning: This article contains disturbing details. Reader discretion is advised.
It’s been a year since the announcement of the detection of unmarked graves at the site of what was once Canada’s largest residential school – an announcement that for many Indigenous survivors was confirmation of what they already knew.
A daylong memorial brought dozens to Kamloops, B.C., Monday to mark the anniversary as work continues at the site, and to honour the children who never made it home.
A sunrise ceremony was held on the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc powwow grounds, not far from the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
It began with an opening prayer, and included an emotional speech from Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir.
“What scientific investigation confirmed were the truths about our survivors and what they’ve always known,” she said.
“Too many children did not make it home.”
The day to honour children who were taken from their homes and never made it back includes cultural performances, dances, drumming and speeches, and will close with an evening prayer, which will be attended by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Trudeau will be meeting with the community and will take part in a closed meeting with Casimir and members of her council, before participating in closing ceremonies scheduled to begin at around 7 p.m.
It’s been a year since members of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced the discovery of what it believes are the remains of up to 215 people buried at an unmarked area on the school grounds.
A file was open by the Tk’emlúps Rural RCMP last spring, and the case remains under investigation.
Casimir said it’s been a year of pain for some, describing the announcement made one year ago as “like a wound being reopened,” but that it’s also an opportunity for healing.
She said science will support the next steps, but that the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation is taking time, knowing the impact the investigation has on the community.
Casimir also noted the impact the discovery had on those outside the community, encouraging non-Indigenous people to want to learn more about Canada’s hidden history.
“The unmarked graves brought truth to the world, and the world stood with us in solidarity and unity,” she said.
Gov.-Gen. Mary Simon was at the sunrise ceremony, and said, simply, “You knew. You’ve known for so long.”
Addressing survivors and their relatives, she said that the investigation has been called a discovery, but it’s confirmation.
“You knew what happened here, the atrocities, the deaths, the loss. And the silence … And now everyone knows. It shouldn’t have taken this long, but finally, people know.”
Drummers play and sing during a ceremony to mark the one-year anniversary of the announcement of the detection of the remains of children at an unmarked burial site at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, B.C., on Monday, May 23, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
(Ben Miljure / CTV News Vancouver)
DETAILS ON THE SEARCH
The search area was in part determined by the discoveries of a child’s rib bone and a youth’s tooth, and is the site of what was once an apple orchard, when the school was in operation.
Sarah Beaulieu, a professor at the University of the Fraser Valley and member of the search team, described what she found as “targets of interest” when outlining the technical side of the investigation last July.
While the only way to confirm what is in the graves is exhumation, according to experts behind the detection, the discovery matched stories from survivors of the school, some of whom described being woken up in the middle of the night to dig graves in the orchard.
Some of those children were as young as six.
Currently, the focus of the ongoing investigation in the Kamloops area is not excavation and forensic analysis but the search through ground-penetrating radar of the rest of the site, as only a small area of the grounds were examined in the initial study.
(Ben Miljure / CTV News Vancouver)
SURVIVORS’ STORIES
One of the people who attended the school as a child is Clayton Peters, who told The Canadian Press it was “the most horrible pain in the world to be a native, to be an Indian back then.”
He and his brothers attended the Kamloops school in the late 1960s, into the 1970s, and said he remembers thinking that the kids who suddenly disappeared were the lucky ones.
“I’d always thought that they ran away like I did, that they made it, that they were free,” he said, crying. Now he thinks some of those children’s remains may be among those hidden under the orchard.
Before he was kicked out at the age of 17, Peters said, he was regularly beaten and molested. Children who spoke their own language were made to eat soap, he said, and they were also forced to scrub their bodies with lye to “take the brown off them.”
When children fell ill, he said, they were put in a dark room rather than given treatment. The room was also used as punishment.
“I was sad all my life. When I left that school, I fought everybody. I fought every white man that bumped into me. I was so angry,” he said.
Another survivor is Ron Ignace, who told CTV News last year he’d been beaten for speaking his mother tongue, but that he refused to abandon the Secwepemctsin language entirely.
“I thought in Secwepemctsin and spoke in English, knowing full well that they could not beat me for what I thought,” he said in an interview on the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.
He ran away during a leave on his 16th birthday, and said he’s living proof that the school system failed its goal, described by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a campaign of cultural genocide.
And what happened back then had a lasting impact.
“This is a heavy truth. It has been referred to as a historic dark chapter but Indigenous people are very much alive with the repercussions that they’re living today,” Kukpi7 Casimir said back in July.
It’s important to remember that the Kamloops school is only one of 139 in the system.
Cutouts of orange T-shirts are hung on a fence outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, B.C., on Thursday, July 15, 2021. (Darryl Dyck / THE CANADIAN PRESS)
DISCOVERIES ACROSS CANADA
Many spoke about deaths and disappearances of children who attended the school, and other residential schools in Canada.
The Kamloops discovery marked a year of further investigations at school grounds across the country, and calls for truth, acknowledgment and apologies from both the Canadian government and the Catholic Church, which operated many institutions in the residential school system.
The Pope issued an apology earlier this year, and is planning a trip to Canada in the summer that will involve visits to First Nations communities, though none in British Columbia.
Casimir included in her opening remarks a thank you to members of the church, including a local bishop who’s committed to working with Indigenous peoples towards reconciliation.
“We know that many of our people still practice Catholicism. We all need to have faith, we all need to have hope, we all pray to the one creator, the one god.”
With files from CTV News Vancouver’s Ben Miljure in Kamloops, B.C., and The Canadian Press
People are silhouetted as they walk past the former Kamloops Indian Residential School after gathering to honour the 215 children whose remains are believed to be buried near the facility, in Kamloops, B.C., on Monday, May 31, 2021. The year since the the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar had located the suspected grave sites in a former apple orchard has been one of national reckoning about residential schools in Canada. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419, or the Indian Residential School Survivors Society toll free line at 1-800-721-0066.
Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.
PHOENIX (AP) — Arizona voters have approved a constitutional amendment guaranteeing abortion access up to fetal viability, typically after 21 weeks — a major win for advocates of the measure in the presidential battleground state who have been seeking to expand access beyond the current 15-week limit.
Arizona was one of nine states with abortion on the ballot. Democrats have centered abortion rights in their campaigns since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022. Abortion-rights supporters prevailed in all seven abortion ballot questions in 2022 and 2023, including in conservative-leaning states.
Arizona for Abortion Access, the coalition leading the state campaign, gathered well over the 383,923 signatures required to put it on the ballot, and the secretary of state’s office verified that enough were valid. The coalition far outpaced the opposition campaign, It Goes Too Far, in fundraising. The opposing campaign argued the measure was too far-reaching and cited its own polling in saying a majority of Arizonans support the 15-week limit. The measure allows post-viability abortions if they are necessary to protect the life or physical or mental health of the mother.
Access to abortion has been a cloudy issue in Arizona. In April, the state Supreme Court cleared the way for the enforcement of a long-dormant 1864 law banning nearly all abortions. The state Legislature swiftly repealed it.
Voters in Arizona are divided on abortion. Maddy Pennell, a junior at Arizona State University, said the possibility of a near-total abortion ban made her “depressed” and strengthened her desire to vote for the abortion ballot measure.
“I feel very strongly about having access to abortion,” she said.
Kyle Lee, an independent Arizona voter, does not support the abortion ballot measure.
“All abortion is pretty much, in my opinion, murder from beginning to end,” Lee said.
The Civil War-era ban also shaped the contours of tight legislative races. State Sen. Shawnna Bolick and state Rep. Matt Gress are among the handful of vulnerable Republican incumbents in competitive districts who crossed party lines to give the repeal vote the final push — a vote that will be tested as both parties vie for control of the narrowly GOP-held state Legislature.
Both of the Phoenix-area lawmakers were rebuked by some of their Republican colleagues for siding with Democrats. Gress made a motion on the House floor to initiate the repeal of the 1864 law. Bolick, explaining her repeal vote to her Senate colleagues, gave a 20-minute floor speech describing her three difficult pregnancies.
While Gress was first elected to his seat in 2022, Bolick is facing voters for the first time. She was appointed by the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors to fill a seat vacancy in 2023. She has not emphasized her role in the repeal vote as she has campaigned, instead playing up traditional conservative issues — one of her signs reads “Bolick Backs the Blue.”
Voters rejected a measure to eliminate retention elections for state Superior Court judges and Supreme Court justices.
The measure was put on the ballot by Republican legislators hoping to protect two conservative justices up for a routine retention vote who favored allowing the Civil War-era ban to be enforced — Shawnna Bolick’s husband, Supreme Court Justice Clint Bolick, and Justice Kathryn Hackett King. Since the measure did not pass, both are still vulnerable to voter ouster, though those races hadn’t been decided by early Wednesday morning.
Under the existing system, voters decide every four to six years whether judges and justices should remain on the bench. The proposed measure would have allowed the judges and justices to stay on the bench without a popular vote unless one is triggered by felony convictions, crimes involving fraud and dishonesty, personal bankruptcy or mortgage foreclosure.
OMAHA, Neb. (AP) — Nebraska voters supported a measure Tuesday that enshrines the state’s current ban on abortions after the 12th week of pregnancy in the state constitution, and they rejected a competing measure that sought to expand abortion rights. Nebraska was the first state to have competing abortion amendments on the same ballot since the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, ending the nationwide right to abortion and allowing states to decide for themselves. The dueling measures were among a record number of petition-initiated measures on Nebraska’s ballot Tuesday.
What were the competing abortion measures?
A majority of voters supported a measure enshrining the state’s current ban on abortion after the first 12 weeks of pregnancy in the state constitution. The measure will also allow for further restrictions. Last year, the Legislature passed the 12-week ban, which includes exceptions for cases of rape and incest and to protect the life of the pregnant woman.
Voters rejected the other abortion measure. If they had passed it by a larger number of “for” votes than the 12-week measure, it would have amended the constitution to guarantee the right to have an abortion until viability — the standard under Roe that is the point at which a fetus might survive outside the womb. Some babies can survive with medical help after 21 weeks of gestation.
Abortion was on the ballot in several other states, as well. Coming into the election, voters in all seven states that had decided on abortion-related ballot measures since the reversal of Roe had favored abortion rights, including in some conservative states.
Who is behind the Nebraska abortion measures?
The 12-week ban measure was bankrolled by some of Nebraska’s wealthiest people, including Republican Sen. Pete Ricketts, who previously served as governor and donated more than $1.1 million. His mother, Marlene Ricketts, gave $4 million to the cause. Members of the Peed family, which owns publishing company Sandhills Global, also gave $1 million.
The effort was organized under the name Protect Women and Children and was heavily backed by religious organizations, including the Nebraska Catholic Conference, a lobbying group that has organized rallies, phone banks and community townhalls to drum up support for the measure.
The effort to enshrine viability as the standard was called Protect Our Rights Nebraska and had the backing of several medical, advocacy and social justice groups. Planned Parenthood donated nearly $1 million to the cause, with the American Civil Liberties Union, I Be Black Girl, Nebraska Appleseed and the Women’s Fund of Omaha also contributing significantly to the roughly $3.7 million raised by Protect Our Rights.
What other initiatives were on Nebraska’s ballot?
Nebraska voters approved two measures Tuesday that will create a system for the use and manufacture of medical marijuana, if the measures survive an ongoing legal challenge.
The measures legalize the possession and use of medical marijuana, and allow for the manufacture, distribution and delivery of the drug. One would let patients and caregivers possess up to 5 ounces (142 grams) of marijuana if recommended by a doctor. The other would create the Nebraska Medical Cannabis Commission, which would oversee the private groups that would manufacture and dispense the drug.
Those initiatives were challenged over allegations that the petition campaign that put them on the ballot broke election rules. Nebraska’s attorney general said supporters of the measures may have submitted several thousand invalid signatures, and one man has been charged in connection with 164 allegedly fraudulent signatures. That means a judge could still invalidate the measures.
Voters also opted Tuesday to repeal a new conservative-backed law that allocates millions of dollars in taxpayer money to fund private school tuition.
Finally, they approved a measure that will require all Nebraska employers to provide at least 40 hours of paid sick leave to their employees.
WASHINGTON (AP) — Voters in Missouri cleared the way to undo one of the nation’s most restrictive abortion bans in one of seven victories for abortion rights advocates, while Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota defeated similar constitutional amendments, leaving bans in place.
Abortion rights amendments also passed in Arizona, Colorado, Maryland and Montana. Nevada voters also approved an amendment, but they’ll need to pass it again it 2026 for it to take effect. Another that bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes” prevailed in New York.
The results include firsts for the abortion landscape, which underwent a seismic shift in 2022 when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, a ruling that ended a nationwide right to abortion and cleared the way for bans to take effect in most Republican-controlled states.
They also came in the same election that Republican Donald Trump won the presidency. Among his inconsistent positions on abortion has been an insistence that it’s an issue best left to the states. Still, the president can have a major impact on abortion policy through executive action.
In the meantime, Missouri is positioned to be the first state where a vote will undo a ban on abortion at all stages of pregnancy, with an amendment that would allow lawmakers to restrict abortions only past the point of a fetus’ viability — usually considered after 21 weeks, although there’s no exact defined time frame.
But the ban, and other restrictive laws, are not automatically repealed. Advocates now have to ask courts to overturn laws to square with the new amendment.
“Today, Missourians made history and sent a clear message: decisions around pregnancy, including abortion, birth control, and miscarriage care are personal and private and should be left up to patients and their families, not politicians,” Rachel Sweet, campaign manager of Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, said in a statement.
Roughly half of Missouri’s voters said abortion should be legal in all or most cases, according to AP VoteCast, a survey of more than 2,200 of the state’s voters. But only about 1 in 10 said abortion should be illegal in all cases; nearly 4 in 10 said abortion should be illegal in most cases.
Bans remain in place in three states after votes
Florida, Nebraska and South Dakota became the first states since Roe was overturned where abortion opponents prevailed on a ballot measure. Most voters supported the Florida measure, but it fell short of the required 60% to pass constitutional amendments in the state. Most states require a simple majority.
The result was a political win for Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican with a national profile, who had steered state GOP funds to the cause. His administration has weighed in, too, with a campaign against the measure, investigators questioning people who signed petitions to add it to the ballot and threats to TV stations that aired one commercial supporting it.
Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the national anti-abortion group SBA Pro-Life America, said in a statement that the result is “a momentous victory for life in Florida and for our entire country,” praising DeSantis for leading the charge against the measure.
The defeat makes permanent a shift in the Southern abortion landscape that began when the state’s six-week ban took effect in May. That removed Florida as a destination for abortion for many women from nearby states with deeper bans and also led to far more women from the state traveling to obtain abortion. The nearest states with looser restrictions are North Carolina and Virginia — hundreds of miles away.
“The reality is because of Florida’s constitution a minority of Florida voters have decided Amendment 4 will not be adopted,” said Lauren Brenzel, campaign director for the Yes on 4 Campaign said while wiping away tears. “The reality is a majority of Floridians just voted to end Florida’s abortion ban.”
In South Dakota, another state with a ban on abortion throughout pregnancy with some exceptions, the defeat of an abortion measure was more decisive. It would have allowed some regulations related to the health of the woman after 12 weeks. Because of that wrinkle, most national abortion-rights groups did not support it.
Voters in Nebraska adopted a measure that allows more abortion restrictions and enshrines the state’s current 12-week ban and rejected a competing measure that would have ensured abortion rights.
Other states guaranteed abortion rights
Arizona’s amendment will mean replacing the current law that bans abortion after the first 15 weeks of pregnancy. The new measure ensures abortion access until viability. A ballot measure there gained momentum after a state Supreme Court ruling in April found that the state could enforce a strict abortion ban adopted in 1864. Some GOP lawmakers joined with Democrats to repeal the law before it could be enforced.
In Maryland, the abortion rights amendment is a legal change that won’t make an immediate difference to abortion access in a state that already allows it.
It’s a similar situation in Montana, where abortion is already legal until viability.
The Colorado measure exceeded the 55% of support required to pass. Besides enshrining access, it also undoes an earlier amendment that barred using state and local government funding for abortion, opening the possibility of state Medicaid and government employee insurance plans covering care.
A New York equal rights law that abortion rights group say will bolster abortion rights also passed. It doesn’t contain the word “abortion” but rather bans discrimination on the basis of “pregnancy outcomes, and reproductive healthcare and autonomy.” Sasha Ahuja, campaign director of New Yorkers for Equal Rights, called the result “a monumental victory for all New Yorkers” and a vote against opponents who she says used misleading parental rights and anti-trans messages to thwart the measure.
The results end a win streak for abortion-rights advocates
Until Tuesday, abortion rights advocates had prevailed on all seven measures that have appeared on statewide ballots since the fall of Roe.
The abortion rights campaigns have a big fundraising advantage this year. Their opponents’ efforts are focused on portraying the amendments as too extreme rather than abortion as immoral.
Currently, 13 states are enforcing bans at all stages of pregnancy, with some exceptions. Four more bar abortion in most cases after about six weeks of pregnancy — before women often realize they’re pregnant. Despite the bans, the number of monthly abortions in the U.S. has risen slightly, because of the growing use of abortion pills and organized efforts to help women travel for abortion. Still, advocates say the bans have reduced access, especially for lower-income and minority residents of the states with bans.
The issue is resonating with voters. About one-fourth said abortion policy was the single most important factor for their vote, according to AP VoteCast, a sweeping survey of more than 110,000 voters nationwide. Close to half said it was an important factor, but not the most important. Just over 1 in 10 said it was a minor factor.
The outcomes of ballot initiatives that sought to overturn strict abortion bans in Florida and Missouri were very important to a majority of voters in the states. More than half of Florida voters identified the result of the amendment as very important, while roughly 6 in 10 of Missouri’s voters said the same, the survey found.
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Associated Press reporters Hannah Fingerhut and Amanda Seitz contributed to this article.
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This article has been corrected to reflect in the ‘other states’ section that Montana, not Missouri, currently allows abortion until viability.
