Stó:lō Nation officials will be providing an update on their work into missing children and unmarked burials in the Fraser Valley at three former residential school sites.
The investigation was launched after ground-penetrating radar located what are believed to be more than 200 graves at a former residential school in Kamloops in May 2021, prompting similar searches and findings in several provinces.
Stó:lō Nation efforts will focus on St. Mary’s Residential School in Mission, Coqualeetza Industrial Institute/Residential School in Chilliwack, All Hallows School in Yale, as well as the Coqualeetza Indian Hospital.
Their ‘Taking Care of Children’ team has been studying archival, oral historical and on-site remote sensing work in search of identifiable unmarked graves.
The work that began in August 2021 is following a three-year plan.
The statement says remote sensing and imaging technologies including drone-based lidar surface mapping and photogrammetry, as well as ground-penetrating radar, would be used to search for unmarked graves.
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