Thursday, March 13, 2025

A former residential school in British Columbia has been designated a national historic site. It’s the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, where in 2021, a radar survey found roughly 200 potential unmarked graves, as Dan Karpenchuk reports. National historic sites in Canada are places that have shaped the country’s history … not all of it good. That is the case with the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. It was nominated to become a site by the Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc (TteS) First Nation. The Canadian government worked with the band to help determine its significance. TteS First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir says designating the school a historic site symbolizes hope and the vision of ancestors for a prosperous future for their children and those not yet born. Many of the buildings on the site have been preserved and are being used for education language and culture. Celia Haig-Brown is a senior scholar at Toronto’s York University. “Recognizing the school is a much more complex recognition of Canada’s history and its relationship with Indigenous people. I just hope that declaring it a heritage site means that it will be protected in memorium, so that we do not lose site of the chequered past we have.” The school operated from 1890 to 1969. The government took over administration of the school from the Catholic Church. It was then run as a day school until it closed in 1978. It was one of the many residential schools across Canada which more than 150,000 first nations Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend. It’s estimated that about 4,100 children died at the schools. Many of those who attended never returned home. (Courtesy Michelle Paulene Abeyta) An estimated 40,000 children in New Mexico were raised by grandparents or a relative in 2024, according to that state’s Aging and Long-Term Services Department. A bill in the New Mexico legislature would create a pilot program to assist these kinship caregivers. Reporter Jeanette DeDios has more. House Bill 252 has already passed the House and is currently at the Senate Judiciary committee. The three-year pilot program would assist kinship caregivers in Rio Arriba, Santa Fe, Taos, McKinley, and Doña Ana Counties, targeting 50 participants in each area. According to the bill analysis, one quarter of grandparents raising grandchildren in New Mexico live in poverty. Kinship care is growing here, despite declining in the rest of the country, and one of the reasons is parents struggling with substance use disorders. According to the fiscal impact report, the bill originally had a $4.5 million appropriation, but an amended version changed that to $4 million from the general fund. The program would be administered through the Aging and Long-Term Services Department and would provide resources like public assistance, economic support, and legal services. State Rep. Michelle “Paulene” Abeyta (Navajo/D-NM) is a co-sponsor and she and her husband are kinship caregivers themselves. Rep. Abeyta is a lawyer and even she finds the system difficult to navigate. “Sometimes the system is not designed to be one of support, right? And so I think with this bill, what we’re looking at doing is empowering the way that we help families.” Abeyta says this bill is to support families who want to obtain legal custody or official guardianship, because so many times those legal fees are what make families concerned about not proceeding through the court system. The legislative session ends on March 22 at noon. And on this day in 1806, the Lewis and Clark expedition were near what would become known as the Oregon Coast. They lost a canoe and sent an interpreter to buy two from the Clatsop. They also describe fish later identified as the sockeye salmon and steelhead trout, which was new to science at that time, and mentioned the Indigenous people were eating starry flounder.   Get National Native News delivered to your inbox daily. Sign up for our daily newsletter today.