On May 27, 2021, the Kamloops Indian Band announced “the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School”. No “remains” have been found at the site, and it was just 215 “anomalies” or “targets of interest” that were found on the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR). At first, this appeared to be a mistake. With the mounting evidence, however, there seems to have been a concerted effort to mislead the public so as to extract millions of dollars in federal transfers. This is FRAUD.
The evidence for this fraud culminated on January 27, 2025, when Blacklock’s Reporter posted a story with the title “Grave Funds Paid Publicists”.
One of the documents released under the Access To Information Act was a “funding request” made by the Kamloops Indian Band for “Kamloops Indian Residential School Ancestral Remains Excavation” in 2021-2022 for $9,255,541.
The Blacklock’s Reporter article notes that even more funding than the $9.3 million requested was received by the band. It was actually $12.1 million.
The Blacklock’s Reporter article also asserts that Mandy McCarthy, the acting director general of the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations, tried to get clarification from the Kamloops Indian Band about what they were spending the money on.
She asked what “archaeological and forensic work” was being undertaken and whether the band had “all the information” that it “need[ed] to advance exhumation protocols and DNA testing”. This shows that it was understood by both parties that that excavations were required as part of the funding that was allocated.
Some of these expenses now have been detailed, but approximately $11 million in government funding remains unaccounted for.
Of the funds that are accounted for, money was spent on “marketing and communications”, “travel”, pay for two trauma counsellors, and “administrative costs”. Over 500,000 dollars also went to “security”.
Funds that are unaccounted for include money spent on hiring 25 consultants “to provide advice and support to the Chief and Council” and for “publicists” to help with “communications strategies”. The Blacklock’s Reporter article points out that “none of the consultants were named”.
One “consultant” and/or “publicist” was Racelle Kooy – an “External Relations Strategist and Lead Facilitator”. As Kooy notes in her Linked-In profile, she was the “communications lead” for the Kamloops Indian Band when it shared the “monumental and heart-wrenching news to the world” about the “missing children of the Kamloops Indian Residential School”.
Kooy became prominent to those analyzing the Kamloops case on July 15, 2021, because she was the consultant preventing journalists from directing questions at the residential school “survivors” giving presentations during the event when the GPR expert, Sarah Beaulieu, discussed her findings.
Kooy also is referred to by the indigenous activist-journalist Tanya Talaga in her book “The Knowing”.
In chapter two, Talaga recounts her interactions with Kooy who was “well known in the Indigenous media world as a sharpshooter…”. According to Talaga, Kooy was the main person controlling communications, which included “sending out an embargoed press release to select journalists who they felt could bring the devastating news to light with sensitivity”.
Talaga also recounts that during her first few days in Kamloops, Racelle Kooy was interacting with journalists from all over the world and telling them not to come to Kamloops. As Talaga puts it: “There would be no media at this time, except those select few who, like me, were invited. How could there be?”.
In addition to her being one of the “select” journalists who was given the nod to cover the Kamloops case, Talaga is notable for her connections to Kimberly Murray (left) and prominent members of the Kamloops Indian Band (Chief Rosanne Casimir {second from left} and Jeanette Jules (Le Estcwicwéy̓ [“The Missing”] Manager {right}) – seen here hobnobbing at the Toronto International Film Festival.
Notable for its absence is any mention of “legal services”. As people will know from reading Disrobing the Aboriginal Industry: The Deception Behind Indigenous Preservation, in addition to “consultants”, lawyers function prominently in any indigenous issue.
In the case of the “Kamloops Indian Residential School Ancestral Remains Excavation”, there is, of course, Kimberly Murray, the Special Interlocutor on Unmarked Graves and Missing children (who is a lawyer). There is also the Kamloops Indian Band’s “legal team” who “strongly advised” the Simon Fraser University (SFU) archaeology department “not to respond to any queries from the public regarding the search for unmarked graves in Kamloops”.
Lawyers were also involved in submitting a complaint to the International Criminal Court on June 3, 2021. According to these lawyers, “The Complaint is regarding the recent discovery of a mass unmarked grave of 215 Indigenous children who were under the forced care of the GOC [Government of Canada] and the Vatican”.
At least the 22 lawyers have an excuse for spreading this misinformation; it was not until July 15, 2021 that Sarah Beaulieu publicly announced that the “remains of 215 children” had not been found, and that it was “200 anomalies [that] remain as targets of interest” and that “only…excavation…will be able to conclusively determine this”. Beaulieu downgraded the “215” number to “200 anomalies” because she discovered, after the fact, that the SFU archaeology department had done excavations previously in the area where 15 of the anomalies had been found. This raises the question of why Beaulieu could not be similarly mistaken for the remaining 200 anomalies.
An email from Hugo Cardoso, the Chair of the SFU archaeology department, is the only evidence that we have that a report by Sarah Beaulieu was actually produced and even “thoroughly reviewed by a designated review team of five archaeologists very experienced in GPR”. According to Cardoso “all agreed that it was methodologically sound” (email to Nina Green, July 27, 2021).
Rosanne Casimir cannot partake of the same excuse as the 22 lawyers when she moved a motion at the BC Assembly of First Nations’ Annual General Meeting (September 14-16, 2021) stating that “215 unmarked mass graves of children were located utilizing ground-penetrating radar”. This was, after all, two months after Beaulieu’s presentation (which Casimir attended).
Similarly, the 13 “Family Heads” of the Kamloops Indian Band cannot plead ignorance. On October 18, 2021 – three months after Sarah Beaulieu’s presentation – a petition was sent by them to the prime minister referring to “the confirmation of at least 215 unmarked graves of little ones who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School”.
Fraud is defined as the “intentional perversion of truth in order to induce another to part with something of value…”. The Kamloops Indian Band made a funding request for “Kamloops Indian Residential School Ancestral Remains Excavation” in 2021-2022 for $9,255,541. In spite of over three years passing and actually receiving $12.1 million, the Kamloops Indian Band has not dug even one hole in what was the apple orchard at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. THIS IS FRAUD.
What is required are the following three things:
- The release of the Sarah Beaulieu Report (funded with a $40,000 grant from Canadian Heritage);
- an impartial investigation; and
- excavations at the site where most of the GPR anomalies were found – the area where septic tiles were laid in an east-west orientation in the 1920s.
