In May 2022, a Memorial for “The 215″/”Le Estcwicwéy̓” (“The Missing) revealed that there had been a “pre-confirmation” of the remains of children existing in the old apple orchard. The presentation, by Ted Gottfriedson, Jr., noted that on April 21, 2021, “Jeanette and Freda Jules did a blessing of the Heritage Park” to reassure the children who were buried there.
Gottfriedson noted that, besides Jeanette and Freda Jules, Diena Jules was also present (Jeanette Jules, Freda Jules, and Diena Jules are sisters). Diena Jules was the “driving force” behind deciding to do GPR work, as she suggested in 2020 or early 2021 that they should “look for the kids”.
This was because Diena Jules had “always known since [she] was a little kid that there was children that were buried”.
This raises the question of why a tourist attraction would have been built on clandestine burials.
There is also the question of why Jeanette Jules did not raise the issue of “buried children” when she testified before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2013.
This was very different from the presentation given by Jeanette Jules in May 2022, during the one year “Memorial” for “The 215” (or Le Escwicwey), where she referred to the “children whose remains are buried here on these grounds…or were thrown into the incinerator”.
This raises the question of what “pre-confirmation” means. How can one “pre-confirm” something? Doesn’t “confirm” mean finding evidence that supports a claim? Did this “pre-confirmation” create an environment of suggestability, where people were more likely to believe that the “remains of 215 children” were buried in the old apple orchard? Did the “pre-confirmation” influence the Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) operator, Sarah Beaulieu?
Sarah Beaulieu came to be hired because the Tkemlups archaeologist Leslie Lebourdais contacted Eldon Yellowhorn, an Indigenous Studies professor at Simon Fraser, and he recommended this “conflict anthropologist” to do the GPR work (the subject of Day 70 in the Coundown to the fifth anniversary of the #Kamloops215Deception).
