N.W.T. residential school grave exhumed, child’s remains repatriated to family

The grave of a residential school victim was exhumed, and the child's remains were returned to her home community. Five-year-old Alma Beaulieu died at St Joseph's school in 1944.

It took three years to find the grave of Alma Beaulieu near the St. Joseph’s Residential School at Fort Resolution, N.W.T., and for the young girl’s remains to be returned home.

Researchers who worked on the case say it’s the first time outside of Quebec that a residential school victim has been exhumed and repatriated.

In 2022, the Deninu Kųę́ First Nation (DKFN) began an investigation into missing children and unmarked burials near the former residential school, which operated from 1903 to 1957. Students were sent there from across the Northwest Territories, and many of them died.

Among them was Beaulieu, who was just five years old when she died in 1944, according to school and church records.

Her sister, Delphine Beaulieu, says her parents were not informed of Alma’s death and only learned about it when she didn’t return home for a school break.

“(My mother) said that some of the kids told their parents,” Delphine recalls. “They (officials) did not tell her. They just buried her. I remember my mom crying for what seemed like forever.”

Delphine, 88, has spent the past several years working with researchers, DKFN leaders and territorial politicians to fulfill a promise she made to her late mother to bring her sister home to finally rest.

Several graves were found using ground-penetrating radar, and they isolated one believed to be Alma’s. A wooden cross bearing her name had been found nearby.