Sask.-based lawyer welcomes Guatemalan group's offer to support search for unmarked graves
CBC
WARNING: This story includes distressing details.
A Guatemala-based forensic anthropology organization is extending its hand to Indigenous Peoples looking to potentially recover remains of children on the grounds of former residential schools in Canada.
Fredy Peccerelli, a founding member of the Guatemalan Forensic Anthropology Foundation, has been working for nearly 30 years to bring home bodies of the "disappeared"— Maya civilians who were killed during the 36-year civil war in Guatemala that ended in 1996.
He said he's seen first-hand how the pain caused by the loss of family members and their missing remains can rupture through generations and communities.
"It doesn't go away," he said.
Peccerelli said his group's Indigenous-led excavations identify the remains of as many as 125 people per year, on average, which are returned to families and communities.
More than 8,000 bodies have been recovered in the organization's exhumations in Guatemala, and nearly half, or 3,800, have been identified. In some instances, criminal cases have been launched as a result of their work.
In Canada, Indigenous Peoples have been grappling with how to bring deceased family members home from the grounds of former residential schools.
An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend residential schools, of which more than 60 per cent were run by the Catholic Church.
Survivors of the schools have been speaking for decades about the possibility of unmarked graves at the sites, prompting the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to release a report on missing children and unmarked burials in 2016.
But it wasn't until 2021, when Tk'emlups te Secwepemc announced its finding of what are believed to be 215 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C., that the country and the world took notice.
Peccerelli was one of those outside of Canada who watched keenly as the news emerged.
He said his first thought was that First Nations should develop an independent Indigenous-led forensics team similar to his organization's.
"No one is going to treat [searches] with as much respect and dignity, and for as long as it takes to do it, like First Nations people," said Peccerelli. "It's the most dignified way."
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