By Canadian Press

Yukon residential school site to be searched with ground-penetrating radar in summer

Mar 24, 2023 | 2:52 PM

WHITEHORSE — A group working to identify Indigenous children who went missing from Yukon residential schools says ground-penetrating radar work will begin this summer at the site of the former Choutla Residential School near Carcross. 

Adeline Webber, chair of the Yukon Residential Schools Missing Children Working Group, says preliminary research and information from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has identified 42 children who died at the school. 

Webber says archival research by the group has been hampered by “terrible documentation” in some cases, making it difficult to pin down the identities of missing students and the communities from which they were taken. 

She says the group’s work is highly sensitive and trauma inducing, and she was shocked at the start of the project to learn that her own older brother had died at the Choutla Residential School.

Webber says they believe the number of children known to be missing will increase as the group’s research efforts expand to include other residential school sites in the territory.

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The group is also recruiting people from other Yukon communities to interview residential school survivors and their families about any information they may have about children who went missing while attending the schools. 

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 24, 2023.

The Canadian Press