LETTER – A very important difference between ‘exhumation’ and ‘excavation’

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is an excerpt from a letter sent to all MPs, B.C. MLAs and members of B.C. municipal councils.

Dear Member of Parliament,

On 27 September 2026 a group self-identified as Second Sons Canada demonstrated near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School on the reserve, and on a highway overpass some 12 kilometres away, at both locations holding a banner which read ‘Got Bones?’

The demonstration was denounced and condemned by government officials and the RCMP, and by Kamloops Band Chief Rosanne Casimir, who pointed out that ‘Everyone should always be concerned because there’s so much racism and discrimination out there.’  The Kamloops Band Council also reacted by unanimously passing a ‘zero tolerance for hate-based conduct’ resolution on 2 October 2026.  Acting Chief Nikki Fraser stated that ‘the formal policy upholds the nation’s jurisdiction, while giving more tools to the RCMP to remove people engaged in hate-based activities from their community’, and while the situation ‘may have looked like a peaceful protest at first glance’, it was ‘going against who we are as Secwépemc people, and there’s hate-based conduct.’

The matter didn’t end there.  Chief Casimir felt compelled to address the ‘Got Bones’ question posed by the demonstrators’ banner by once again explaining why, after over five years, there has been no excavation of what the Band claimed on 27 May 2021 was the discovery of ‘the remains of 215 children’.

As she has done since 2022 (see here and here), Chief Casimir confused the public by conflating excavation and exhumation.  Put simply, excavation is digging in the ground to find out if something is buried beneath the surface.

Exhumation, on the other hand, is defined as: The formal act of digging up or removing a dead body from its burial place.

In other words, Chief Casimir consistently puts the cart before the horse by talking about exhumation because exhumation only comes into play after buried human remains have been revealed by excavation.  If excavation determines there are no human remains at Kamloops  – which appears to be the case – then exhumation is – and always has been – a non-issue.

Chief Casimir has consistently refused to commit to excavation, and has been playing verbal games when she speaks of exhumation and the difficulty of obtaining the consent of all 38 Bands whose children attended the former Kamloops Indian Residential School before exhumation can take place.

Her comments about exhumation are meaningless, and are deliberately designed to confuse the public into thinking the Kamloops Band plans to excavate, which it clearly does not intend to do, despite the fact that it has received millions of dollars from the federal government for excavation.

NINA GREEN