He told indigenous people that “the hurt and the trauma that you feel is Canada’s responsibility to bear”.
It is not clear how many of the remains detected belong to children,Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme said.
He said the church that ran the school had removed the headstones.
“We didn’t remove the headstones. Removing headstones is a crime in this country. We are treating this like a crime scene,” he said.
The residential school system,which operated between 1831 and 1996,removed about 150,000 indigenous children from their families and transferred them to Christian residential schools run on behalf of the federal government.
“Canada will be known as a nation who tried to exterminate the First Nations. Now we have evidence,” said Bobby Cameron,chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations,which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan.
“This is just the beginning.”