I have chosen an archeological impact assessment interim report that documents the “presence/absence of human remains and/or buried evidence of historical cemetery use” in New Westminster, British Columbia, on the grounds where the old secondary school stood on (Golder Associates, 2017). Although I never attended school in this district, I grew up in a neighboring city called Burnaby and I have been living in New Westminster for the past four years – for these reasons, this personally relevant “event” (for lack of a better word) immediately came to mind. Similar to the rationale for the report provided in the assignment example, this one provides a first-hand account of the shocking discoveries made of the quantity of unmarked bodies, the number of graveyards that existed on this land before other properties were constructed above it, and how people were chosen to be buried here and forgotten. I also decided to include the article published by The New Westminster Times as it led me to find this report, which I thought would be pertinent in examining how Indigenous peoples are not only represented but also how they are involved in this particular matter. I imagine that in a teacher education course, these sources would bring discussions of erasure of identity and injustice to Indigenous communities as well as other marginalized groups to the forefront. More importantly, it raises the issue of cover-ups in our Canadian history that have greatly affected people deemed as “lesser” which trickles into what some of our students may be feeling today as a consequence of this oppression.
I wanted to find out how this was even allowed to happen and be hidden from the public eye for so long in the first place. By doing so, the goal would be to give prospective educators an awareness of how close these atrocities can be to home without us even knowing in the hopes of getting one step closer to decolonization and reconciliation. I still have a lot to learn, so I did not feel comfortable adding terms of my own. Instead I read the page on Indigenous Foundation Terminology, took what I learned, and decided to use the terms “Indian”, “Indigenous”, “Aboriginal”, “First Nations”, “Native”, and “Métis” to aid in the search. Another question I hoped to find the answer to is what educators can do after learning all of this – though given how vague this question is and as more truthful, painful histories are uncovered, perhaps the definitive word “answer” should be replaced by a question: “What now?”
Below is a list of the occurrences for each search term in both the report and article.
| Indian | Indigenous | Aboriginal | First Nations | Native | Métis |
| 6 | 10 | 0 | 42 | 1 | 2 |
The term “Indian” is used twice in the article to bring attention to another site, the Kamloops Indian Residential School and four times in the report where the Musqueam Indian Band and New Westminster Indian Bands were named on the distribution list of who received this report. The term “Indigenous” only appeared in the article, referring to Indigenous land claims, members of Indigenous communities who participated in this archeological process, and a mention of the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA). The term “First Nations” appears 40 times in the report describing multiple recipients on the distribution list and crediting those who engaged in field work. The term “Native” appears once in the report but is unrelated, as it is used to describe a specific archaeological finding related to fauna as a native species. The term “Métis” appears twice in the report – once as the Métis Nation British Columbia on the distribution list, and once as one of the groups with community interest and involvement with these cemeteries in New Westminster.
When compiling these results and analyzing the information that was presented to me, I was not able to read the entirety of the report as it contained 119 pages. Instead, I used the search terms to give me a starting point on where to look for answers related to my questions, which led to me branching out to related and neighboring sections of the report. The article also referred to the Kamloops Indian Residential School and the unmarked graves which have yet to be excavated five years after the announcement. Although this may have been a catalyst for the investigation that took place in New Westminster and other places in British Columbia, I chose to focus on the New Westminster site to keep the scale of this assignment at a reasonable size.
From what I could gather, there were multiple cemeteries in the vicinity of the old secondary school, such as Potter’s Field, the New Westminster Public Cemetery, the Chinese Cemetery, and Douglas Cemetery – all of these were used for slightly different purposes but resulted in a mass of unmarked burials. For example, the New Westminster Public Cemetery to bury “poor and homeless” people as well as “some patients and stillborn infants” (Golder Associates, 2017). A mix of building permits as well as loose definitions of what constituted the boundaries of burial grounds led to the construction of various buildings such as an isolation hospital, city stables, and eventually a high school. It seems that the original purposes of that land were lost to time and carelessness and were only uncovered with the investigation that occurred before enacting the New Westminster Secondary School Replacement Project. There were also no laws, policies, or societal values in place to protect the identities of the buried.
The second question was trickier but I was not surprised given its open-ended nature. By reading between the lines, I was able to find how the history of residential schools and unmarked graves resulted in change. The Canadian government passed acts such as DRIPA in 2019 which would respect the “human rights of Indigenous Peoples” and require an action plan to be developed (Government of British Columbia, 2026). Red Dress Day was first observed in 2010 while the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation began in 2021. Schools began normalizing land acknowledgements while the media and Internet started widely discussing residential schools and unmarked burials. While the Golder Associates did not find any human remains, they still provided heritage recommendations and the new high school was relocated to an adjacent spot out of respect. Most importantly, I gained a hint as to what educators can do in response to all of this. The simple act of openly talking about and bringing awareness to this topic is a marker of progress that did not really exist until recently in our history – sometimes the biggest impacts start from conversations and from listening to one another.
References:
Brett, D. H. (2026, January 8). Unmarked graves and unanswered questions: New Westminster’s swift ground truthing reveals Kamloops cover-up. The New Westminster Times. https://www.newwesttimes.com/news/unmarked-graves-and-unanswered-questions-new-westminsters-swift-ground-truthing-reveals-kamloops-cover-up/article_ec5df996-e275-4fac-8b2a-d473fd91c52a.html
Golder Associates. (2017). School District 40 (New Westminster) Heritage Investigations for the New Westminster Secondary School Replacement Project. https://newwestschools.ca/archive_241212/wp-content/uploads/2016/10/0714120151-578-R-Rev0-Arch-Impact-Assess-IR-12JUN_17.pdf
Government of British Columbia. (2026). Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act. https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/indigenous-people/new-relationship/united-nations-declaration-on-the-rights-of-indigenous-peoples
Indigenous Foundations. (2009). Indigenous Foundation Terminology. https://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/terminology/
