After searching for 70 years, Pimicikamak family finds graves of relatives taken to residential school

After 70 years of searching, a Cree family finally knows where three of their relatives were buried after they were taken from their first nation in northern Manitoba and forced to attend residential school.

In September, on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Betsy Oniske and her family gave her three late aunties a proper burial. Oniske, 67, carried dirt from where their final resting places — places across the province that were once unknown to her family — and put them in three tiny wooden boxes, each marked with a flower on top. 

At her grandmother’s resting place in Pimicikamak, the family dug a