Peace and Closure as Residential School Girls Rest at Home
- CBS News
- 5 hours ago
- 3 min read
Peace and closure among family's feelings as girls who died at residential school come home
July 23, 2026
Alice and Rosanna Drygeese will be buried in Yellowknife, N.W.T., next to their father
In some of his final words, Berna Ross’s grandfather spoke of how nice it would be to reunite with his two daughters in heaven.
It’s been decades since he’d seen his daughters Alice and Rosanna Drygeese, Ross’s aunties, who went away to residential school in Fort Resolution and never came home.
Ross’s mother, Mary Jane, is Alice and Rosanna’s sister. They were 14 and 6 years old when they died of tuberculosis.
“They were supposed to come home for Christmas,” Ross said, recalling her mother’s story. “She was never given a full explanation.”
Soon, Alice and Rosanna will be buried next to their father in Yellowknife.
“Just knowing that they're going to be close to their dad, it just gives me joy and peace, closure as well,” Ross said.
Deninu Kųę́ First Nation has been working to map the graves of those who died at residential school in Fort Resolution and identify unmarked graves while connecting family with their missing loved ones. So far, they've identified the names of 70 children who never made it home from St. Joseph's Mission School in Fort Resolution.
It’s a process that takes years of work, ground penetrating radar, DNA testing and hundreds of thousands of dollars. Thanks to that work, the remains of Alma Beaulieu were brought home to Fort Smith in October and Alice Abel and Denise Boucher to Łútselk'e last week.
Linda Vanden Berg, an anthropologist working with the First Nation, said the work is intensive but everyone involved is dedicated.
“We're trying to repatriate as many children as possible because when the elders contact us, they aren't young and they want to bring these children home to be buried beside their relatives,” she said.
Deninu Kųę́ is leading the country in repatriating remains of children who died in residential schools, she said, and that has a lot to do with the Jon Hansen, the bishop of the Mackenzie-Fort Smith diocese, allowing access to historical church records.
“Without the burial records, it would have been nigh on impossible to achieve this. And I don't think that access is there for the rest of the country,” she said.
Vanden Berg said their team has also been able to make strides because the residential school in Fort Resolution was relatively small compared to others in the country so they can go through the documents more quickly.
Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) funds this work through a Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund. That supports research to help communities gather local knowledge, find burial sites and honour the children with grave markers, monuments or commemorative events.
‘All of the what ifs’
The Northwest Territories previously prevented families from bringing home remains of their loved ones because of legislation that considered ancestral remains to be artifacts.
Last year, the government of the Northwest Territories established a process to get around that. The chief public health officer could authorize families to exhume the children, or families could go through the courts for permission.
At least five children have been brought home to their communities and Vanden Berg said several more are forthcoming.
Ross also has another aunt she hopes they can bring home. She says they think she may have been moved to Fort Providence or the Fort Smith hospital.
“It still hurts, you know, that we’ve had aunties that we could have known and cousins that we could have had,” Ross said.
“It was just all of the what ifs.”
Ross said she feels compassion for all the families working to bring their loved ones home.
“What they’re going through is not easy.”
But she hopes they can be encouraged to see it through.
“Just be hopeful,” she said. “Be hopeful and that hopefully they can get their loved ones back.”
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