By Kaniehtonkie.

The Penelakut Tribe announced on July 8th that more than 160 unmarked graves and undocumented graves were found at site of former residential school near Vancouver Island.

The Penelakut Tribe is a Hul'qumi'num speaking community in British Columbia that is separated into 4 reserve locations: Tsussie 15.5 hectares, Northern tip of Galiano Island 29.1 hectares, Tent Island 34.4 hectares and Penelakut Island 556.7 hectares.

It was not clear in the statement how or when what are believed to be grave sites were found. The unmarked and undocumented graves were found on the grounds of a former Kuper Island residential school, off Ladysmith on Vancouver Island. It was not clear in the statement when the grave sites were found on Kuper Island, since renamed as Penelakut Island.

In their July 8 memo written "to our neighboring tribes and organizations" and on behalf of Chief Joan Brown, council and elders, the Penelakut Tribe identified the Kuper Island Industrial School as the site of the discovery.

"We understand that many of our brothers and sisters from our neighbouring communities attended the Kuper Island Industrial School," the memo reads. "We also recognize with a tremendous amount of grief and loss, that too many did not return home."

According to the Vancouver Sun (VS), "The Kuper Island Industrial School was in operation from 1889 to 1975 and has been referred to as "Canada's Alcatraz" because of its remote location and difficulty to escape from. It was operated by the Catholic Church with funding from the federal government.

The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia said records show more than 100 students died at the school between 1890 and 1966. Two sisters drowned while trying to escape in 1959 and another student died by suicide in 1966.

The shut the school down in 1975 after the federal government took over administration in 1969. Twenty years later, a former Kuper residential school employee admitted to three charges of indecent assault and gross indecency.

Per the VS, "The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba has records of 202 deaths of students at residential schools on Vancouver Island, including many from the Kuper Island school. First Nations survivors and researchers say greater numbers of children died as a result of neglect, tuberculosis and meningitis, fires and injuries from beatings and rapes, and those deaths were never recorded."

Penelakut Tribe member Steve Sxwithul'txw told the Sun, "For myself and my family, it is always upsetting when we hear (of) our lost loved ones that didn't come home from this institution, and this is very tragic and sad."

Eric Simons, a PhD student in anthropology at the University of British Columbia who has been working with the Penelakut Tribe at the former school site said Tuesday that researchers have been working off and on at the site since 2014. The ground-penetrating radar doesn't find actual bodies but grave shafts, as well as changes in the soil.

The school was demolished in the 1980s and Simons to the VS, that has been a challenge for both researchers and the community. Where the school once stood is the core or center of the main Penelakut town, so people live around that space.

"That's part of the emotional and spiritual stress caused by the fact there was knowledge of missing children buried on the landscape but without knowledge, of specifically in many cases, where they are."

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said in a news conference Tuesday that the findings by the Penelakut Tribe deepen the pain of Indigenous people across the country. He said the government is committed to telling the truth about what happened at residential schools.

The National Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day at 1-866-925-4419 to help survivors of residential schools.