Qualla: Brandon Indian Residential School

Brandon Indian Residential School: Introduction

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, CC BY 2.0. One of the burial grounds is now an RV campground. That single fact distills the complicated, painful history of the Brandon Indian Residential School, a place where Indigenous children were sent for seventy-seven years, where official records accounted for only nine registered deaths, and where ground-penetrating radar has since revealed scores of unmarked disturbances beneath the soil. Five kilometres northwest of Brandon, Manitoba, this institution operated from 1895 to 1972, part of the Canadian Indian residential school system that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission found responsible for the deaths of between 3,200 and 6,000 children nationwide over 120 years.

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Brandon Indian Residential School: Seventy-Seven Years Behind Closed Doors

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain. The Brandon Indian Institute opened in 1895, established by the Department of Indian Affairs to educate Indigenous children brought from communities north of Lake Winnipeg. The Mission Board of the Methodist Church managed the school for its first three decades, from 1895 to 1925...

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Brandon Indian Residential School: The Gap in the Records

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain. The 1905 annual report of the Department of Indian Affairs noted five deaths at the Brandon school in that year alone. Methodist Church records from the same period counted three. Yet across the entire seventy-seven-year life of the institution, only nine deaths were ever registe...

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Brandon Indian Residential School: Searching Beneath the Surface

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain. In 2012, the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation partnered with researchers from Simon Fraser University, Brandon University, and the University of Windsor to investigate the cemeteries at the Brandon school site. Their goal was straightforward and painful: identify the children buried th...

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Brandon Indian Residential School: What Stands There Now

Thu, 05 Feb 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Unknown authorUnknown author, Public domain. The site of the Brandon Indian Residential School has been transformed by time and development. One of the burial grounds now lies beneath an RV campground, a fact that drew national attention when the Sioux Valley Dakota Nation's findings became public. Chief Jennifer Bone of th...

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