How long could it take to identify remains found at residential schools?
TORONTO -- In the wake of yet another discovery of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school, one forensics expert says it could take decades to identify. WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing. On Thursday, the Cowessess First Nation says it found 751 unmarked graves near a former Saskatchewan through the use of ground penetrating radar. This find comes less than a month after the remains of 215 Indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at Kamloops Residential School in Kamloops, B.C. were discovered. Megan Bassendale, who is the director at Forensic Guardians International, said the process of identifying all the remains will require extensive investigations and needs to be led by the communities themselves. There's a lot of information that needs to be collected from a lot of different sources to actually be able to make identifications, Bassendale told CTV News Channel on Thursday. It can take decades.  During the identification process, forensic investigators would need to interview the family members of missing people, residential school survivors who attended the same school or any other contacts, in an attempt to find out if they had any identifying features. They may have had a broken leg during their life or a chipped tooth. Anything that can individualize one person from another is really important for the forensic identification process, Bassendale explained. Investigators would then attempt to match these features with the remains that were found. Basically, what you'll have is families that are missing a loved one, and you'll have human remains that we don't know who they are. And so, you're trying to match these two pieces of information together," said Bassendale. The Tk'emlps te Secwpemc First Nations have already begun the work to identify the 215 children whose bodies were found at the Kamloops site, although their attempts to obtain some of the relevant records has been met with resistance from the Catholic groups that ran the school. While this is a slow and arduous process, time is of the essence as Indigenous elders, residential school survivors and others who may remember key details continue to age. If somebodys critically ill and theyre the only person that knew somebody that was in one of these schools, then its really important for them to record that, she said. Bassendale noted that the process is quite invasive given the level of personal information that is required. It's very invasive in terms of personal information because we need very specific details to actually be able to identify human remains. And, you know, some people aren't comfortable with that. Some people are.  For these reasons, Bassendale pointed out that some families or communities may not want to put themselves through the traumatic process of exhumation and identification, and added its important to respect those wishes if thats the case. Some families in some communities may decide to memorialize sites and leave it at that. But if the process of exhumation and identification is chosen, then it's important that families understand that it's a long process, said Bassendale. Bassendale says it's critical for Indigenous communities to lead this process. Otherwise, bodies could end up becoming misidentified. If they don't believe or trust the information that's coming out of the process, then it just doesn't work, said Bassendale. If people just start to go and dig it can cause big problems and it can cause misunderstandings and it can cause misidentifications.  With files from CTV News Brooke Taylor  The Indian Residential School Survivors Society toll free line is: 1 (800) 721-0066. A 24-hour crisis line for residential school survivors is: 1 (866) 925-4419 if you require further emotional support or assistance.