Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir stands in front of a memorial at the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Image Credit: SUBMITTED/Tk'emlups te Secwepemc

Plans are moving forward as Tk'emlups te Secwepemc looks for contractors to manage its planned healing house, a health-care facility for Kamloops Indian Residential School survivors and their families.

Construction for the survivors' health centre is estimated to cost $7.5 million, according to an invitation to prospective project management companies issued recently.

The First Nation announced $12.5 million in federal funding for the project nearly two years ago and planned its construction to take place at the former Harper Ranch, a historic farm Tk'emlups purchased in 1999 and now calls Spiyu7ullucw Ranch.

The 26-acre riverfront property just east of Sun Rivers is expected to host a healing space for Indian residential school survivors in one building facing the South Thompson. It will host counselling and healing programs, cultural programs for youth and a place to honour the children who never returned home from the school, dubbed "Le Estcwicwey" or "The Missing."

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Elders' housing is planned to be built nearer to Shuswap Road, though it will likely be in a second construction phase and isn't part of the request for qualified contractors, according to planning documents.

The $12.5 million funding announcement in March 2023 also did not mention housing for Elders and likely is not included in that federal contribution. The $7.5 million is specifically for healing lodge construction, excluding not only Elders' housing but also civil costs for utilities, for example.

Current planning sets construction at the 844 Miners Road property to start in September 2025 with completion in October 2026.

Planning and funding for the healing centre followed months and years after Tk'emlups announced finding around 200 suspected graves near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School and set off a series of similar searches across the country.

Though there has been no exhumation at the site and there are no plans announced so far to do so, the First Nation plans to repatriate children to other First Nations "if that is desired," which is part of Tk'emlups te Secwepemc's strategic plans announced in 2022.

Last May, Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir said the investigation has continued since news broke in 2021 including archival research, archaeological studies, "potential" DNA scans and other forensic methods.

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"We are taking steps to ensure the investigation is carried out in a way that does not preclude and will not interfere with potential future legal proceedings," she said in a statement.

The First Nation has recently come under scrutiny after Ottawa-based outlet Blacklock's Reporter obtained financial records from the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations that purports to document $12.1 million in federal funding specifically earmarked for initiatives related to Indian residential schools and missing children.

At least part of those funds went to "publicists and consultants," according to Blacklock's Reporter. Exactly where the full $12 million from the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund has gone or whether it has all been spent isn't clear.

It was meant to be used for research, memorializing initiatives, fieldwork investigations or repatriation of remains.

Whether part of that fund is the same as the funding set aside for the healing centre isn't clear.

According to the federal government database for the community support fund, Tk'emlups has received around $7.4 million from 2021 to 2023. It's the third most among 160 First Nations, following $8.6 million for Williams Lake First Nation and nearly $10.3 million for another in Ontario.

iNFOnews.ca requested the same documents from the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations but has not received a response.

Casimir did not respond to a request for comment.

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