(LEVI LANDRY / iNFOnews.ca)

Trespassers didn't believe Tk'emlups te Secwepemc when it announced in May 2021 that more than 200 unmarked graves were found near the Kamloops Indian Residential School.

The Band has been met with heavy skepticism since making the announcement and a new report says "denialists" came to the site in order to "see for themselves" if children were truly buried there.

"Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels," an interim report from the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor reads.

The interlocutor, Kimberly Murray, is working closely with each community discovering unmarked graves near Indian residential schools, with the goal of coming up with a federal legal framework to protect the grave sites.

Murray's interim report on findings across Canada was issued today, June 16.

The report doesn't say who the people were or when they came to the burial site with shovels. It says the Band and Kukpi7 (Chief) Rosanne Casimir also faced online "attacks" by denialists.

"Kukpi7 Casimir explained that the hate and racism was so intense that she no longer uses social media without heavy filters," the report reads. "She said that the toxicity of denialism on social media needs more attention."

Casimir did not immediately respond to a request for comment from iNFOnews.ca.

The report summarizes comments from chiefs and community members in Bands across the country. Tk'emlups wasn't alone in their experience with people who deny the abuse in the Indian Residential School system.

Lead researcher Barbara Lavallee at Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan, where the largest grave site was found with ground penetrating radar, opted to stop responding to denialists.

"She said that her community has learned that the best response to denialism is no response at all," the report reads.

Cowessess and Tk'emlups saw reporters, too, breach cultural boundaries and site boundaries when covering grave findings.

"(Tk'emlups) also received preadatory and exploitative media requests that they had to filter. They had to deal with many uninvited visitors, including media and denialists, who did not always respect this Sacred site," the report reads.

This included those taking photos and videos of the site "without consent."

Tk'emlups was particularly targetted last year when the New York Post published a story proclaiming the unmarked grave findings were the "biggest fake news in Canada."

Ground penetrating radar was used in 2021 on the site between the South Thompson River and the Kamloops Indian Residential School and more than 200 anamolies were found.

The graves have not been dug up, but Casimir maintains there has always been a "knowing" of the graves among elders and survivors.

The news of the findings was broken through a leak to local media and the Band wasn't prepared for the international attention that followed.

Although news of the findings came years after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in 2015, documenting the abuse and Indian residential schools across the country, the national spotlight continued to follow each First Nations community that also found graves in the months that followed.

The interlocutor's interim report can be found online here.

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