It took three years to find the grave of Alma Beaulieu near the St. Joseph’s Residential School at Fort Resolution, N.W.T., and for the young girl’s remains to be returned home.
Researchers who worked on the case say it’s the first time outside of Quebec that a residential school victim has been exhumed and repatriated.
In 2022, the Deninu Kųę́ First Nation (DKFN) began an investigation into missing children and unmarked burials near the former residential school, which operated from 1903 to 1957. Students were sent there from across the Northwest Territories, and many of them died.
Among them was Beaulieu, who was just five years old when she died in 1944, according to school and church records.
Her sister, Delphine Beaulieu, says her parents were not informed of Alma’s death and only learned about it when she didn’t return home for a school break.
“(My mother) said that some of the kids told their parents,” Delphine recalls. “They (officials) did not tell her. They just buried her. I remember my mom crying for what seemed like forever.”
Delphine, 88, has spent the past several years working with researchers, DKFN leaders and territorial politicians to fulfill a promise she made to her late mother to bring her sister home to finally rest.
Several graves were found using ground-penetrating radar, and they isolated one believed to be Alma’s. A wooden cross bearing her name had been found nearby.
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But N.W.T. laws protected residential school graves as “artifacts” and prohibited them from being disturbed.
In a February 2025 letter to the territorial government, DKFN Chief Louis Balsillie wrote: “Our children are not artifacts. The Indigenous communities whose children attended St. Joseph’s Residential School have a right to have their loved ones repatriated and buried alongside their family members in their home communities …”
After months of back and forth in the legislature, families can now request residential school graves be relocated to a cemetery of their choice.
On Oct. 20 in a small ceremony in Fort Smith, Alma Beaulieu, was re-interred next to her mother.
“I hope it helps Canadians to see that we are doing what we can, and these investigations are working and ground penetrating radar is working,” says Sarah Beaulieu, an assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley who is a modern conflict archeologist and ground penetrating radar specialist. She’s not related to Alma and Delphine.
Records kept by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation show 67 students died at St. Joseph’s.
The remains of five other students who died in the 1940s and were buried near Alma Beaulieu are also expected to be exhumed and returned to their families.
“We have a very good idea of who these children are and the families have all given their DNA, says Sarah Beaulieu. “We’re just waiting for the funding to be able to complete the DNA analysis.”
The research team working for DKFN says more than 100 students and staff are believed to be buried near the former school.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 final report and 94 Calls to Action requires Canada to support efforts to identify and locate the resting places of children who died while at residential school.
The Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund was established in 2021 after Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc said they found 215 anomalies near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
According to Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada, as of March 31, 2025, “161 funding agreements have been put in place providing more than $246.7 million to Indigenous communities and organizations to support community-led and Survivor-centric initiatives to document, locate and commemorate the children that did not return home and unmarked burial sites associated with former residential schools.”
Alma’s is the first grave to be exhumed and repatriated through the program.
“We just need people to be patient and allow us to do this work and to do it in a safe way and a way that protects community and supports them as the work is being done, ” says Sarah Beaulieu.