(Annett is also the man behind unproven claims that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Phillip took 10 children from the Kamloops Indian Residential School on a picnic in September 1964 and that the children were never seen again.
Holy crap; well, OK then. I may be adjusting my opinion on this, especially since there may have been a burial ground around there. Damn, I don't know.
but when we read a headline about "6,000 kids died in residential schools" it's never placed in context of how many school-aged kids died in general in the same region or in the same part of Canada over the same period.*
and now even today indigenous persons in Canada have a life expectancy almost 10 years less than the Canadian population as a whole.
Several things here. Yes, kids died more often back then. Kids that died under the care of the church/government in these residential schools fell into three categories from least likely to most likely: straight up murder, death due to neglect and unavoidable death (accidents, fatal illness). We have confirmed knowledge of kids that were beaten for trivial reasons, some may have died from that.
Archaeology will shed light really quick. If the first skeleton uncovered is an adult buried before 1920 all bets are off.