Unmarked burials

A good place to start is with RG10 Indian and Inuit Affairs program collection and the RG85 Northern Affairs program. The most relevant of these records may include:

• Quarterly returns
• Quarterly reports
• Admissions and discharges
• Inspection reports
• Principal’s monthly reports
• Correspondence

To search these documents, we suggest the following keywords:

• Name of school
• Name of town or province
• Specific Band names
• Names of districts, agencies, superintendencies, or regional offices associated with a specific Band or area
  • For help identifying Bands, use our Index of Bands in Western Canada

The School Files Series is one helpful resource for this research. These are school records, including lists of names from 1879 to 1953. For specific search instructions and tips on how to search these files, please see our help page on the subject.

Please consult the Residential Schools help page for further guidance.

Responsibility for police investigations is split between federal, provincial, and regional police forces. Provincial and regional police forces documents may be available in provincial and local archives.

Operational records from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and the North West Mounted Police (NWMP) Operational Records are housed at LAC in RG18. These records are organized primarily by regional division. Records containing information about First Nations, Inuit, and Métis are integrated within all other files. You will need to know which divisions were active in specific areas at any given time. An internet search can help you to determine this information.

These files can include documents relating to investigations and individual case files. The most relevant types of files for this research include:

• Assignments to return runaway students to schools
• Enforcement of Indian Act
• Records for Inuit Disc numbers (in Northern divisions)

These files and their associated finding aids are restricted and must be accessed through an Access to Information and Privacy request.

You will need to use the Scope and Content or Additional Notes fields in the Item results display to get a brief description of the files. You will need this information to make your privacy request.

There are also some records related to police activity in schools in the RG10 sous-fonds. Try searching RG10 and:

• law enforcement
• accidents
• incidents
• truancy

Health care records are generally under provincial jurisdiction. They could be found in provincial archives, hospital archives or religious orders. Some hospitals have more complete records than others.

A small number of hospital and sanatoria records are available at LAC. For more information on searching these files, please see our help page on Indian Hospitals.

Vital statistics are documents that capture information about births, marriages, deaths, etc. They are important sources of information for names, dates, relationships, and geographical information. These may include the following types of documents:

• birth certificates or registers
• baptismal records
• adoption and orphanage records
• parish registers
• death certificates
• coroner's reports
• funeral home records
• cemetery records and/or tombstones
• band membership registers
• census returns
• enfranchisement records

Most of these documents are found in church records, genealogical societies, religious archives, and provincial civil registration records rather than at LAC. For more information about these documents, including LAC’s holdings, please see Canadian genealogy links and resources.

Some census records list names of people within First Nations communities, but also students at schools or in hospitals. These may be found within the Indigenous Affairs sous-fonds (RG10), or within the census itself. For help searching census records, please consult our help page on that subject.

Although many federal Indian agents also acted as agents of provincial governments for the registration of vital statistics for the First Nation populations in their jurisdictions, very few of these records have found their way into the records of the Department of Indian Affairs. In many cases, the records have not survived or have not been transferred to Library and Archives Canada. Try searching “vital statistics” and RG10 to see what is available.

Band membership Registers

Band membership lists before 1951 are scattered throughout the Indian and Inuit Affairs program sous-fonds (RG10). They are mostly in the agency, district, superintendency and regional office records. A few of these lists can also be found in the General Headquarters Administration Records. For Bands in Western Canada, try searching Finding aid 10-12: Guide to Indian Bands and Agencies in Western Canada, 1871-1959.

Indian Registers

The Indian Registers, 1951-2009 are a national registry of every known individual entitled to Indian status under the Indian Act.

The register lists the names of all status Indians and may contain information on:

• membership
• band number
• date of birth
• familial relationships (parents, marriages and children)
• religion
• occupation

The post-2009 register is maintained by Indigenous Services Canada. The general public should direct their inquiries there.

Maps, plans, and surveys show the evolution of property boundaries and building layouts over time. These sources can provide references for locating potential grave sites.

To find further documents, try searching for maps and plans using these key words in Collection Search:

• Name of school or school site
• Name of town or province
• Specific Band names
• Names of districts, agencies, superintendencies, or regional offices associated with a specific Band or area

Using the left hand filters, choose “Archives,” then filter by maps and plans.

Some larger files you will come across include maps amongst other documents. Some of these files include:

• RG 22 – Department of Indian Affairs and Northern Development, Engineering and Architecture Branch
  These records contain information on the construction and maintenance of buildings, homes, schools, roads, bridges and water systems in First Nations (reserves) across Canada.
• RG 11 – Public Works files
  These files contain information on maintenance, repairs, renovation, and reconstruction projects in Manitoba and Ontario, and the assessment and inspection of Ebb and Flow School in Ebb and Flow, Manitoba.
• Survey and Mapping Branch sous-fonds (RG 88)
  Search Canada Land Survey records collected by Natural Resources Canada, including more than 3,100 First Nations Maps
• National Map Collection
  Try searching for towns or areas within the National Map collection.
• First Nations reserves –Western Canada
  Search maps and plans related to First Nations reserves and settlements in Western Canada (includes BC, AB, SK, MB, YK, NWT). For more information on searching these files, please see our help page for this database.

For further help, contact a Reference archivist for a reference appointment.

You can use photos to supplement your research. They can add context to maps and help track changes to a space over time, mainly land and buildings.

To search for photographs at LAC, go to Collection Search and select the "Images" tab. This will limit your search to digitized images in the archival collection.

Most of the photographs in the collection are not digitized, or may not be searchable in Collection Search. You may need to use Finding Aids to search larger collections, or start at a higher level of the collection and move down. For further information on how to find or order photos, see our Searching for Photographic Records help page.