In 2019, Shannon Cornelsen discovered 27 journals written by her grandfather, an agent for the federal government department then called Indian Affairs. He'd lived and worked on Stony Plain Indian Reservation, now Enoch Cree Nation, from the mid-1950s until 1980.
As Cornelsen read through the pages, she was surprised to discover the names and dates of when Indigenous patients from Edmonton's former Charles Camsell Hospital were buried at Enoch. The hospital operated from 1946 to 1980 as part of a segregated health-care system that isolated and institutionalized Indigenous people in "Indian hospitals."
First Nations and Inuit people from across Western Canada and the North were flown to the Camsell and placed in a tuberculosis sanatorium, often without their consent.
Her grandfather's meticulous records, she realized, "were the only surviving documents that detail where these people are buried."
It set Cornelsen, a member of Saddle Lake Cree Nation, on a personal quest to reunite families with their loved ones buried far from home.
"Many people from my family were treated at the Camsell, born there or died there, and my mom had worked there as a nursing assistant for many years, so I knew there were patients who would just go missing," she says.
"Families deserve closure."
To take on that heavy work, Cornelsen knew she'd need research skills and academic support to turn the project into a reality, so she enrolled at the University of Alberta.
Graduating this week with a bachelor of arts from the Faculty of Native Studies, Cornelsen now feels confident in her skills and ability to ultimately help close that circle.
"I'm in a position where I can speak for these people, and I'll be able to connect families and communities with where their loved ones are."
Exploring topics such as the history of residential schools in Canada and Indigenous human rights, Cornelsen's degree was vital in "learning about the history of the colonization that has happened to Indigenous people in Canada," she says.
"That's really crucial to understanding how deep-rooted segregation and systemic racism in health-care systems came into effect, and it's helped me understand why so many Indigenous patients ended up at the Camsell," Cornelsen adds. "They may have felt they had no other treatment options available to them."
Her degree also deepened her understanding of Indigenous research methodologies, such as sharing oral histories, which is important to the work she plans to carry out.
"Research has to be undertaken with community for the community, and it should stay within the community. That plays a part in how to record and analyze data."
