Did Rose Miller prove that 'forced to attend' is a myth?
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By Nina Green
Did Rose Miller prove that 'forced to attend' is a myth?
She did.
On 1 September 1949, Rose Grace Celesta (later known by her married name of Rose Miller), and her brother, Robert James Celesta, of the North Thompson Indian Band were enrolled at the Kamloops Indian Residential School (see attachments).
Rose was eight years old, and Robert was eleven. Rose was enrolled as Register Number 945, Robert as Register Number 919.
In an interview with Tina House of APTN News on 31 May 2021, Rose claimed that she and her brothers had been 'forcibly removed from their home' and taken to the school (see attached transcript).
That is clearly not true. Although Rose at eight years of age likely wasn't aware of it, her parents, Henry and Celestine (nee Christopher) Celesta signed application forms requesting that Rose and Robert be admitted to the school. Requiring parents to sign applications for admission was standard Department of Indian Affairs procedure throughout the years during which Indian residential schools existed, as attested by thousands of surviving documents in DIA Admission and Discharge files.
Two years later, on 1 September 1951, Rose's parents enrolled another of their children, 7-year-old Edward Celesta, at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Edward was enrolled as Register Number 13 (see attachment).
Rose's first stay at the Kamloops Indian Residential School lasted only three years. In the afore-mentioned interview of 31 May 2021, Tina House reported that 'Rose and her siblings were picked up by their father [in June 1952] to never return to the school' (see attached transcript).
That also turns out not to be true. Although she did not reveal these facts to Tina House during the 31 May 2021 interview, Rose not only re-enrolled at the Kamloops Indian Residential School as a student in either 1955 or 1956, but also voluntarily returned to work at the school from 1971-1976, and attended the school's staff and student reunion in 1977.
Rose and Robert's failure to return proves that 'forced to attend' is a myth
The fact that Rose and Robert Celesta did not return to the Kamloops Indian Residential School in September 1952 after the summer vacation is incontrovertible proof that the claim repeatedly made by the CBC as recently as 31 October 2024 that 150,000 children were 'forced to attend' Indian residential schools is a myth. A note beside Rose and Robert's names in the attached quarterly return attendance forms for 30 September 1952 reads 'Retained by parents'. There is no record that their younger brother Edward came back to the school that year either. A note beside his name in the attached quarterly return attendance form reads 'Late returning', indicating that although Edward had not been present during the entire month of September, his parents had still not notified the school that he wasn't coming back.
It is thus clear, both from Rose's interview with Tina House and from the school records, that the decision not to send the children back to the Kamloops Indian Residential School in the fall of 1952 was made by their parents, a fact which, along with an overwhelming abundance of other documentary evidence, proves that children were not 'forced to attend' Indian residential schools. Students were only admitted after their parents had signed application forms and the Department of Indian Affairs had determined the children were eligible to attend, and parents withdrew their children if and when they decided to do so.
Where did Rose go to school after her parents withdrew her from the Kamloops Indian Residential School?
It seems almost certain that after her parents withdrew her from the Kamloops Indian Residential School, Rose Celesta (and perhaps her younger brother Edward as well) attended public school at home in Chu Chua.
Although the first teacher assigned to the public school in Chu Chua reboarded the stage after viewing the town, the next teacher stayed, and Grace Fennell, the teacher who arrived in 1951, stayed permanently. A class photo from 1951 shows several Indian children in Grace Fennell's Grade 1-7 class, including Paul Celesta and two members of the Eustache family.
Rose thus almost certainly attended public school in Chu Chua for 3 or 4 years after leaving the Kamloops Indian Residential School at the age of eleven.
However in either 1955 or 1956 her parents sent her back to the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Confusingly, when she signed the guest book at the 1977 Kamloops Indian Residential School reunion (see her attached signature), Rose forgot all about her previous three years at the school from 1949-1952 and wrote '1955' for the date at which she first entered the school, thus omitting all mention of her first enrolment. In the column for her age at the time of her first enrolment she put a question mark, and she left the column for 'grades taken' blank. These omissions give rise to questions. Was Rose Miller's memory so faulty at the time of the 1977 reunion that she really couldn't remember these details, or did she deliberately omit them, and if so, why?
There are further inconsistencies in details Rose supplied to the Department of Justice for a biography published on 15 February 2022. At that time Rose claimed that she had been at the Kamloops Indian Residential School from 1949-1953, and had returned for part of the year in 1956, neither of which dates tallies with the school records or with the date she specified when she signed the 1977 reunion guest book:
Speaker Biographies
Elder Rose Grace Miller is a member of Simpcw First Nations north of Kamloops BC. Born at Canim Lake reserve where my mother was from. My Grandfather was the last Hereditary Chief from there. Survivor of Kamloops Indian Residential School 1949 - 1953 and returned for part of year in 1956. In 1971- 1976, I was a nurse prior to closing of KIRS. Remain a Union Member in Alberta for Construction Worker for 44 years. Trained & Employed: 1998 Life Skills Facilitator & Trainer of Trainers. Justice Programs since 2005- Facilitator/TOT to 2022. First Nations Court - 2013 to 2022. Nechi Training for Addictions Counsellor. Remain on Board of Directors for Thompson Rivers University for Indigenous Health Nursing Research.
Rose's misleading statements concerning her qualifications as a nurse
The foregoing biography Rose supplied to the Department of Justice gives the misleading impression she was a registered nurse ('In 1971- 1976, I was a nurse prior to closing of KIRS'), and the biography she supplied to the Grandmothers Advisory Council gives a similar misleading impression, saying she 'started nursing in 1968, in the hospital in Vernon' and that 'After she finished school she worked at Royal Inland Hospital in the med-surg ward'.
In a Facebook posting on 14 February 2019, Rose again claimed to be a nurse, giving her career history as:
Nurse AB & BC 16 years/ Construction & General Worker Union Local 92 since 1978/Facilitator - Secwepemc Community Justice Programs since 2005/ Elder for First Nations Court in Kamloops BC
In an interview with Tina House on 3 June 2021, Rose once again gave the impression that she was a registered nurse. According to House, Rose returned to the Kamloops Indian Residential School - 'this time as a nurse'. However the description she gave House of her duties at the school didn't involve nursing duties:
For survivor Rose Miller, who was severely abused while attending this schools, she found a way to heal her trauma and later help other children. She returned here again – this time as a nurse in the 1970s.
“I got them all the glasses that were up to date and I got them a lot of their dental work done and different surgeries and we had RCMP days where they got to know the RCMP they used to have a pool here things started changing,” she says. “I got them clothes where they didn’t have to wear the same type of clothes different kind of shoes so many thing they were allowed into town once a week.
“A lot of them played ball here and we played with ball with them. We did a lot of things the childcare workers and I to try and change the whole system.”
Details Rose supplied to Thompson Rivers University in 2022 indicate that she trained as a practical nurse, not a registered nurse, and that it must have been as a practical nurse that she worked at the Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops:
After graduating from the Practical Nursing Program at the BC Vocational School in Kelowna in 1968, Miller began working at Royal Inland Hospital in Kamloops.
“There were lots of really good days, but there were some challenges,” says Miller. “When I looked after Indigenous patients, I believe they felt more supported. One time, Elders from other areas arrived at the hospital, and they needed care. I would get paged to the floor, and I would support the Elder who didn’t understand what was being asked of them by other nurses. We could understand each other, we spoke the same language, so that was helpful. I wanted to help them feel safe.”
In 1971, Miller returned to the Kamloops Indian Residential School, this time as a community health nurse.
The latter statement also appears to be misleading. In general, the term community health nurses applies to registered nurses.
Assessing Rose's memory
The inconsistencies and lack of transparency in Rose's statements as discussed above raise questions about her credibility with respect to allegations she has made in recent years about the Kamloops Indian Residential School. These allegations appear to date from after the Kamloops Band made its false claim on 27 May 2021 to have discovered 'the remains of 215 children' in the Band's Heritage Park.
In a TikTok video on 29 September 2021, Rose claimed she knew there were missing children buried on the hillside and 'probably on the school' and that she knew that people were burned in incinerators below the rec room:
We knew that there was missing children. We knew there was children that uh were buried on the hillside there, and probably on the school. We knew there uh was people burned in incinerators below our rec room.
Rose also told Tina House in the 31 May 2021 interview that she wasn't surprised that 215 children had been found buried on the property, and 'believes there's likely more'.
In the 31 May 2021 interview, Rose called the school chapel 'the heebie-jeebie place, the evil place' and claimed the children were threatened with rape and mutilation by the Romans in Hell if they didn't pray:
“This is the heeby jeeby place, the evil place. This is where some of the boys went upstairs to make room there used to pews all along here girls side boys side they’d have an aisle along here and up there is where the priest would say that mass.
“We were told if we didn’t pray we were going to ‘burn in hell’ where the Romans were going to come and rape us and cut our eyes out burn our hands and feet and burn off our fingernails so we’d pray a lot harder,” she said.
Rose claimed 'their religion controlled us', clearly forgetting that the Department of Indian Affairs would only have admitted her to a Catholic residential school if she and her parents were baptized Catholics, and that Catholicism was her religion as well as her parents' religion at the time. The Department's application for admission forms required that the child's religion be specified.
Why did Rose not report these alleged crimes to the RCMP?
Given her monstrous claims that she knew children were missing and that children were buried on the hillside and 'on the school', and that people were burned in incinerators under the rec room, why did Rose not report these crimes to the RCMP, particularly when she says she worked with the RCMP while employed at the school between 1971 and 1976?
The obvious answer is that Rose knew these tales were fictional. No one had ever reported a child missing from the Kamloops Indian Residential School - or in fact from any Indian residential school in Canada. There are no missing children at Kamloops, and if there are no missing children, it goes without saying there are no murdered and clandestinely buried children. As a whistleblower recently revealed, the Kamloops Band knows this, and it appears the Band knows it because several years ago the Band was granted access to the TRC records through a Memorandum of Understanding with the University of Manitoba:
The federal government plans to transfer more than 875,000 records through a recently signed agreement with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), the archival repository for all of the material collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Those files include the school "narrative" for Kamloops IRS, which summarizes the institution's history, including its administration, attendance record, key events and reports of abuse. . . .
The community is working with NCTR to sign a memorandum of understanding to access the documents, said its legal counsel Don Worme.
Although the University of Manitoba's NCTR staff strive to give the opposite impression, it is clear that the TRC records establish that there is not a single missing Indian residential school child. The TRC and the University of Manitoba - which now holds the TRC records through a trust deed it signed with the TRC in 2013 - have been unable to produce the name of a single missing child since the TRC inaugurated its so-called 'Missing Children Project' in 2007. Given the general public's growing skepticism about claims of missing Indian residential school children buried in unmarked graves, it is only a matter of time before the University of Manitoba will have to admit that the claim that there are missing Indian residential school children is a myth created by the TRC and the University's NCTR staff.
Why did Rose return to the Kamloops Indian Residential School as an employee during the years 1971-1976 if she really believed tales of missing, murdered and clandestinely buried children?
As mentioned above, the capacity in which Rose was employed at the Kamloops Indian Residential School during the years 1971 to 1976 is unclear. What is clear is that she would never have returned to the school as an employee had she really believed the tales about missing, murdered, and clandestinely buried children. Nor would her first cousin, Nathan Matthew, later Chancellor of Thompson Rivers University, have taken a job as the school administrator in 1973 had he believed that heinous crimes had been committed which he, in his capacity as administrator, would have to help cover up. In fact, Nathan Matthew's family had very close ties to the school, and knew the stories weren't true. His parents, Louis Matthew and Ida Eustache (see attached 2022 obituary of Ida (nee Eustache) Matthew) were married in 1948 by Father Gerald Dunlop, OMI, of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, and Nathan's uncle Wilfred Matthew was married in 1944 at the school itself by Father Fergus O'Grady, OMI, (later Bishop O'Grady). Nathan Mathew and his parents attended the 1977 reunion at the school, and signed the guest book. In fact, Nathan Matthew signed the reunion guest book on the same page as Rose Miller.
Moreover both Rose Miller and Nathan Matthew knew that Senator Len Marchand had been a student at the Kamloops Indian Residential School (Marchand had, in fact, enrolled in September 1949, at the same time as Rose and her brother Robert). Everything Rose says about the Kamloops Indian Residential School is flatly contradicted by Senator Len Marchand in his autobiography Breaking Trail, including Rose's claim to Tina House that 'we couldn't have bread half the time and we were so hungry'. According to Senator Marchand, one of the best points about the food was that 'there was plenty of milk and butter from the dairy herd and slabs of good bread'. Marchand was emphatic that he never saw any abuse at the school, and the account in his autobiography is proof positive that he was not 'forced to attend' (see attachment).
Moreover Senator Marchand and his wife attended the 1977 Kamloops Indian Residential School reunion, as did Rose Miller and Nathan Matthew and his parents. Would any of them have attended had the stories Canadians have been told about the school were true? Would any of them have socialized at the reunion with all the former priests, brothers, nuns and lay staff who attended the reunion if the stories were true? Of course they wouldn't. The fact that almost 300 former staff and students came to the reunion and had a great time speaks volumes about the Kamloops Indian Residential School as it really was.
What are Canadians to take from this?
Canadians have been well and truly propagandized about Indian residential schools, and about the Kamloops Indian Residential School in particular.
Rose Miller's parents voluntarily enrolled her at the school, and withdrew her when it suited them to do so. Len Marchand attended voluntarily, and left to attend public school in Vernon. 'Forced to attend' is a myth.
That there are missing Indian residential school children buried in unmarked graves is also a myth. The University of Manitoba needs to publicly admit that in its capacity as the legal custodian of the TRC records which prove there are no missing children.
Prime Minister Mark Carney's father, Dr Robert Carney, a highly-respected scholar and educator, worked in the Indian residential school system. Hopefully that fact will encourage the Prime Minister, the federal government, and all Canadians to take another look at what Indian residential schools were really like.
It's clearly time for a reset.
Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Did the RCMP's Indigenous Policing policy derail the Kamloops investigation?
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“Forced to attend” is indeed a myth, and no one makes the point as lucidly and thoroughly as Nina Green. Yet the challenge of doing a “reset” on any residential school myth is great. The perpetrators of historical lies tend to double down rather than change their views when confronted with facts.
The IRS lie- that thousands of kids died under nefarious circumstances at the schools and were secretly buried- is just too big to admit for the Indigenous Grievence Industry. It is the foundantion of all the "decolonization" and "indigenization" measures by which Industry leaders amass money and power. Acknowledging that it is all a big lie can only happen when the grifters have found a new angle by which to extort the Canadian public. You can be sure they are working hard on this knowing the house of cards is about to tumble.