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

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