the local community including some, Chief Cadmus Delorme asserted, where markers were destroyed by church leadership. Donald Bolen, Archbishop of Regina affirmed the community's pain regarding the destruction, illustrating one story where an Oblate priest had destroyed headstones "in a way that was reprehensible", echoing RéAnne Letourneau, a Sisters of the Presentation of Mary, who wrote in the 2019 Archdiocese of Regina Annual Report that the diocese had heard reports of a pastor who bulldozed parts of the cemetery 50 years prior because of a conflict with Cowessess leadership. Other accounts cited the 1970 handover, when the Cowessess First Nation took over the cemetery from the church, saying graves were plowed under or destroyed. Marieval Indian Residential School Established in 1874, after Treaty 4 at Fort Qu'Appelle was signed and Cowessess 73 reserve formed, OMI's Crooked Lake Mission in the Qu’Appelle Valley began. Led by Oblate Jules Decorby, followed by Oblate Agapit Page, it operated within the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Saint Boniface under Oblate Archbishop Alexandre-Antonin Taché. A log building day school for Cowessess children opened in 1885 with Page as principal. Students transferred to the newly built Qu'Appelle Indian Residential School in 1884 and the log building was torn down. Oblate missionaries continued to visit the area from Lebret. Thirteen years later, OMI presence was a constant in the community, with eleven brothers and 39 priests serving the mission from 1897 to 1967. In 1898, four Sisters of Notre Dame des Missions de Lyon arrived from France to begin a boarding school at Cowessess called the Holy Heart of Mary, however friction with the Oblates resulted in their departure. In 1900 they were replaced first by lay teachers, then the Sisters of St. Joseph of St. Hyacinthe in July 1901. The first principal of the school was Oblate Théophile Campeau (1897-1900). When the school was granted federal government funding as a residential school for 40 children in 1901, Oblate Siméon Perreault (1900-1912) was principal. In 1903, Oblate Perreault requested 40 acres of land from the Cowessess for a school and mission and received verbal permission. As formal paperwork was done, Perrault increased the request to 350 acres. The surrender of land was signed in November 1908 under condition that if it ceased use for a school or mission, it would revert to the band. In 1908 the establishment of a post office under the name of "Marieval" set