The search was planned two years earlier, but saw delays due to the COVID-19 pandemic; it eventually started on May 31,[13] and was expanded four times after anecdotes from elders that bodies had been buried past the school grounds.[14] On June 23, 2021, hundreds of unmarked graves were announced to have been located at the school, the most found in Canada to date according to the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN), which represents Saskatchewan's First Nations.[5] The total number of graves was announced as 751 in a press conference the next day, over three times higher than the 215 discovered in Kamloops the previous month.[6][10] A total of 44,000 m2 (470,000 sq ft) was searched, with each of the 751 "recorded hits" possibly indicating more than one body.[13] At least 600 of the graves were confirmed, since the radar technology had an error rate of 10–15%.[15] The bodies were not part of a mass grave; rather, headstones had been removed by representatives of the Catholic Church in the 1960s.[6][16]