The Unknown Tomb in Canada: Why mourn hundreds of Aboriginal children-BBC News

In May of this year, the chief of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc aboriginal tribe, Rosanne Casimir, announced that the remains of 215 children had been found near Kamloops in southern British Columbia, Canada.

Some of the remains are believed to belong to children as young as three years old.

These children were former students of Kamloops Indian Residential School, Canada’s largest boarding school.

The complete report on the discovery of the remains will be released at the end of June, and the preliminary findings may be subject to change. Aboriginal leaders said they expect the number of 215 people to rise.

“Unfortunately, we know that there are more children missing,” Cassmill said in a statement.

Thousands of children died in boarding schools. They rarely went home. The bodies of many children were buried in forgotten graves.

In June of this year, the Cowessess First Nation of Saskatchewan announced that after a similar investigation, they found 751 unnamed graves, the largest such discovery to date. once. The remains were found near the Marieval Indian Residential School, which was run by the Roman Catholic Church from 1899 to 1996.

The leader of the First Nations in Cauvis is not sure that all the unnamed graves are buried with children. The technical team will continue to investigate and provide verified figures.

Just a week later, the Lower Kootenay Band of British Columbia said that 182 more bodies were found near St Eugene’s Mission School. From 1912 to the early 1970s, St. Eugene’s Mission School was operated by the Catholic Church.

The lowland Kootena tribe said in a statement that some of the remains were found in shallow graves.

As of today, there is no comprehensive information on the number of children who died in boarding schools and where they were buried. The Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nations and the Cauvis First Nations are trying to piece history together.

Kamloops School was operated from 1890 to 1969 and can accommodate 500 Aboriginal students, many of whom were sent to live in schools hundreds of kilometers away from home.

Stephanie Scott, executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada, said that among the remains found, it is believed that the identities of 50 children have been confirmed, and their deaths date from 1900. It didn’t wait until 1971.

But for the other 165 people, there are no records available to confirm their identities.

This discovery aroused anger across Canada, and people built temporary monuments everywhere.

But for the indigenous leaders, this discovery is not unexpected.

“There is no doubt that we welcome the public’s anger and surprise,” Perry Bellegarde, National Chief of the First Nations Congress of Canada, said after a report on the incident in British Columbia. “But this finding is not surprising.”

“The survivors have said this for years, but no one believes them.” He said.

Kamloops Boarding School is one of more than 130 similar schools. These schools operated in Canada from 1874 to 1996.

The key to the government’s mandatory assimilation policy is that approximately 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families during this period and sent to public boarding schools.

In the 1920s, going to school became mandatory, and if parents did not comply, they would face jail.

This policy has caused trauma to several generations of indigenous children, who are forced to give up their mother tongue, speak English or French, and convert to Christianity.

The Christian church is indispensable in the establishment and operation of the school. According to the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, up to 70% of boarding schools are run by the Roman Catholic Church.

“Our government’s policy is to’remove Indian elements from children’,” Bellegarde said. “This is a kind of self-destruction, destruction of families, communities and countries.”

In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission issued a landmark report that referred to government-led policies as cultural extinction.

The 4,000-page report described in detail the serious negligence in the care and safety of these children, as well as the collusion between the church and the government.

“Government, church, and school officials are aware of these derelictions and their impact on student health,” the author wrote, “If the question is,’Who knows what happened when?’ The clear answer is:’In the history of this system Everyone in power at any moment of time.'”

The report stated that students often live in shabby buildings with insufficient heating and unsanitary facilities. Many people do not receive the help of well-trained medical personnel, and receive severe and often abusive punishments.

Research by the Canadian National Truth and Reconciliation Center found that thousands of Aboriginal children who were sent to boarding schools never returned home.

Physical and sexual abuse caused some children to run away. Because of negligence, others died of illness or accidents. By 1945, the death rate of boarding school children was almost five times that of other school children in Canada. In the 1960s, this number was still twice that of ordinary students.

“Survivors talked about children who suddenly disappeared, some people talked about children missing at mass burial sites,” Murray Sinclair, chairman of the Canadian National Truth and Reconciliation Center, said in a statement in May.

In 2015, an estimated 6,000 children died in boarding schools. So far, more than 4,100 children have been identified.

“We know that in the future there will be many locations similar to the Kamloops Indian boarding school that will be exposed,” Sinclair said. “We need to start preparing for this.”

In 2015, Canada’s National Truth and Reconciliation Center issued 94 calls to action, including 6 recommendations on missing children and cemeteries. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau pledged to “fully implement” all recommendations.

In June of this year, Trudeau stated that he was “shocked” by Canadian boarding schools and promised to take “concrete actions”, but did not provide any details.

“Trudeau has always been willing to take action on this issue, he said a lot, but we really need to see action,” Scott said.

Chiefs Scott and Bellegarde and other Aboriginal leaders urged the government to conduct a thorough investigation of all 130 school sites to find any unnamed tombs.

Bellegarde said these children have been “abandoned” and “this is unacceptable.”

These findings also cast a shadow over Canada’s National Day on July 1, and municipalities across Canada cancelled this year’s celebrations.

The preliminary investigation also asked the Catholic Church to apologize again, which is one of the actions called for in the Canadian National Truth and Reconciliation Center report.

In 2017, Trudeau asked Pope Francis to apologize for the role of the church in the management of Canadian boarding schools, but the church refused.

Bellegarde said that the Catholic Church’s apology would “heal” and “this is part of healing wounds.”