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Indigenous people across Canada are finding the remains of more than 200 Indigenous children, including some three-year-olds, at the site of a former residential school in the western province of British Columbia this week.
Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Rosanne Casimir has announced the head of the first nation (PDF) On Thursday, the remains of 215 children found on the grounds of Kamloops Indian Residential School were confirmed to have been confirmed as “an unthinkable loss that was talked about but never documented”.
“We believe these missing children are undocumented deaths,” Casimir said.
“Some were three years old. We sought a way to confirm our knowledge of our children and their relatives with deep respect and deep love, understanding that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc is the last rest of these children. “
Anishinaabe lawyer Danielle Morrison said Indigenous communities across Canada feel “collective pain and trauma”. “Right now [are] fires are lit, pipes are lit and events are held to honor all those lost lives of these precious children, ”he told Al Jazeera.
“This news is reminiscent of the violence caused by the residential school system and the injuries caused to communities, families and survivors to date,” the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba also said. statement.
For more than 100 years, Canadian authorities have separated and attended thousands of Indigenous children from their families. residential schools, which aimed to sever ties between indigenous families and cultures and enshrine children in white Canadian society.
The schools run by the churches from the 1870s to 1996 had physical, mental, and sexual abuse, neglect, and other forms of violence, and created a cycle of intergenerational trauma for Indigenous people across Canada.
It was founded in 1890 and is run by the Catholic Church. Kamloops Indian Residential School eventually became The largest residential school in Canada, at the peak of enrollment in the 500s in the early 1950s.
“The residential schools were opened with the sole purpose of removing the Indian child,” Morrison said. “It was to assimilate the Indians of Canada and basically, in the words of one of the superintendents of the time, it is to get rid of the ‘Indian problem.’
This is the legacy of Canadian colonialism. Today’s heritage educators need to keep in mind that education has always been used in Canada to harm indigenous students, families and communities. To teach us that we are wrong. My heart goes out to the families.https://t.co/4WOgcLBxDQ
– Alicia Elliott (@ WordsandGuitar) May 28, 2021
In a reminder online Saturday, Karen Joseph, Reconciliation Canada’s director general of charity, said Kamloops ’discovery was“ whispered real knowledge ”that marked the first time and that its impact is being felt across the country, especially by survivors of residential schools.
“Although these children we are referring to right now went to Kamloops Indian Residential School, we know that not all of these children were from Kamloops. That was the nature of residential schools, it was to take our children further away from our homelands, ”Joseph said.
“The pain isn’t localized in that community, and it’s a huge burden they’re carrying right now.”
‘Cultural genocide’
In 2015, a national truth and reconciliation commission said the Canadian government had committed a “cultural genocide” by forcing more than 150,000 Indigenous children to attend residential schools.
“Questions to relatives about what happened and where they were laid have upset families and communities,” the committee said in its report, about children who never returned home. “Throughout the history of Canada’s residential system, no effort has been made to record the number of students attending schools each year throughout the system.”
More than 4,100 children have died as a result of an illness or an accident at schools, the commission said, but are trying to identify others.
Instead of thoughts and prayers @MinJusticeEn @KoronaIndigena @Min_IndServ @JustinTrudeau Stop fighting First Nations children and survivors of residential schools and end the genocide that killed and wiped out indigenous women who ended up. #genocide #IndianPolicy #Human rights
– Pam Palmater (@Pam_Palmater) May 29, 2021
The Canadian government formally apologized in 2008 for the residential school system, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said on Friday that finding the bodies of children “is a painful reminder of this dark and shameful chapter in our country’s history.”
But observers have said that survivors of residential schools have been forced to sue Ottawa to seek redress and responsibility for what happened.
Last year, CBC News reported the government spent $ 3.2 million ($ 2.6 million) on a 10-year fight against a group of survivors of St Anne’s Indian Residential School (a residential residential school in Ontario).
Others have also pointed out that while residential schools may remain closed, Indigenous children continue to be brought to Canada in proportion to their families.
According to census data, in 2016, more than 52% of children in foster care were indigenous, and indigenous children accounted for only 7.7% of the country’s total population.
“This is not a historic event,” Jose said at an online ceremony on Saturday. “This continues today: the loss of our children and the loss of our people for no other reason than the color of our skin.”
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