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New search begins for Canadian residential school graves Indigenous Rights News

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Warning: The story below contains details of residential schools that may be of concern. The Canadian Residence School for Survivors and Family Crisis Line is available 24 hours a day at 1-866-925-4419.

Indigenous community leaders have begun searching for more graves without signs in Toronto, near Canada, where there was a former boarding school for Indigenous children. calls to discover the whole framework For decades, the abuses associated with the country’s “residential school” system have continued.

The search began Tuesday at the Mohawk Institute Residential School in Brantford, Ontario, one of the oldest and longest-running institutions of its kind in Canada.

It is one of dozens of searches being carried out or planned across the country after more than 1,200 discoveries. unmarked graves In residential schools in the UK and Saskatchewan this year.

“This is the first step in our journey to take our children home,” Mark Hill, the elected leader of the Six Nations on Grand River, said at a news conference. reported By CBC News.

“While it will certainly be a difficult process, the Six Nations hopes that we can as a people
heal together by finally bringing our children home, ”the community said a statement earlier on Tuesday.

The Canadian government had to send more than 150,000 First Nation, Inuit and Metis children to residential schools between the late 1800s and the 1990s.

Children were deprived of their language and culture, separated from their siblings, sent hundreds of miles from home, and subjected to psychological, physical, and sexual abuse. Thousands are believed to have died.

A federal commission of inquiry into the institutions, known as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), concluded in 2015 that the Canadian residential school system was a “cultural genocide”.

It was done by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has promised grants and other assistance to help indigenous communities find more unmarked graves and to address the ongoing damage to the system.

“We all need to learn the history and heritage of residential schools. Only by tackling these hard truths and correcting these wrongs can we move forward together toward a more positive, just, and better future, ”Trudeau said in his September 30 appearance, Canada’s first. National Day of Truth and Reconciliation.

But indigenous advocates say the government has not implemented most of the TRC’s Calls for Action, and they say they also follow current policies. it harms indigenous children disproportionately Canada.

Indigenous communities, which have been in turmoil ever since first discovery Out of the remains of 215 Indigenous children at Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, at the end of May, they are asking the Catholic Church to release all records related to residential schools.

Meanwhile, some leaders have called for that criminal charges they will be set up against the federal government, the church, and any attackers who are still alive.

The search began at the Mohawk Institute Residential School site after months of planning, including police training for members of the local First Nations community, to scan about 500 acres of land use radar to penetrate the ground, the Hill chief said.

“We’ve finally arrived today where we’re ready to start the search,” he said.

“Survivors have been telling us stories of what has happened in so-called schools for years. This research and the important work that this entails is for those who survive and is led by those who are alive.

Children’s toys and shoes sit on the porch on Nov. 9 in Brantford as a tribute to the missing children at the former Mohawk Institute residential school in Canada. [Cole Burston/AFP]

“For many, this day was long overdue, but it is reminiscent of the atrocities committed against our people in these organizations.”

The search and analysis of results can take up to two years.

Brantford School became part of a network of 139 residential schools opened in Canada in 1885. About 90 to 200 students enrolled there each year before it closed in 1970.



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