Locals in Canada are struggling to find the remains of more than 200 American children, including some three-year-olds, at a former boarding school in the western part of Britain this week.
Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation leader Rosanne Casimir has announced (PDF) On Thursday that the remains of 215 children were found on the premises of Kamloops Indian Residential School, claiming that “the unprecedented loss reported but never recorded” has been confirmed.
“As far as we know, children are missing and dying without documents,” Casimir said.
“Some were three years old. We looked for a way to make sure we introduced our lost children and their families to their great respect and to realize that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc is the last resting place for these children. ”
Danielle Morrison, Anishinaabe’s lawyer, said the “heartbreak and heartache” are felt among rural Indians in Canada. “We are here now [are] fires are lit, pipes are being lit, and rituals are held in honor of all those who have lost the lives of those precious children, “Al Jazeera told.
“This story is a vivid reminder of the violence that is taking place in homes and the wounds that people, families and survivors have experienced so far,” the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba said in a statement. words.
For more than 100 years, Canadian authorities have been forced to separate thousands of Indian children from their families and force them to emigrate. residential schools, whose aim was to eradicate indigenous families and cultures and to make children white in Canada.
The schools, run by churches from the 1870s to 1996, were rife with physical, psychological, sexual, neglect, and other forms of violence, and led to the birth of religious diversity among Canadians.
Established in 1890 and run by the Catholic Church, Kamloops Indian Residential School eventually he sat down the largest school in Canadian boarding schools, enrolling 500 children at the peak of enrollment in the early 1950s.
“Residential schools were opened for the sole purpose of dropping off Indian children,” Morrison said. It was to the advantage of the Indians in Canada and in fact, according to one of the supervisors at the time, to solve the ‘Indian problem “.
This is the legacy of Canadian colonialists. Heritage teachers today need to keep in mind, as courses have been used in Canada to injure Indian students, families and communities. To teach us we are wrong. I feel sorry for the families.https://t.co/4WOgcLBxDQ
– Alicia Elliott (@WordsandGuitar) May 28, 2021
Recalling on the internet on Saturday, Karen Joseph, CEO of the charity Reconciliation Canada, said the findings in Kamloops were the first to “whisper to know it really happened” and the consequences are felt across the country, especially by school survivors.
“Even though the children we are talking about now went to Kamloops Indian Residential School, we know that all these children were not from Kamloops. This is how the schools live, they had to take our children away from home,” said Joseph.
Grief is not found in this area, and it is a very heavy burden right now. ”
‘Indigenous people’
In 2015, the International Committee of the Red Cross said the Canadian government had committed “genocide” by forcing more than 150,000 Indian children to attend boarding schools.
“The question of what happened to their loved ones and where they were placed has affected families and communities,” the commission said in a report on children who did not return home. “Throughout the history of Canadian boarding schools, there has been no attempt to record nationwide the number of students who die going to school each year.”
More than 4,100 children have died from illness or accidents at school and so far, the agency said, but efforts are still being made.
Instead of thoughts and prayers @KamemeTvKenya @CrownIndigenous @Min_IndServ @JustinTrudeau stop fighting the first-class and school-surviving children in court and end the killings that kill and deprive Indian women. #chimonac #IndiaPolice #human
– Pam Palmater (@Pam_Palmater) May 29, 2021
The Canadian government has apologized for residential schools in 2008, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Friday that the discovery of children’s bodies “is a painful reminder of that black and shy head in the history of our country”.
But observers say the school’s survivors are being pressured to sue Ottawa for compensation and to answer charges.
Last year, CBC News reports the government spent $ 3.2 million ($ 2.6m) in the fight against a group of survivors at St Anne’s Indian Residential School, a violent Ontario boarding school, in court for 10 years.
Some have also said that even though residential schools may be closed, Indian children continue to be taken from their families in various parts of Canada.
According to the population, more than 52% of the children raised by their parents in 2016 were Indian, while Indian children accounted for only 7.7 percent of the country’s population.
“This is not what happened in the past,” Joseph said online on Saturday. “This continues today – the death of our children and the loss of our people for no other reason than our skin.”
