OTTAWA – The remains of 215 children have been discovered on the grounds of a former boarding school set up more than a century ago to assimilate Canada’s indigenous peoples, according to a local tribe.
A specialist used ground-penetrating radar to confirm the remains of the students who attended the school near Kamloops, British Columbia, said the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc tribe in a statement late Thursday.
“Some were as young as 3 years old,” said chief Rosanne Casimir, calling it “an unthinkable loss that was spoken about, but never documented” by school administrators.
Preliminary findings are expected to be released in a report next month, she said.
In the meantime, the tribe is working with the coroner and museums to shed more light on the horrific discovery and find any records of these deaths.
It is also reaching out to the students’ home communities across British Columbia and beyond.
The “distressing” find “breaks my heart”, said Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in a tweet.
“It is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history.”
Pupils stripped of culture, language
Trudeau’s comments were echoed by Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett, who also offered government support to the families and indigenous communities for their “healing as we honour loved ones lost”.
The Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest of 139 boarding schools set up in the late 19th century, with up to 500 students registered and attending at any one time.
It was operated by the Catholic Church on behalf of the Canadian government from 1890 to 1969.
Some 150,000 Indian, Inuit and Metis youngsters in total were forcibly enrolled in these schools, where students were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers, who stripped them of their culture and language.
Today, those experiences are blamed for a high incidence of poverty, alcoholism and domestic violence, as well as high suicide rates, in their communities.
A truth and reconciliation commission has identified the names of, or information on, at least 3,200 children who died from abuse or neglect while attending a residential school. The exact number remains unknown.
At the Kamloops school, the principal in 1910 raised concerns that federal funding was insufficient to properly feed students, according to the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc statement.
Ottawa formally apologised in 2008 for what the commission later termed a “cultural genocide” as part of a C$1.9 billion (RM6.5 billion) settlement with former students. – AFP, May 29, 2021
