A gruesome find recalls one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history. It is still unclear what exactly happened to the indigenous children up to 1978. But one thing is clear: it was fatal for many.
Ottawa (AP) – A find that shocked the nation: On the property of a former boarding school in western Canada, specialists with radar devices discovered the remains of 215 children.
It is very painful news that reveals old wounds, wrote Perry Bellegarde, the highest representative of the country’s indigenous peoples, on Twitter over the weekend.
The boarding school was in operation between 1890 and 1978 and served as a so-called residential school – a kind of re-education camp for the sons and daughters of Canadian natives. The children were officially missing, but those who live in the area near the town of Kamloops, British Columbia, had feared the worst for years.
“Nobody talked about it, but we all suspected what had happened,” said Rosanne Casimir, the leader of the indigenous group based in Kamloops, in a press conference at the weekend. “This premonition has now been confirmed.” The death of the boys and girls is an “unimaginable loss”. Some of them lived to be only three years old, according to Casimir. What and when they died is still unclear.
It is one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history: over a period of more than 100 years, the government snatched nearly 150,000 children from their families and sent them to boarding schools. There they should forget their culture – their festivals, songs, language, religion – and learn the traditions of European immigrants. Violence, forced labor and sexual abuse were the order of the day.
According to Casimir, the residential school at Kamloops was the largest in Canada. It was initially run by the Catholic Church and later by the government. Up to 500 boys and girls lived there – under dire conditions. Many of them went hungry because the government did not provide enough money for food, Casimir said. The school management never documented the death of the children whose remains have now been found.
The find sparked a wave of condolences in Canadian politics. “The news breaks my heart,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote on Twitter. In a statement, Carolyn Bennett, Minister for Native American Relations, spoke of a “tragic and shameful part” of her country’s history. “Thousands of children were sent to these schools and never returned to their families.”
Trudeau tearfully apologized to the indigenous peoples in 2017. This is not enough for the IRSSS association, which represents survivors of the residential schools. Over the weekend, co-boss Rick Alec reached out to the Catholic Church, which ran many of the infamous boarding schools. The Pope must answer the question of why this was done to the Canadians, Alec told the TV broadcaster CBC.
In 2015, a Canadian government commission published a report detailing the suffering in boarding schools. It also contains experience reports from Kamloops. “Every student smelled of hunger,” one survivor is quoted as saying. In addition, the facility is described as extremely unhygienic. Many children, it is said, died of measles, tuberculosis or the flu. According to the report, more than 6000 boys and girls lost their lives in the residential schools.
© dpa-infocom, dpa: 210530-99-796625 / 3
Message from the indigenous people
Government report from 2015
