Another discovery of Indigenous children’s remains in Canada
The remains of 761 people, mainly Indigenous children, were discovered at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, a Canadian Indigenous group said. It was the largest such discovery to date.
Less than a month ago, the remains of 215 children were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former boarding school in British Columbia. Many are asking how so many children could have wound up in those burial spaces.
“This was a crime against humanity, an assault on a First Nation people,” Chief Bobby Cameron, of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said during a news conference on Thursday. “The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous,” he said.
Context: A federal commission in 2015 found that the residential school system meant to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children was a form of “cultural genocide,” where students were abused by clergy and dealt with disease, death and danger.
The latest findings are likely to deepen debate in Canada over its history of exploiting Indigenous people and refocus attention on the horrors of the schools, a stain on the history of a country that has often been perceived as a bastion of progressivism and multiculturalism.
Related: The U.S. this week announced that it would search federal boarding schools for possible burial sites of Native American children.
