Photo via Library and Archives Canada
June 1, 2021, 1:45 pm
The Roman Catholic Church has been hit with renewed calls for an official apology to indigenous Canadians after the remains of 215 children were found in a mass grave at the site of a former Catholic “residential school” that functioned as a key part of the systematic genocide of the native population. These schools removed indigenous children from their parents and forced them into these “schools,” which stripped them of their cultural identities and brutally punished them for infractions such as speaking in their native language.
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Many children, including these 215 children from the Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation tribe, died in these schools and never even had their remains returned to their families, much the same as it was with Native Americans in the U.S. At this site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, remains were identified from kids as young as three.
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News of this discovery, as expected as it might have been, unleashed a wave of mourning across Canada’s indigenous population as well as demands for accountability. The tribe was able to find the remains using ground-penetrating radar and believes there is a possibility that there are yet still remains to be found in the area.
“This past weekend, with the help of a ground-penetrating radar specialist, the stark truth of the preliminary findings came to light – the confirmation of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School,” wrote Tk’emlups te Secwépemc First Nation Chief Rosanne Casimir in a statement.
“We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children
are undocumented deaths.”
She and other indigenous leaders will now work toward identifying the individual children with the help of the BC Coroners Service and the Royal B.C. Museum, as well as independent forensic experts.
The school in question was run by the Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969 before it was taken over by the Canadian government, which didn’t close it down until 1978. The government apologized in 2008 for the use of these schools as part of their genocidal campaign as well as specifically for the rampant physical and sexual abuse that occurred within. In 2015, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau wrote to Pope Francis to request an official apology from the church for its participation in the genocide, but the church declined.
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“The Catholic Church has yet to do that, and to really accept full responsibility for reparations to families,” said First Nations Child and Family Caring Society Executive Director Cindy Blackstock. “So that’s something that we need to look into the Catholic Church to be doing to accept that accountability.”
Although the supposedly more liberal Pope has declined to apologize for the church’s role in the genocide of indigenous Canadians, the Archdiocese of Vancouver did offer some words of sympathy and acknowledged the harm that these residential schools caused.
“The pain that such news causes reminds us of our ongoing need to bring to light every tragic situation that occurred in residential schools run by the Church,” said Archbishop J. Michael Miller. “The passage of time does not erase the suffering that touches the Indigenous communities affected, and we pledge to do whatever we can to heal that suffering.”
At least 41,000 children died from abuse, malnourishment, and disease at schools like the one in Kamloops according to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the death records they recovered, though the estimate that undocumented deaths like these 215 pushes that number far higher. The damage this caused to indigenous Canadian families, communities, and culture is incalculable.
*First Published: June 1, 2021, 1:45 pm
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