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The Kamloops school in 1937 had the capacity to accommodate up to 500 children.
From 1863 to 1998, more than 150,000 Aboriginal children were separated from their families and placed in public residential schools in Canada.
These public schools, run largely by the Catholic Church, were part of the policy of assimilation of indigenous children.
Miners were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture and many were mistreated and abused.
Now the terrifying discovery of the remains of 215 children who were students in one of these boarding schools, Kamloops Indian Residential School once again focused on the abuses committed in these establishments.
“Cultural Genocide”
Christian churches have played a vital role in the founding and operation of these types of schools.
The Catholic Church, in particular, was responsible for manage up to 70% of the 130 boarding schoolsaccording to the Indian Residential School Survivor Society.
image sources, Getty Images
Children at a boarding school for native miners in Canada in 1950.
The children were forced to give up their mother tonguespeak English or French and convert to Christianity.
Joseph Maud was one of these children. In 1966, at the age of five, he entered Pine Creek Boarding School in Manitoba.
Students had to speak English or French, but Maud only spoke her native Ojibwa.
If students spoke their own language, their ears were pulled and their mouths washed out with soap, Maud told the BBC in 2015 when a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report was released.
“But the biggest pain was being separated from my parents, cousins and aunts and uncles,” Maud told the BBC.
The report describes the government’s policy as “cultural genocide”.
image sources, Cole Burston
Kamloops school survivor Evelyn Camille, next to the victims’ memorial.
“These measures were part of a cohesive policy to eliminate Indigenous peoples as distinct peoples and assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will,” reads the report’s executive summary.
“The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wanted to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Indigenous peoples and take control of their lands and resources.”
Bad conditions and abuse
The report also details radical failures in the care and safety of these children, with the complicity of the Church and the government.
Students were often housed in poorly constructed, poorly heated and unhealthy, according to the report. Many did not have access to qualified medical personnel.
With the work of the CVR, it was estimated that some 6,000 children had died while they were in boarding schools. Their bodies rarely returned home and many were buried in unmarked graves.
image sources, Reuters
Some Canadians placed children’s shoes in memory of the victims of these residential schools.
The Missing Children Project documents deaths and burial sites of children and to date over 4,100 minors have been identified.
But many others have suffered emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
Maud told the BBC in 2015 that she had to kneel on the concrete floor of the chapel because the nuns told her “it’s the only way God listens to you”.
“I was crying as I got down on my knees, thinking, ‘When is this going to end? Someone help me.'”
He remembered that when he wet his bed, the nun in charge of his room rubbed his face with her own urine.
“It was very degrading, humiliating. Because I was sleeping in a room with 40 other children,” he said.
In 2008, the Canadian government officially apologized for the system.
The Find at Kamloops School
The Kamloops School, which operated from 1890 to 1969, was the largest such school system, known as the Indian residential school system.
image sources, Reuters
There were about 130 boarding schools in Canada like the one in Kamloops (pictured).
Under Catholic administration it came to have up to 500 students during its heyday in the 1950s.
The discovery in late May of the remains of at least 215 indigenous children in a mass grave at this school sparked outrage across the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the discovery a “painful reminder” of a “shameful chapter in our country’s history.”
Trudeau also urged the Catholic Church to “taking responsibility” for your role in residential schools.
The central government took over the administration of the school in 1969, using it as a residence for local students until 1978 when it was closed.
“We need to have the truth before we can talk about justice, healing and reconciliation,” Trudeau said.
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