Community leaders are working with specialists from the museum and the coroner’s office to establish the causes and exact timing of the deaths, which are currently unknown.

Rosanne Casimir, community leader for the city of Kamloops in British Columbia, said the preliminary findings point to an unthinkable loss that has never been documented by school administrators.

These schools in Canada functioned as compulsory boarding schools run by government and religious authorities during the 19th and 20th centuries with the aim of integrating forcibly to indigenous youth.

The Kamloops boarding school was the largest of this whole system, known as the Indigenous residential school system.

Opened under Catholic administration in 1890, it once had up to 500 students when it reached its peak in the 1950s.

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.

According to spokespersons for Tk’emlups te Secwepemc, the remains were found using ground-penetrating radar during an inspection of the school.

“To our knowledge, the deaths of these children have never been documented,” Casimir said. “Some of them were only 3 years old.”

“We have sought a way to confirm the facts with the deepest respect and love for these lost children and their families, knowing that Tk’emlups te Secwepemc is the final resting place for these minors.”

They also noted that they have reached out to communities whose children have attended this school.

AND they claimed thathope to get results preliminaries in mid-June.

British Columbia’s chief forensic officer, Lisa Lapointe, told Canadian broadcaster CBC they were “in the early stages of the information-gathering process.”

The reactions were shock, pain and regret.

“News of remains found at former Kamloops boarding school they break my heart“Trudeau wrote in a tweet.

Canadian Indigenous Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett said residential schools were part of a “shameful” colonial policy and that the government was committed to “commemorating those innocent souls lost”.

For his part, Terry Teegee, the regional leader of the Assembly of Original Nations, described the discovery of these bodies as “an urgent task” which “calms pain and losscommunities in the region.

These views were shared by other Aboriginal groups, including the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA).

“Sadly, this development comes as no surprise and illustrates the detrimental and lasting impacts that the residential school system continues to have on First Nations people, their families and communities,” CEO Richard Jock said in a statement. communicated.

From approximately 1863 to 1998, more than 150,000 Aboriginal children were separated from their families and enrolled in these schools.

Often the children they weren’t allowed to speak their language nor practice their culture, and many have been mistreated and abused.

A commission launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their home communities.

The landmark Truth and Reconciliation report, published in 2015, concluded that the policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.

In 2008, the Canadian government officially apologized for the system.

The Missing Children Project documents the deaths and burial locations of children who died while attending these schools. To date, more than 4,100 minors have been identified, he explains.

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