CANADA: HUNDREDS OF UNMARKED GRAVES FOUND AT ANOTHER INDIGENOUS SCHOOL

Thu 24 June 2021:

Hundreds of unmarked graves have been discovered at the site of a former residential school in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, local media reported on Wednesday.

The revelation follows the unearthing of 215 children’s remains — some as young as three — at a different Indigenous residential school in the province of British Columbia last month.

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Members of the Cowessess First Nation and Canada’s Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nations (FSIN) said that the graves were found at the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan province.

A statement warned that “the number of unmarked graves will be the most significantly substantial to date in Canada.”

FSIN leader Bobby Cameron and Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme said they would be holding a news conference on Thursday to give further details about the find.

The former school, which operated between 1899 to 1997, is located close to where the Cowessess now reside, some 140 kilometers (87 miles) east of the provincial capital Regina.

The First Nation, who took control of the school’s cemetery in 1970, followed calls to investigate all former Indigenous residential schools for possible mass graves.

Many of the roughly 150,000 children from 1883 to 1996 forced to “assimilate” into white Canadian society by attending the schools — mostly run by Catholic missionaries — faced neglect and abuse in what Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission determined in 2015 was a “cultural genocide.”

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The Indigenous schools were a part of Canada’s violent history where children were forcibly integrated into the settler communities.

Children were separated from their families and taught to follow the traditions of the European colonizers, including adopting Christianity, and forget their own customs and languages. Violence and sexual abuse were widespread.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said earlier this month Canada’s government would help Indigenous leaders who requested assistance in searching for more mass graves.

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