Author: Javaria Ahmad
After news broke out about the discovery of 215 unmarked graves of children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, the Cowessess First Nation decided to use the same ground-penetrating radar to scan more areas. Towards the end of June, they announced the additional discovery of 751 unmarked graves on the premises of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan province. Last month, 160 more such graves were found on Penelakut Island, now referred to as Kupur Island. Notably, these graves mostly belonged to indigenous children.
From the 1800s to the mid-1900s, indigenous children were enrolled in these residential boarding schools of Canada. They were mostly taken away from their families without consent and were forced to live with the fact that the school was trying to instill “superior” Euro-American values and culture within them. In these Catholic, church-run boarding schools, young students were subject to abuse and extreme neglect; from not being allowed to speak their own languages to being targets of rampant physical, sexual and emotional violence. According to the accounts of survivors, many students died because of alienation and torture for being considered “heathens”, with many girls being impregnated by priests and students being subject to severe punishments for minor mistakes. Several students vanished as well, for which the possible explanation is that they died and their graves are now being discovered. Numerous children also died during their efforts to escape, while others committed suicide.
This mass discovery of unmarked graves in Canada is not an isolated event, it is a part of continuing systematic discrimination, prejudice, injustice, and racism against indigenous communities across the globe. Their values and culture have systematically been sidelined and many communities are pushed to the peripheries to inculcate Euro-American traditions and culture.
There is no denying that this was a crime against humanity. Although Canada has pledged millions of dollars for the search for remaining burial sites and is supporting the survivors and pressurizing the Catholic churches to compensate the victims of the residential schools, the truth remains that the pain children had to face while being taken to boarding schools against their will cannot be compensated. While the First Nations are still systematically silenced and sidelined, they have managed to survive and embrace their culture. They continue to thrive in many aspects, despite their past struggles. A daughter of a survivor said: “The whole residential school system was meant to destroy an entire people, but now I’m seeing young Indigenous becoming doctors, lawyers, and scientists. They’re becoming leaders. The fact that we can do these things and still know who we are and where we came from means the residential school system failed”.