Schools’ purpose was to kill ‘Indian in the child’
Desk: In a horrific development, 751 unmarked graves of indigenous children of Canada have been discovered in Canada’s Saskatchewan province on the site of the Marieval Indian residential school, which was formerly run by Catholic Church. The graves were discovered by a ground-penetrating radar.
The search began on June 2, weeks after a similar discovery was made in British Columbia.
The discovery of mass graves at a school site has sparked off a fierce debate on the historical role of Catholic Church in Canada and the country’s colonial past.
The Guardian story on the development says: “The children were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and thousands died from disease, neglect and suicide.”
The news has sent shock waves throughout West as people are pouring out grief and pain.
The Guardian quotes Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous First Nation as saying: “We are seeing the results of the genocide that Canada committed – genocide on our treaty land.”
He is further quoted as: “Our people deserve more than apologies and sympathies, which we are grateful for. Our people deserve justice.”
He is further cited as saying: “We will tell the stories of our children of our people who died, who were killed by the state, by the churches. We won’t stop.”
The Guardian further writes: “Canadian government formally apologised in parliament in 2008 and admitted that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant.”
A DW report says: “Their purpose was to “kill the Indian in the child” and assimilate Aboriginal and First Nations children into the dominant European colonialist culture. Across Canada, more than 150,000 children were removed from their families to be reeducated. Violence and sexual abuse were common and the children were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Up to 6,000 are said to have died. Kamloops was home to as many as 500 children, who Casimir said lived under horrible conditions, including hunger. Casimir said Kamloops was one of the largest of such schools in Canada, operating between 1890 and 1978 under the auspices of the Catholic Church and later the government.”
A BBC report says: “It was one of more than 130 compulsory boarding schools funded by the Canadian government and run by religious authorities during the 19th and 20th Centuries with the aim of assimilating indigenous youth. An estimated 6,000 children died while attending these schools, due in large part to the squalid health conditions inside. Students were often housed in poorly built, poorly heated, and unsanitary facilities. Physical and sexual abuse at the hands of school authorities led others to run away.”
