Cranbrook –
Local Kanda tribes again found 182 unmarked graves at a school near a native residence in Canada. Previously 215 children’s bodies and 751 unmarked graves were also found in two different schools.
As reported by AFP on Thursday (1/7/2021), experts used ground-penetrating radar for the 182 unmarked graves. They also found the remains of schoolchildren believed to be between the ages of 7 and 15 at the former St Eugene School of Mission near Cranbrook, British Columbia.
“Some of the graves are three to four feet deep,” the Lower Kootenay Band said in a statement.
The Lower Kootenay Band said the Cranbrook site is believed to be the location where the Catholic Church originally operated a school on behalf of the federal government from 1912 to the early 1970s. The children’s bodies are believed to be the remains of members of the Ktunaxa nation’s band, which includes the Lower Kootenay, and other neighboring indigenous communities.
This finding adds to the long list of findings of children’s bodies in a number of former schools in Canada. About a few months ago about 215 children’s remains were found in unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Housing School in British Columbia and a few weeks ago another 751 unmarked graves were also found at another school at Marieval in Saskatchewan.
Following the discovery, Pope Francis expressed his pain at the discovery and pressured religious and political authorities to explain “this sad affair.”
But he did not convey the apology requested by the First Nations and the Prime Minister of Canada.
From the 19th century to the 1970s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools. The school is run mostly by a congregation of Roman Catholic missionaries, in a campaign to assimilate them into Canadian society.
The Canadian government has recognized that physical and sexual violence is rampant in schools. Where in the violence students were beaten for speaking their mother tongue.
(maa/maa)
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