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Image source, Reuters
In recent weeks, people have left children’s shoes at memorials to honor those who died in Canadian Indian schools.
An Indigenous group in Canada said Thursday it found 751 anonymous graves at the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School, a former Catholic residential school, in the province of Saskatchewan.
The group – the Cowessess First Nation – called the find “the most significant to date in Canada.”
“We are not asking for compassion, but for understanding,” Cowessess chief Cadmus Delorme also said.
The discovery comes weeks after the remains of 215 children at a similar school in British Columbia.
Those compulsory boarding schools They were administered by government and religious authorities during the 19th and 20th centuries with the goal of assimilating Aboriginal youth into Canadian culture.
Research
In May, the Cowessess began using ground sweeping radar to locate anonymous graves in the Marieval school cemetery.
Image source, Getty Images
The Chief of the Assembly of Indigenous First Nations urged Canadians to support them during this difficult time.
The group called the discovery “horrific and shocking”.
Of the 751 graves discovered this Thursday, it is not known how many belong to children.
“There are oral testimonies that there are also adults in the cemetery,” said Delorme.
The Cowessess chief added that at one point the graves may have been identified, but the headstones had been removed.
“Removing tombstones is a crime in this country. We treat the place like a scene from a criminality“, he underlined.
Perry Bellegarde, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, described the discovery of the graves as “tragic but not surprising”.
“I urge all Canadians to support First Nations during this extremely difficult and emotional time,” he wrote on Twitter.
The head of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, Bobby Cameron, called the discovery a “crime against humanity,” according to AFP.
“The world is watching Canada as we uncover the findings of the genocide,” he said.
“We had concentration camps here … Canada will be known as the country that tried to exterminate the First Nations,” he added.
Abuse and ill-treatment
Among 1863 and 1998, more than 150,000 indigenous children they were separated from their families and sent to schools like Marieval’s residence.
Children were often not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture, and many were mistreated and mistreated.
Marieval school operated from 1899 to 1997.
Image source, Getty Images
Marieval’s discovery comes a few weeks after the discovery of a mass grave at Kamloops residential school in British Columbia.
“They made us believe that we had no soul,” former student Florence Sparvier said Thursday at a press conference. “They looked down on us as people, so we learned to reject who we were.”
A commission created in 2008 to document the impacts of this residential school system found that a large number of Indigenous children never returned to their home communities.
In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system.
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