Author of photos, Toronto Star via Getty Images
Canadian firefighters (photo on file)
Four Catholic churches were set on fire in indigenous settlements in western Canada this week. In recent weeks, hundreds of graves of Indian children have been unearthed in the region at the sites of Catholic boarding schools, where children from indigenous families in the country were forcibly taken in the past.
Police cannot yet claim that there is a link between these events.
Saturday night in the province of British Columbia, in two different communities, St. Anne’s Church and Chopak Church burned down at the same time.
Six days earlier, on National Aboriginal Day, two churches burned down in British Columbia.
Police have not yet undertaken to claim it was an arson attack, but are investigating the fires as suspects.
“The investigations into the two previous fires and these two new ones are ongoing. No one has been arrested, no charges have been laid against anyone, ”said Sergeant Jason Beida, spokesperson for the local branch of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.
Lower Similkamin local Indian community leader Keith Crowe told the CBC Broadcasting Corporation he received a call on Saturday night and was told the Chopak church was on fire. By the time he reached the place an hour and a half later, it had already burned down completely.
“I’m angry. I don’t understand what good can be done with this. There will be problems,” said Keith Crow. According to him, many in the community are Catholics, and they are very upset by this incident.
Tomb without a name
In May and June, 966 anonymous graves were found in two locations in western Canada, including British Columbia, located on the site of two former orphanages where Indian children were forcibly taken.
These residential schools were part of the Indian assimilation program in effect in the 19th and 20th centuries. The program was owned by the state, but the residential schools were run by religious organizations.
In May, the graves of 215 children were found at a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia. The boarding school opened in 1890 and closed in 1978 and was run by the Roman Catholic Church.
On June 25, members of the Cowessess First Nation, an independent Indigenous organization in southeast Saskatchewan, announced that an additional 751 unmarked graves had been discovered in the village of Marival, Saskatchewan. It is not yet known whether they are all children. The Marival boarding school was also run by the Roman Catholic Church.
“Cultural genocide”
Indian children in residential schools died mainly as a result of harsh conditions: Residential school buildings were dilapidated, poorly heated, and unsanitary conditions prevailed.
The assimilation program operated in Canada from 1863 to 1998, and during this time authorities abducted from their parents and placed in residential schools over 150,000 Indian children. There, they were forbidden to speak their mother tongue and were weaned from Indian traditions and way of life.
A commission created in 2008 by the Canadian authorities found that most of the graduates did not return to their communities and called the policy of forced assimilation a cultural genocide. At the same time, the Canadian government apologized to the indigenous peoples.
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