EFE.- An indigenous Canadian group on Wednesday announced the discovery of hundreds of unidentified graves on the grounds of a former school residence where thousands of children were forcibly interned for nearly a century.
The Cowessess Indian group from the province of Saskatchewan in western Canada said they discovered the graves on the grounds of the Marieval boarding school, which operated between 1899 and 1997, about 2,500 kilometers northwest from Toronto.
This is the second discovery of hundreds of anonymous graves on the grounds of a former Canadian school residence in recent weeks.
On May 28, Rosanne Casimir, leader of the Tk’emlúps te secwépemc, an indigenous group from the province of British Columbia, also in western Canada, announced the discovery of the remains of 215 indigenous children buried in unmarked graves. marked at Kamloops School. residence.
In both cases, the graves were discovered using ground penetrating radar.
The chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the group that represents the various indigenous groups in the country, noted on Twitter that “the news of the discovery of hundreds of anonymous graves in the First Nation of Cowesses is absolutely tragic but not surprisingly. ”.
“He called on all Canadians to stand with Indigenous peoples in these extremely difficult and moving times,” he added.
The Saskatchewan Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN), which represents the province’s 74 Indigenous groups, noted that it is more than likely that many new unidentified graves will appear in other school residences in the coming years. days.
The FSIN has launched a systematic search of most of the residential schools in Saskatchewan, over 20, since the discovery of the human remains in Kamloops.
The Indian school residence system was imposed by Canadian authorities at the end of the 19th century to wipe out the indigenous culture of the country. Indigenous children have been forcibly removed from their communities and sent to boarding schools, in some cases hundreds of kilometers from their families.
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Between 1890 and 1997, more than 130 residential schools operated across Canada and some 150,000 Aboriginal children were involved in these institutions run by religious orders, most of them Catholic.
In school residences, indigenous children were systematically subjected to physical, psychological and sexual abuse and even experimentation by government scientists.
In 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded that 1 in 50 children sent to school residences, approximately 3,200 children died in institutions, although this figure is viewed as conservative by Indigenous leaders.
In many cases, the families of the interned children were never informed of the deaths.
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