Canada returns to deal with one of the darkest and most ignoble chapters in its history. A period of generalized silence. Everyone knew, because “residential schools for indigenous people” operated in every province of the great North American state. Children were snatched from their families from an early age, to be initiated into “white education”, almost always in institutions run by the Church. In the garden of one of these schools in British Columbia, Kamloops Indian Residential School in western Canada, a mass grave was found with the remains of 215 children.
The discovery was announced Thursday by the head of Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation and, immediately after, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau spoke of a “painful memory” and a “shameful phase in the history of our country”. Representatives of the First Nation, as the original inhabitants of Canada are called today, are already working with forensic specialists to determine the causes and times of deaths. The remains were found with the help of a radar. “As far as we know, these missing children died without documents,” explained Rosanne Casimir, head of the First Nation Tk’emlups te Secwépemc of Kamloops. “Some were just three years old.”
Residential schools in Canada were colleges run by the government and religious authorities, in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, with the aim of assimilating indigenous youth by force. Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest in the residential system. Opened by the Catholic Church in 1890, in the 1950s it had up to 500 students, almost all forced to attend it, often thousands of kilometers away from their families, whom they had not seen for years, if not decades. In 1969, the Ottawa government took over the management of the school which continued to operate until 1978. “This find is no surprise and demonstrates the damaging impacts that the residential school system continues to have on First Nations people, their families and community, ”said the head of the First Nations Health Authority, Richard Jock.
Between 1863 and 1998, more than 150,000 indigenous children were taken from their homes, almost always by force, and placed in residential schools, where they were forbidden to speak the language or practice the culture of their communities. A commission set up in 2008 to document the impact of this system found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their communities of origin. The Truth and Reconciliation report, published in 2015, stated that this policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.
In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized. The leaders of the Catholic Church no. In 2018 Pope Francis declared that he did not intend to apologize on behalf of the Church for the abuses related to schools in Canada, despite the requests of the indigenous communities and the formal invitation – in 2017 – of the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The Episcopal Conference in a letter to the natives explained that Francis believed he “could not respond personally” to the request made by them. But he encouraged the local bishops to continue the path of reconciliation and solidarity with the indigenous communities.
Il Missing Children Project documents the burial places of children who died while attending schools. To date, more than 4,100 children have been identified who died while attending a residential school. On the other hand, 50% of the complaints made to the Commission for Truth and Reconciliation concerned serious forms of physical and sexual abuse. Repeated cases of rape, which in most cases led to the psychological destruction of the victim and then had a very long-term impact: inability to establish interpersonal relationships, psychosis, alcoholism, unemployment, inability to be good parents. Several generations of children have not been able to live with their parents and therefore have not learned to be in turn. Children who grew up without love, without caresses, without encouragement. An indelible mark for First Nations communities
At the time, residential schools were presented as a useful tool for integrating indigenous peoples in the society. The government said that they had to be educated in Western ways, that their practices were barbaric and unacceptable.
“The suppression or subjugation of the natives was a definite strategy in Canada – explained to me a few years ago Ry Moran, former director of the National Research Center for Truth and Reconciliation, who helped create the Commission’s immense archive of investigations -. We were a colony from which the motherlands – Great Britain and France – pumped resources. The first objective was access to rivers, timber, the sea, the land to be cultivated. The myth of the virgin territory to be conquered is false. There were people who had lived here for hundreds of years. The Canadian state had to cancel the indigenous peoples in some way and tell a new story, of the myths: that this land had been “discovered”, that the indigenous people were dying and would disappear and therefore it was better to integrate them, assimilate them into Western society that was forming. They were “legally” prevented from actively participating in the new state, no right to vote, no right to assemble more than three people, forced removal from their traditional lands to confine them to reservations, and forced transfer of children to residential schools. You had to tell the story of a nation being formed, much of what indigenous peoples endured was kept out of public view. It was not discussed. “
May 29, 2021 (change May 29, 2021 | 13:13)
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