Justin Trudeau: Canada is ashamed of the mass graves of indigenous children.
The Prime Minister of Canada has expressed shame over the torture and killing of indigenous children in Catholic boarding schools.
The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, on Friday evening, expressed his dismay at the long-standing policy of Canadian governments to torture and kill indigenous children in Catholic boarding schools.
Canadian media have twice reported the discovery of mass graves burying Native Canadian children in recent weeks.
Between 1883 and 1996, some 150,000 Buddhist children were forcibly separated from their families and sent to boarding schools established by the Catholic Church, with the primary goal of alienating these children from Canadian indigenous communities and preventing the spread of the language. And their maternal traditions and upbringing were imposed.
In the latest incident, the Canadian National Post reported Thursday morning that hundreds of unregistered graves had been discovered in Saskatchewan, possibly containing the bodies of Native Canadian children. One month earlier, the bodies of at least 215 indigenous children, some about three years old, were found on the grounds of a Catholic boarding school in British Columbia.
The Canadian government has acknowledged that these children were physically and sexually abused in those schools and denied them the right to speak their mother tongue.
“It was a terrible government policy that has been a reality in Canada for decades, and Canadians today are ashamed of how our country behaves,” Trudeau said Friday.
“It was a policy that deprived children of their homes, their communities, their culture, and their language, and forced them into cultural assimilation,” he said.
“Canadians across the country have opened their eyes to the truths that indigenous communities have long been aware of,” he said. “The resonance of past injuries is very loud today.”
The Washington Post reported that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada concluded in a 2015 report that what happened in Native Canadian boarding schools was a “cultural genocide.”
Research shows that at least 3,200 Indigenous students died in boarding schools during the period, far more than students in other parts of Canada, and some reports even show that the actual number of Indigenous students The number of people who have lost their lives in boarding schools is much higher than the official figure, and in some cases even more than 4,100 students have been announced.
Students in boarding schools have often died from diseases such as tuberculosis, which spreads rapidly in cramped, unsanitary areas, and most of these children have been malnourished.
Reports also indicate that many of these indigenous children in boarding schools have lost their lives as a result of suicide, arson, and accidents related to long, hard work or frostbite while trying to escape from school.
