From 1863 to 1998, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families and transferred to state boarding schools in Canada.
These government-run colleges, which are largely run by the Catholic Church, were part of Aboriginal children’s policy.
Minors were not allowed to speak their language or practice their culture and many were mistreated and abused.
Now the terrifying discovery of The remains of 215 children طفل who were students in one of those boarding schools, Kamloops Indian Residential School I focused again on the abuses committed in these institutions.
“Cultural genocide”
Christian churches have been instrumental in establishing and operating these types of schools.
The Catholic Church, in particular, was responsible for Operate up to 70% of 130 detainees, according to the Aboriginal Residential School Survivors Association.
The kids were forced to Abandon their native languages لغاتThey speak English or French and convert to Christianity.
Joseph Maud was one of those children. In 1966, at the age of five, he attended Pine Creek Boarding School in Manitoba.
The students were expected to speak either English or French, but Maud only spoke Ojibwa.
When students spoke in their own language, their ears were pulled and their mouths washed with soap, Maud told the BBC in 2015, when a report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) was released.
“But the biggest pain was being separated from my parents, cousins, uncles and aunts,” Maud told the BBC.
The report described the government-led policy as “cultural genocide”.
“These actions were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal peoples as distinct peoples and to integrate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will,” the report’s summary read.
“The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wanted to relinquish its legal and financial obligations to the indigenous population and to take control of their lands and resources.”
Bad conditions and abuse
The report also described drastic failures in the care and safety of these children, with the complicity of the church and government.
Students were often housed in poorly constructed buildings with little or no heating unhealthy, according to the report. Many of them lacked trained medical staff.
With CVR work estimated that some 6000 children died While they were in boarding schools. Their bodies are rarely returned to their homes and many are buried in unknown graves.
The Missing Children Project documents the deaths and burials of children and so far more than 4,100 children have been identified.
But many have suffered Emotional, physical and sexual abuse.
Maud told the BBC in 2015 that she had to kneel on the church’s concrete floor, because the nuns told her that “this is the only way God will listen to you”.
“I was crying when I got on my knees, and I was thinking, ‘When is this going to end? Someone help me. “
Remember that when he wet the bed, the nun in charge of his bedroom was rubbing his face with her urine.
“It was very humiliating and humiliating,” he said. “Because I slept in a bedroom with 40 other children.”
In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system.
Discovery at Kamloops School
The Kamloops School, which operated between 1890 and 1969, was the largest of this type of school system, known as the Aboriginal School System.
Under the Catholic administration, it became so Up to 500 students When it reached its peak in the fifties.
The discovery of the remains of at least 215 Aboriginal children in a mass grave at this school at the end of May sparked outrage across the country.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called the discovery a “painful reminder” of a “shameful chapter in our country’s history”.
Trudeau also urged the Catholic Church to do so Taking responsibility for your role In indigenous schools.
The school was taken over by the central government in 1969, and used as housing for local students until 1978, when it closed.
“We need the truth before we can talk about justice, healing and reconciliation,” Trudeau said.
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