CONPID Demands Proper Respect for the Thousands of Unmarked Graves of Children at IndianResidential Schools in Canada
The National Council of Indigenous Peoples in the Diaspora (CONPID) denounces the Canadian government and all associated guilty parties for the thousands of deaths of First Nation children at Indian Residential Schools. These were boarding schools that were part of the Canadian government’s efforts to forcibly assimilate native children into settler colonial society. Since May, more than 1,308 suspected graves were uncovered near the sites of former Indian Residential Schools: 215 in Kamloops, British Columbia; 182 in Cranbrook, British Columbia; 751 in Marieval, Saskatchewan; and more than 160 found on Penelakut Island, British Columbia. These numbers make these graves seem like the type of mass graves commonly found at sites where genocide took place.
According to NPR, Chief Jason Louie of the Lower Kootenay Band called these horrible discoveries "deeply personal" since he had relatives attend the school in Penelakut where many unmarked graves were discovered.
"Let's call this for what it is," Chief Louie told CBC radio in an interview. "It's a mass murder of Indigenous people. The Nazis were held accountable for their war crimes. I see no difference in locating the priests and nuns and the brothers who are responsible for this mass murder to be held accountable for their part in this attempt of genocide of an Indigenous people."
CONPID joins native leaders such as Chief Louie and many others in demanding that the Canadian government as well as the Christian institutions that ran these schools immediately begin the process of reparation. From the nineteenth century until the 1970s, Canada implemented laws that forced 150,000 Indigenous children to attend state-funded Christian boarding schools in an effort to assimilate them into Canadian society. Thousands of children died at these schools of disease and other causes. Most were never returned to their families as the Indian Residential Schools had a policy of not returning bodies to the family as it was deemed too costly. Nearly three-quarters of the 130 residential schools were run by Roman Catholic missionary congregations, with others operated by Presbyterian, Anglican, and the United Church of Canada. During times with particularly high death rates, children were known to be buried in improvised, informal graves without proper markers or burial records. In other cases, children may have been buried in marked residential school cemeteries but years of neglect following the schools’ closures have left the sites overgrown and “forgotten.” In the worst cases there has been development built over the sites of these burials, such as in Brandon, Manitoba, where there is a large civic park built on top of children’s graves from the former Brandon Industrial School.
As indigenous peoples we know that these graves were most likely intentionally neglected and “forgotten” to erase the crimes committed by the Canadian government and the associated churches that ran the Indian Residential Schools in Canada. We are outraged that these schools proved so deadly for our children for this reveals that health conditions must have been substandard and unacceptable. We demand an independent investigation to shed light as to why these graves were allowed to go unnoticed and “forgotten” for so long and proper reparations be made to surviving relatives of the victims.
We denounce that the Canadian government, together with the Catholic and Christian churches, have committed crimes against humanity and the actors must be investigated and punished so that these events are not repeated again. We demand an explanation and reparation of damages for the families of these missing children.
