On May 27th, 2021, the remains of 215 children were found buried at a prior residential school in Kamloops. The school is built on the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nations territory and said the remains were found using ground-penetrating radar. The Kamloops Residential School was founded in 1816 and was in operation until 1969 when the federal government took over and was used as a day school until 1978. The Catholic Church has still not issued an apology for its involvement in the residential school systems. It is estimated that there were around 500 children at their peak in the 1950s. The identification of these children has not been released due to the lack of residential school records. The Federal government and Catholic Church are refusing to release school records with the First Nations communities as they are still battling in court. Scientists say that identifying the children can definitely be done, however, it will be a long and complex process requiring DNA samples from both the victims and the indigenous families. This process will also require full access to school records, oral history, and government records.
What Are Residential Schools?
Residential schools were run by the Canadian Government and Churches which first opened in the 1880s and the last residential school closed in 1996. Residential schools were built to try and eliminate indigenous culture from the First Nation’s children to accommodate for the cultural differences between the European settlers and the indigenous peoples. Few people are residential school survivors, currently, there is an estimate of 15,000 to 20,000 residential school survivors alive today. Most Residential school survivors still cannot forget what horrible events happened before and still suffer from the mental toll the school has on people.
What Happened in Residential Schools?
Residential schools forced children from their homes for long periods forbidding them to do anything related to their indigenous cultures such as language and heritage.
Residential schools often provided very poor learning conditions with extremely low standards. Education was also limited to practical skills instead of conventional learning, girls were taught to sew, do laundry, cook, and clean. Boys were taught skills such as carpentry and farming. There was a wide range of punishments made for the children attending residential schools. Speaking the native language, bedwetting, running away, smiling at students of the opposite gender or siblings resulted in beatings, strappings, and many other manifestations of both physical and mental abuse.
What Are We Doing About It Now?
Since the discovery of the remains of these unfortunate children, memorials vigils have been held around Canada. Schools and other departments across Canada lowered their flags to half-mast and having a moment of silence for all the children that have been found. Furthermore, several indigenous groups are now conducting searches for children’s mass graves because it is highly unlikely that this horrible act only happened in one place. There have been many movies and books written about the horrors that these children experienced such as We Were Children, Where the Spirit Lives, and Holy Angels. We must remember what these children had to go through and what effect this has had on them.
Written by The Lost Man
The Anonymous Helpers (TAH)