The native community of southern British Columbia (Canada) is in shock.
A tragic truth that members of the ethnic minority 'Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc' have suspected for decades has come to light in all its macabre cruelty in recent days: the remains of 215 children have been found near what was once Kamloops. Indian Residential School, one of the institutions of the so-called 'Indian residential schools' system, a network of schools founded by the government and administered by the Catholic Churches that removed the children of indigenous people from their culture to assimilate them into the dominant culture.
But not only that: children were often subjected to sexual and physical abuse, and many of them - as evidenced by this discovery, which CNN reports today - paid with their lives their only 'guilt' of being different. Kamloops Indian Residential School, one of the largest in the country, began operations in the late 19th century under the management of the Catholic Church before coming under government control in the second half of the 1960s and closing its doors in 1978.
