Finding potential new burial grounds for Indigenous peoples of Canada

Montreal-Sana

A group of Indigenous peoples in western Canada has announced that they have found new potential graves near a Canadian boarding school, intended for young descendants of Indigenous groups.

The Star Plunket Cree Aboriginal group said in a statement carried by Agence France-Presse: It had found 2,000 spots in the Leaperet region of the province of Saskatchewan suspected of containing graves for children, and should be subject to extensive research work.

A year and a half ago, more than 1,300 children's graves were found near this school, to which children of indigenous groups were forcibly admitted, which caused widespread shock in Canada and reminded of the dark colonial past.

Sheldon Poitras, who led the searches, noted that an exact number of graves remains impossible, pending further investigation, because not every spot necessarily contains the grave of an unidentified person.

A bone from a child's jaw dating back to about 125 years was also found, and Poitras said that this discovery represents physical evidence of the existence of a cemetery in the place.

The research areas were chosen near the boarding school run by the Catholic Church, and opened its doors until 1998, based on the statements of former students who lived in the school.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described the news as difficult, stressing that “work in this regard has just begun, and he pledged that the government would provide its assistance in the subsequent steps.”

Between the end of the nineteenth century and the nineties of the last century, about 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly enrolled in 139 boarding schools across Canada, and in these institutions they were removed from their families, language and culture.

And in 2015, a national commission of inquiry described this system as cultural genocide.

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