Residential schools in Canada: a belated realization
Gathering on June 2, 2021 near the Kamloops Indigenous Residential School in Western Canada after the remains of 215 Indigenous children were found.
REUTERS - JENNIFER GAUTHIER
Text by: Marie Normand Follow
6 mins
The localization of more than a thousand children's remains in the past month on the sites of former residential schools has created a shock wave across Canada and darkened the national holiday on July 1.
However, the high mortality rate in these establishments had been known for a long time.
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Canada finally opened its eyes a month ago to one of the darkest pages in its history. On May 28, the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Indigenous community revealed the results of a soil survey around Kamloops Residential School in British Columbia.
215 children's remains
have been located, using geo-radar, in what was once the largest "
residential school
" in the country, in other words a boarding school reserved for indigenous students. Some were barely 3 years old. Research continues in other residential schools.
751 other anonymous graves
were found in Marieval and 182 in Cranbrook, still in western Canada.
Since these announcements, the country has been in mourning. Some municipalities have chosen to cancel Canada Day on July 1. The Canadian flag on the Peace Tower in Ottawa remained at half mast, at the behest of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, who apologized from Canada and demanded that from the Vatican.
“
Most shocking is that some people seemed to have no idea what had happened, even though indigenous communities had been talking about it for decades,
” comments Dr. Samir Shaheen-Hussain, emergency pediatrician, assistant professor at McGill University's Faculty of Medicine.
“
The Marieval boarding school cemetery
was well known, there were also tombstones until the 1970s. But it took these geo-radar analyzes to understand that there were really children underground.
», Is sadly surprised Marie-Pierre Bousquet, professor in the anthropology department of the University of Montreal and director of the program in native studies.
The last boarding school closed in 1996
Indigenous families, as well as several reports published since the end of the 1990s, nevertheless reported numerous unexplained disappearances in these 139 boarding schools open since the end of the 19th century. The last one closed in 1996. In all, 150,000 children were torn from their families and educated in these establishments run by churches - most often the Catholic Church - on behalf of the federal state. The assumed objective was to assimilate them to the dominant culture, to "
civilize
" them.
Jimmy Papatie was 5 years old in the late 1960s when he had to leave his village and go to boarding school in Amos, Quebec.
“
We put all the children inside the bus.
Everyone was crying,
”
recalls this former Algonquin chief.
Today he presents himself as a survivor.
He tells of the forced abandonment of his mother tongue, of his identity, but also of the mistreatment and rape.
“
We had become a children's park where the abusers could select who they wanted.
In my group, we were about thirty young people in our dormitory.
About twenty have suffered abuse.
We all came out broken,
”he confided in a telephone interview.
At least 4,000 children never returned
A damning report, released in 2015 by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, confirms the extent of sexual assault within residential schools. He also estimates that more than 4,000 children have never returned home. Most of the time, families were not notified of these deaths. As early as 1907, the chief medical officer of the Department of Indian Affairs of Canada alerted the federal government to the high mortality rate within these residential schools.
"
The vast majority of deaths were related to tuberculosis or other respiratory and infectious diseases,
" says Dr Samir Shaheen-Hussain, author of
No Indigenous Child Torn Off. To put an end to Canadian medical colonialism.
He adds that "
experiments have been carried out on these children, who are systematically malnourished
"
in these residential schools.
Many deaths are at risk of going unexplained, as records have been destroyed or disappeared.
Pressure is increasing on religious congregations to open their registers and lift the veil on the fate of these children.
“
There are always archives to which we do not have access,”
notes Marie-Pierre Bousquet
.
We don't know where they are.
For women's congregations in particular, very few archives have been made public.
"
A team is conducting radar searches on the ground where 751 graves of Native children were discovered near the Marieval residential school in the province of Sashkatchewan, Canada.
via REUTERS - FSIN
"
It awakened trauma
"
“
For now, the idea is to locate cemeteries and mass graves
,”
adds the specialist in indigenous Canadian issues. “
Some families have been waiting for this for years. Information about the disappearance of a child has been passed on to siblings and even grandchildren. These families want to know if their loved one really died in the residential school, if there is a chance that he is buried there.
"
The federal government has
released $ 27 million
over three years to continue "
collecting knowledge about children who died in residential schools and their burial grounds
."
For former resident Jimmy Papatie, the discoveries of recent weeks have rekindled the injuries.
“
It sure awakened trauma.
Because we had the chance to come home.
It comes to shake us emotionally.
Even our children who have never been to these residential schools feel our pain,
”explains the 50-year-old.
Today, he calls for an end to impunity and the opening of a criminal investigation.
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