Residential schools designed to eliminate indigenous culture

Since May 28, more than 1,000 unmarked children's graves and remains have been identified at former Indigenous residential boarding schools in Canada. In addition to the Penelakut Island graves, unmarked burials at three more locations were detected by First Nations communities between May and July, using ground-penetrating radar scans at sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan.

For almost 150 years in Canada — from 1863 to as recently as 1998 — more than 130 residential schools such as Kamloops, Marieval, St. Eugene's and Kuper Island were funded by the Canadian government, and until 1969 many of the schools were operated by Christian churches. These schools forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families and isolated them from their communities and cultures, according to Indigenous Foundations, a website for the First Nations Studies Program at the University of British Columbia.

The children were abused, malnourished and raped in these schools, and 3,200 indigenous children were reportedly killed in these schools.

Many Indigenous peoples blame the residential boarding schools that have played a major role in the lives of generations in Canada for social problems such as alcoholism, domestic violence and high suicide rates.

In 2008, Ottawa formally apologized to the survivors of those who had spent the residential boarding schools. The country's Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 said they were victims of "cultural genocide."

To shed light on the issue, we reached out to Celina R. Caesar-Chavannes, a Canadian politician and former Member of Parliament for the riding of Whitby in the House of Commons of Canada from 2015 to 2019. 

Pairs of children's shoes are seen at a memorial in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, May 31, 2021