AFP, Released Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 10:13 p.m.
More than 160 new anonymous graves have been discovered in western Canada near the site of the Indian Residential School on the former Caner Island, the fourth, the Penalwood community, to be discovered within a month.
In a matter of weeks, more than 1,000 graves were discovered, renewing a painful piece of Canadian history and its policy of forcible unification of the First Nations.
“We must face the shock again in the wake of these genocides,” Chief John Brown said in a July 8 statement confirming the discovery of more than 160 unidentified graves at the site.
“This is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Bob Chamberlain, vice president of former British Columbia union leaders. According to him, many anonymous graves “have not yet been discovered”.
“My heart is broken for the Penalwood community and for all the tribal communities across the country,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters Tuesday.
“The extinct cannot be revived, but we can share the truth and continue to work with the tribal people against discrimination and formal racism through decisive action,” he added.
The Cooper Island Indigenous Residential School catered to indigenous children from the late 19th century to 1975.
The announcement comes shortly after western Canada discovered the human remains of 215 tribal children in the Kamloops this summer, as well as 182 more unmarked graves in Marvel, Sask, and Cranbrook.
The Cooper Island Indigenous Residential School catered to indigenous children from the late 19th century to 1975.
Within a month this fourth invention renewed the shock experienced by about 150,000 tribal children, their families, disconnected from their language and culture, and forcibly enrolled in 139 boarding schools across the country until the 1990s.
Many of them have been badly treated or sexually abused, and more than 4,000 have died there, according to the Commission of Inquiry, which concluded it was a genuine “cultural genocide” on behalf of Canada.
In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized on behalf of Canadians for residential schools.