Montreal, Canada:
Hundreds of unmarked graves have been located close to a former Catholic residential college for indigenous children in western Canada, regional media reported late Wednesday.
Excavations at the web page about the former college in Marieval, Saskatchewan started at the finish of May.
They followed the discovery of the remains of 215 schoolchildren at an additional former indigenous residential college in Kamloops, British Columbia, which sent shock waves by way of Canada.
The finds revived calls on the Pope and the Catholic church to apologize for the abuse and violence suffered by the students at these boarding schools, exactly where they had been forcibly assimilated into the dominant culture.
In a statement quoted by numerous Canadian media, which includes CBC and CTV, the native Cowessess neighborhood stated it had made “the horrific and shocking discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves” in the course of excavations at former Marieval boarding college.
“The number of unmarked graves will be the most significantly substantial to date in Canada,” the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations (FSIN) stated in a statement.
Perry Bellegarde, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, stated the news was “absolutely tragic, but not surprising. I urge all Canadians to stand with First Nations in this extremely difficult and emotional time.”
After the discovery of the Kamloops remains, excavations had been undertaken close to numerous former schools for indigenous children across Canada, with the help of government authorities.
The Marieval residential college in eastern Saskatchewan hosted indigenous children amongst 1899 and 1997 prior to getting demolished and replaced by a day college.
Some 150,000 Native American, Metis and Inuit children had been forcibly recruited up till the 1990s in 139 of these residential schools across Canada, exactly where they had been isolated from their households, their language and their culture.
Many had been subjected to ill-therapy and sexual abuse, and more than 4,000 died in the schools, according to a commission of inquiry that concluded Canada had committed “cultural genocide” against the indigenous communities.
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