New discovery of unidentified graves near a former residential school in Canada

This is the third discovery of its kind in a month: Excavations have revealed 182 unidentified graves near the former St Eugene Residential School in Cranbrook, British Columbia, Canada, announced on Wednesday (June 30). Indigenous community in the Lower Kootenai region in a press release.

last week in MarivalIn Saskatchewan, 751 graves were discovered. At the end of May, the remains of 215 schoolchildren were discovered Kamloops, in British Columbia.

The Lower Kootenay community says they conducted the search in 2020 and located the graves using ground-penetrating radar, near this former boarding school run by the Catholic Church between 1912 and 1970, on behalf of the Canadian state. Former St Eugene Residential School “It was administered by the religious congregation of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which was also in charge of the boarding school at Kamloops and Marival”, specified Radio Canada.

‘Cultural genocide’ by Canada

“Some of the remains were buried in graves 3 to 4 feet deep.”, 90 to 120 cm, said the lower Kootenay community indigenous to the First Kootenai Nation (Ktunaxa). “All Aboriginal children between the ages of 7 and 15 are required by law to attend Aboriginal boarding schools, many of whom have received cruel and sometimes fatal treatment.”Press release details.

This new discovery relives the trauma suffered by some 150,000 American Indian, Métis and Inuit children, cut off from their families, language and culture, and forcibly recruited until the 1990s at 139 of these boarding schools across the country.

Many of them were sexually abused or abused, and more than 4,000 of them died, according to the investigative committee that found “Cultural genocide” form Canada.