The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were found on the grounds of a former residential school for Indigenous children, a discovery that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as heartbreaking on Friday.
The children were students at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, which closed in 1978, according to the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc Nation, which said the remains were found with the help of a ground radar specialist.
“We knew in our community that we could check this,” said Rosanne Casimir, head of Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc, in a statement. “Right now we have more questions than answers.”
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Canada’s residential school system, which forcibly separated Indigenous children from their families, constituted “cultural genocide,” a six-year 2015 survey of the now-defunct system.
The report documented the horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition, and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended schools, which were normally run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa during the 1840s-1990s.
It was found that more than 4,100 children died while attending residential school. It is believed that the deaths of the 215 children buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest residential school were not included in this number and were undocumented until it was discovered.
Trudeau wrote in a tweet that the news “breaks my heart – it is a painful reminder of this dark and shameful chapter in the history of our country.”
In 2008, the Canadian government officially apologized for the system.
The Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc Nation said they looked into the coroner and reached out to the home communities whose children were attending school. They expect preliminary results by mid-June.
In a statement, Terry Teegee, British Columbia First Nations regional chief, described the search for such burial sites as “an urgent work that will” replenish the grief and loss for all British Columbia First Nations. “
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