Canada shocked! Remains of 215 children found buried in a former indigenous boarding school

A terrible find took place this week, worthy of any horror movie related to boarding schools, orphanages, and such places. 

The remains of at least 215 indigenous children have been found in Kamloops Indian Residential School, a former boarding school located in British Columbia, where boys and girls from different indigenous communities were forcibly taken to be “integrated” into society.

Kamloops Indian Residential School

The macabre discovery was disclosed in a statement published by the Tk’emlúps te Secwepemc tribe, an indigenous group in the province of British Columbia, claiming that the bodies correspond to missing children, whose deaths were not documented.

Rosanne Casimir, head of the tribe, confirmed that the indigenous group discovered the bodies using ground penetrating radar so as not to alter the remains and has indicated that the search will continue on the grounds of the Kamloops school residence.

"We had a knowing in our community that we were able to verify. To our knowledge, these missing children are undocumented deaths," said Casimir. 

"Some were three years old," she noted.

Kamloops Indian Residential School circa 1930

The Kamloops Indian Residential School was opened in 1890, under a Catholic administration.  In the 1950s it reached its highest point of students, with about 500 children. The central government took over the administration of the boarding school in 1969 and it closed its doors only in 1978.

This boarding school was just one of 139 schools that were opened for this purpose , which became known as the Indian residential school system. 

The school residence system was established by the Government of Canada at the beginning of the 19th century to assimilate the indigenous population of the country; and it was operational until the closing of the last center of this type in 1996.

Many of the government-operated residential schools were run by churches of various denominations, with the majority administered by Roman Catholics.

A group of young girls at the school

In these boarding schools, which are sometimes located hundreds of kilometers from their place of origin, they learned to behave as the rest of society did, forcing them to abandon their customs, beliefs, and language.  

In many cases, children suffered systematic physical, sexual and psychological abuse, including torture. In some cases, Canadian authorities conducted "scientific" experiments on them.

Children would disappear suddenly from the residential facility, and no one would question where they had gone.

Large numbers of these children never returned to their communities of origin. Some of these children fled, while others died in schools. The exact number of children who died in school may never be known, but death rates in many schools, especially during times of epidemic or disease, were very high. 

Kamloops Indian Residentail School in 1937

The indigenous community reported that they are investigating the causes and the exact moment of the deaths of all these minors, as none of them were documented by the boarding school. 

Data from a special commission indicate that some 150,000 minors were forcibly detained in these types of places and there is a record that at least 4,100 died from the violence and abuse they suffered.  Sometimes parents never find out what happened to their children.

Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, described the discovery of the remains of these 215 children in the former indigenous boarding school as heartbreaking.

"The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart - it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history. I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news. We are here for you," he wrote.

The Canadian government formally apologized in 2008 for the persecution of native communities with these types of centers . Years later, this would be classified as a “cultural genocide”.