17 unofficial graves have been identified in the garden of the former Alberni Indian Residential Boarding School on Vancouver Island, Canada.
The indigenous group known as the “First Nation” said 17 unnamed graves were found in the garden of the former Alberni Indian Residential Boarding School on the country’s Vancouver Island.
In the statement, it was stated that the detection of graves that are not in official records was made by radar.
In the statement, which stated that only 10 percent of the 300-hectare area could be scanned, it was emphasized that the work would continue and more graves could be found.
Ken Watts, one of the “First Nation” officials, stated that at least 67 children died in this school in previous studies.
Stating that the exact number of children who cannot return to their homes will never be determined, Watts underlined that as a society, they will reveal the facts about the issue.
There is no data on the number of children enrolled in this school, which has a decades-long history.
On January 26, 66 places considered to be burials were identified on the grounds of a former church boarding school in Canada’s Central British Columbia region.
On January 18, 171 places considered to be graves were identified on the site of the old boarding church school in the Ontario region of the country, and it was stated that these could be the graves of children staying at the school.
THE FIRST TOMBS WERE FOUND IN 2021
Radar scans launched at 139 schools across the country first uncovered unregistered graves containing the remains of 215 children in the yard of a boarding school in Kamloops, British Columbia, on May 29, 2021.
Cadmus Delorme, First Nation Indigenous Chief of the Cowessess District in Saskatchewan, Canada, announced on June 24, 2021, that unregistered graves containing the remains of 751 children were found in the garden of the Marieval Boarding School, which operated in the area until the 1990s.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau used the phrase “one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history” for the child graves found in the garden of old boarding church schools, which had a great impact on the public.
BOARDING SCHOOLS OF CHURCHES FUNCTIONED AS ASSIMILATION CENTERS
The boarding church schools, the first of which were opened by the Catholic Church in 1840 on behalf of the Canadian government, and the last one was closed in 1997, went down in history as places where more than 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly taken from their families.
It was claimed that the majority of Native American children, who were forcibly removed from their families and cultures to “integrate” into communities dominated by the white majority, were subjected to ill-treatment, starvation, and cold, as well as sexual and physical abuse, and even medical experiments were carried out on some children.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established in Canada in 2008 to reveal all aspects of the tragedy in boarding church schools.
The Commission, which listened to more than 6,000 victims who survived, completed its work in 2015 and published a 4,000-page report, describing the events as “cultural genocide”.
In some sources, the number of children who died while staying in church schools was given as 4,200, while the Commission report stated that this number was 5,995 because the deaths were not documented by church administrations.