Discovery of unmarked First Nation graves turns spotlight on Canada’s colonial legacy

The discovery of 182 unmarked graves near a former school in western Canada that housed children taken from their families has fuelled anger about the country’s past treatment of Indigenous peoples.

The human remains were unearthed by members of the Lower Kootenay Band, a First Nation based in the East Kootenay region of British Columbia, using “ground-penetrating radar”, The Guardian reports. The bodies were buried close to the site of the Catholic Church's St Eugene's Mission School and add to a growing tally found in unmarked graves across Canada in recent weeks.

The latest horrifying discovery sparked an outburst of protests that saw statues of queens Victoria and Elizabeth II toppled on the Manitoba Legislature grounds on Thursday as the nation celebrated Canada Day, a national holiday marking the anniversary of the country’s foundation in 1867.

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‘Many, many, many, many more graves’

More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-run Christian schools between the 19th century and 1990, as part of a campaign to assimilate them into Canadian society.

The schools were residential and the children were intentionally located far from their communities. Many parents and family members regularly travelled to the schools and camped outside to be closer to their children, prompting Hayter Reed, a Canadian government Indian Commissioner in the late 1800s, to call for the schools to be moved even farther from First Nation reserves in order to obstruct these visits.

“Abuse was rife at the schools,” says The Guardian, and “thousands of children died of disease, neglect and other causes”. Many survivors “say their trauma was compounded” by the government’s refusal to admit that “countless friends and relatives died at the institutions which were supposed to be caring for them”, the paper adds.

“People are finally listening to us,” said Jack Kruger, who was taken from his family in 1956, at the age of six, and transported by train and cattle truck to St Eugene’s.

Echoing the testimony of other pupils, Kruger told The Guardian that he had witnessed sexual and physical abuse of his classmates and that his best friend took his own life after being raped by a priest.

“As they uncover more graves at other sites, I’ll have to relive it all over again,” he said. “I don’t anticipate that I’ll stop having nightmares or pain for the next two years. The next two years, you’re going to find many, many, many, many more graves.”

The Lower Kootenay Band is now working “to identify whether the graves are those of children who were forced to attend St. Eugene’s”, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) reports.

In a statement, the Indigenous group - also known as Yaqan Nuʔkiy - said that “ʔaq̓ am leadership would like to stress that although these findings are tragic, they are still undergoing analysis and the history of this area is a complex one”.

Despite this cautious tone, anger is growing among many First Nation people as the number of unmarked burial sites discovered “near or adjacent to residential schools in preliminary scans across Canada” continues to grow, says CBC.

Records from St Eugene’s list the deaths of a total of only 19 students at the institution - “highlighting the gap between official figures and what many believe is a vast undercounting of the deceased”, says The Guardian.

The discovery of the scores of unmarked graves near St Eugene’s comes a month after a further 215 were discovered at another former residential school in British Columbia, sparking “a national reckoning”, The Washington Post reports.

The discovery of at least 751 unmarked graves near the site of a former residential school in Saskatchewan last week has further “underscored the extent of the abuse”, the paper continues.

The Saskatchewan discovery is “the biggest to date”, says Reuters, and is another “a grim reminder of the years of abuse and discrimination Indigenous communities have suffered in Canada” as they now fight “for justice and better living conditions”.

“Canada will be known as a nation who tried to exterminate the First Nations,” said Bobby Cameron, chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan. “This is just the beginning.”

National reckoning

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau last week told Canada’s Indigenous community that he was “deeply saddened” by “the hurt and the trauma that you feel is Canada’s responsibility to bear”.

The recent graves discoveries triggered calls for the cancellation of celebrations on Canada Day, which marks the date when the three British colonies of Canada, Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick were united into one dominion.

“Celebrating Canada Day is being seen as inconsiderate to all the children’s lives that were lost and we encourage everyone to consider the price these children had to pay at the hands of the Canadian government,” Chief Cameron said.

Some localities did cancel events planned to mark the national holiday, as Trudeau called on Canadians to reflect on the nation’s history and “work together to right past wrongs”.

Murray Sinclair, the former head of the country’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), told The Guardian last week that “we need to know who died, we need to know how they died, we need to know who was responsible for their deaths or for their care at the time that they died”.

“We need to know why the families weren’t informed,” he continued. “And we need to know where the children are buried.”

The TRC was established in 2008 to collect testimonies from people affected by the Indian Residential Schools system, after then PM Stephen Harper offered a full apology on behalf of Canadians.

After interviewing around 7,000 people, the commission concluded in a 4,000-plus-page report that the system may have “amounted to cultural genocide” - and that Canada needed to move “from apology to action”.

As Indigenous communities across Canada now deploy “ground-penetrating radar to unearth dark secrets buried for decades“, First Nation leaders “expect to find many more unmarked graves”, The Washington Post reports.

“This is the beginning of these discoveries,” the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Perry Bellegarde, tweeted on Wednesday.