The terrifying discovery in May 2021 of 215 children buried on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School1, a residential school whose purpose was the acculturation of indigenous children, has exposed the abuses committed in these institutions. They were children buried in unmarked graves and without the knowledge of their families. On June 25, another 751 infant graves appeared in the Marieval Indian Residential School2 and many more in similar institutions until reaching the 4,1003 that are known today, which has unleashed a wave of indignation over the role of the Canadian government in what is a heinous cultural genocide.
According to a report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada4, from 1863 to 1998 more than 150,000 indigenous minors were separated from their families and taken to state boarding schools, administered by the Canadian government and operated mainly by the Catholic Church. The objective was the cultural assimilation of the indigenous population, prohibiting their native languages and forcing them to change their religion. Students often lived in poorly constructed, poorly heated, and unsanitary buildings. It is estimated in the report that some 6,000 children died during their internment.
In many cases, indigenous people were treated as if they were not human. As an example of this, food historian Ian Mosby found that between 1942 and 1952 Canada’s most prominent nutrition scientists conducted nutritional research5 with 1,300 indigenous people, including 1,000 children, in northern Manitoba communities and in six residential schools in Canada. Experiments such as reducing milk for two years to prevent growth or not providing vitamins or minerals necessary to survive, in an indigenous population that already suffered from malnutrition before this.
The discovery of the anonymous graves of indigenous minors recently led to a wave of indignation in Canada that resulted in numerous mobilizations and riots: on April 1, the date of the commemoration of Canada Day, during a demonstration, the statue of the queen Victoria of England was daubed in red and knocked off her pedestal in front of the Winnipeg Parliament6. On the same day, a Catholic church burned in Monriville, when the previous week there had already been four other fires in Catholic temples of indigenous communities in western Canada, and seven in total relatively recently.
Although Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has publicly acknowledged and apologized for the genocide7, this does not prevent the consequences of colonial policies from being felt not only among the Canadian indigenous population, but in all parts of the world where colonialism has existed. In Latin America, among the non-white population of the United States and in many other parts of the world, a wave of indignation and a search for redress is felt for what constitutes a historical injustice of the victors against the defeated. Only through mobilization and international solidarity will these struggles come to fruition, in order to avoid their repetition in the future.
1 https://elpais.com/internacional/2021-05-29/conmocion-en-canada-tras-el-hallazgo-de-los-restos-de-215-ninos-en-un-antiguo-internado-para-menores-indigenas.html 2 https://www.ctvnews.ca/canada/cowessess-first-nation-says-751-unmarked-graves-found-near-former-sask-residential-school-1.5483858 3 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/canada-pressured-find-all-unmarked-indigenous-graves-after-children-s-n1269456 4 https://ehprnh2mwo3.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/Executive_Summary_English_Web.pdf 5 https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-57694677 6 https://www.bbc.com/mundo/noticias-internacional-57702227 7 https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202106/1227102.shtml
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