Canada school mass grave discovery ‘not an isolated incident’, PM Justin Trudeau says
- Discovery of remains of 215 children at former school shocks Canada
- Indigenous groups are calling for a nationwide search for mass graves
Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said it’s not an isolated incident that more than 200 children were found buried at a former indigenous residential school.
Trudeau’s comments come as indigenous leaders were calling for an examination of every former residential school site – institutions that held children taken from families across the nation.
“As prime minister, I am appalled by the shameful policy that stole indigenous children from their communities,” Trudeau said on Monday.
“Sadly, this is not an exception or an isolated incident,’’ he said. “We’re not going to hide from that. We have to acknowledge the truth. Residential schools were a reality – a tragedy that existed here, in our country, and we have to own up to it. Kids were taken from their families, returned damaged or not returned at all.”
From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a programme to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.