Investigators have discovered remains of 761 people, comprised mostly of indigenous children, at a former Indigenous school in Saskatchewan, a Canadian Indigenous group said.
According to the New York Times, it was the largest discovery of indigenous children’s remains to date.
The remains were unearthed at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which run by the Roman Catholic Church and operated from 1899 to 1997. The site is currently occupied by the Cowessess First Nation.
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The discovery came less than a month after bodies of 215 children were discovered in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former Indigenous boarding school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
“This was a crime against humanity, an assault on a First Nation people,” Chief Bobby Cameron, of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations said during a press briefing on Thursday.
“The only crime we ever committed as children was being born Indigenous,” he added.
According to Chief Cadmusn Delmore of the Cowessess, the site was previously marked but the Roman Catholic Church removed the markers.
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Pope Francis had previously expressed his pain over the discovery of remains in Kamloops. He also called on religious and political authorities to shed light on the allegations of rampant abuse in church-run schools
However, the Pope came short from offering an apology sought by First Nations and by Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau.
In a move to assimilate Indigenous people to Canadian society, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded Christian schools from the 19th century until 1970s, majority of the said schools were operated by Roman Catholic missionary congregations. (RA)
