This comes less than a month after the mass burial place of 215 children, aged from three years, was found at a school site, closed in 1978, near the Canadian town of Kamloops.
Following the discovery of graves, a probe has been opened into the circumstances and the accountability of these fatalities.
Under the Canadian schooling system for indigenous children during the 19th century, at least 150,000 students were forcibly separated from their families and incarcerated in residential schools. It is estimated that up to 6,000 children could have died in such schools.
Following the disturbing revelation, indigenous leaders and Trudeau said there probably would be more discoveries as other such sites were searched.
Many indigenous children in Canada were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages, as per a 2015 report by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
It said the schools carried out “cultural genocide” and effectively institutionalized child neglect.
Children often died of diseases that spread rapidly in unsanitary living conditions, accidents, and fires, the commission said. Some disappeared while trying to escape.
Meanwhile, the Cowessess First Nation had long suspected there were many unmarked graves at the site, which is about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.
The Marieval Indian Residential School was founded in the 1890s by Catholic missionaries. The federal government began funding the school in 1901 and took over its administration in 1969 before turning it over to the Cowessess First Nation in 1987. It was closed in the 1990s.
Cowessess First Nation Chief Cadmus Delorme has said that the First Nation planned to identify all the remains and build a monument to honor the dead.
The Vatican has come under pressure from residential school survivors and Trudeau to apologize for the Catholic Church’s role in the residential school system.
(With inputs from ANI)
(Edited by Amrita Das and Pallavi Mehra. Map by Urvashi Makwana)
