Canada is facing a national scandal after more than a thousand unmarked graves were found in front of some boarding schools that were dedicated to educating Aboriginal children in Canada in the last century, while the search for other graves is still underway.
And it was announced that 3 mass graves had been found in less than a month in 3 provinces. The survivors, who are now elderly, said they had seen or heard of the burials, according to what was published by the CBC website.
And what the churches that ran these schools tried to hide for decades, nature revealed in the 1990s, when heavy rains led to the appearance of bones near a boarding school in Saskatchewan that revealed the secrets of the buried past, according to what Reuters reported.
What is the story of these graves, and the extent of Canadian governments’ involvement in the extermination of the indigenous peoples who have lived in those areas for thousands of years?
Indian law strengthens Canadian control over land and resources
Indigenous peoples inhabited the vast lands of North America, or Turtle Island, as some cultures call it, for thousands of years before European colonizers arrived on the continent.
Although Canada remained a British colony for several decades, it became an independent country from the United Kingdom in 1867. With this, it inherited the treaty obligations and agreements signed between these peoples as sovereign nations with the British Crown.
But soon after its independence, Canada consolidated its control over the indigenous peoples and vast wealthy lands bypassing, without consulting them, the Indian Act (1876) or the Indian Act.
The law limits indigenous peoples’ autonomy and control over land and limits the type of services provided to them, such as education and health care.
As happened with the indigenous peoples in the United States, their presence was limited to nature reserves; To contain their culture, practices, customs, and traditions, while preparing children and subsequent generations to assimilate into Western civilization.
Attempts to blur the identity
Also at this historical stage, the practice of some cultural events, such as the Potlatch Festival, which witnesses the redistribution of wealth in some cultures, was criminalized, as it was considered a criminal offense until 1951, as well as the prohibition of wearing their traditional costumes or practicing hunting and other rituals that they have always practiced.
In the first half of the twentieth century, the Canadian government was systematically practicing policies aimed at the extinction of the cultures and identities of these peoples, to dissolve completely in the modern Canadian identity.
In 1920, for example, the Deputy Superintendent of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell-Scott famously said of his government’s policy: “We aim to continue until there is no Indian who has not been assimilated into the body politic, and now no Indian question nor Indian circle remains.”
Several reasons have shaped Canadians’ desire to integrate indigenous peoples; Some were well-meaning, assuming that these peoples could only survive in a modern world through Western culture.
On the other hand, other reasons were more pernicious, such as the belief that this process would stop indigenous claims to their lands, which would mean their division and subsequent appropriation.
Boarding schools and children’s integration
Parallel to the laws and policies that were applied at the level of legislators, the boarding schools run by some churches and later by the state were working to tame future generations.
The last boarding school closed in 1996, and its students later recount the tragedies they experienced through abuse, torture, rape, and even murder.
Those schools were forcibly separating children from their parents, then cutting their hair and forcing them to wear clothes that were far removed from their cultural dress, as well as preventing them from speaking their mother tongue and imposing the English language in addition to teaching the Christian religion.
Indigenous peoples of Canada
The Canadian constitution recognizes three groups of aborigines: the Indians (more commonly referred to as First Nations or Aboriginal), the Inuit living in the cold northern regions, and the Métis, who parted ways with European settlers.
Previous generations had signed treaties with the Canadian government requiring the state to use their lands in exchange for annual payments and tax exemptions, but what indigenous peoples believed were peace agreements between two entities, the Canadian government at the time considered real estate deals aimed at nullifying indigenous claims to land, removing or restricting access rights to resources.
