Live
Audio Only
The children were among the 150,000 First Nation minors taken from their families to catholic-led residential schools to instruct them into entering the Canadian society from the 19th century to the 1970s. They were forced to convert to Christianism, sexually abused, prevented from speaking their native language, and it is estimated that at least 6000 died.
Canada’s government asked Pope Francis on Wednesday for an apology over the participation of the Catholic Church in Canada’s residential school system, following the discovery of remains of 215 Indigenous children at a site where it was the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.
RELATED:
The children were among over 150,000 First Nation minors taken from their families to catholic-led residential schools to instruct them into entering the Canadian society from the 19th century to the 1970s. They were forced to convert to Christianism, sexually abused, prevented from speaking their native language, and estimated that at least 6000 died.
And in Canada,more bodies of Indigenous children were found buried under one of the "Indian schools"
— Indigenous (@AmericanIndian8) May 29, 2021
In Loving Memory of the 215 First Nations children that never returned home from Kamloops Indian Residential School#INDIGENOUS #TAIRP pic.twitter.com/p1TCypnQBn
The discovery has sparked outrage and grief as the United Nations Human Rights Office called on Wednesday the Canadian government to conduct and investigate the deaths of the Indigenous children at residential schools.
Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission ruled in 2015 that the residential schools were "a cultural genocide" and demanded back then an apology from the Pope, a petition renewed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2017.
Newsletter
