Philip Jong

The recent discovery of large numbers of unmarked graves, mostly of children, at sites of former residential schools in Canada has reignited the nation’s attention on the tragic history of the Canadian Indian residential school system. Amended in 1894, the Indian Act mandated the compulsory schooling of all Indigenous youths, mostly in residential schools, with the misguided goal to assimilate them into the dominant Christian and Euro-colonial culture. Funded mostly by the federal government, these schools were largely administered by churches in many provinces where they were nominally operated. More than 150,000 children were forced into the system until the closure of the last residential school in 1997. Displaced from their families, these children suffered from both physical and mental abuse while being deprived of their ancestral heritage. At least 6,000 children died from malnutrition and disease, particularly tuberculosis and influenza, in residential schools due to poor living conditions. Bodies of these children were not returned to their families but were simply buried in large grave sites on school grounds. In 2008, the Government of Canada finally issued a formal apology to the Indigenous communities over the utter failure of the residential school system. The landmark findings of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada in 2015 further concluded that actions taken by residential schools amounted to cultural genocide to systematically extinguish the spirit of the Indigenous people. More recently, discovery of these grave sites has sparked widespread public outcry across the country demanding the removal of public monuments and statues of historical figures considered to be key architects of the residential school system. Over a century later, it is time for all Canadians to rise up to confront the country’s tragic legacy and to make amends with those who had been wronged by it.