VANCOUVER, Aug 30 (NNN-XINHUA) – Since May this year, over 1,300 remains or unmarked graves have been found, near former residential schools for indigenous children in Canada.
However, survivors of Canada’s indigenous residential schools said, these findings were just the tip of the iceberg, renewing their feelings of grief and trauma.
An estimated 150,000 indigenous children across Canada were reportedly removed from their homes and forced to attend residential schools, between the 1890s and as recently as 1996, during which more than 50,000 died of abuse.
For years, the indigenous people in Canada have long been socially marginalised and poorly educated and paid, with their basic human rights unprotected and their life expectancy cut by nearly 10 years, compared with other groups.
Aboriginal school-age children were forcibly taken away from their families, forced to convert to Christianity, and banned from using indigenous languages. This policy lasted for over a century, during which many children involved were sexually assaulted, beaten or abused to death.
After years of intensive research, Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, reached a conclusion in 2015, that, the country’s former policy of forcibly putting aboriginal children into boarding schools, can best be described as “cultural genocide.”– NNN-XINHUA
