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How Thousands of Indigenous Children Vanished in Canada

The discovery of the remains of hundreds of children at the sites of defunct schools in British Columbia and southern Saskatchewan has rekindled discussion of a sinister time in Canada’s history.

Children’s shoes and toys were placed in front of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia after the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3, were found at the site this past week.Credit...Dennis Owen/Reuters

OTTAWA — Across Canada, many Indigenous communities are beginning the lengthy process of identifying unmarked graves on the grounds of former residential schools and investigating the deaths of children who attended the schools, where generations were abused and sometimes died.

The remains of more than 1,000 people, mostly children, have been discovered on the grounds of three former residential schools in two Canadian provinces since May.

In late June, the remains of 751 people, mainly Indigenous children, were discovered at the site of a former school in the province of Saskatchewan, a Canadian Indigenous group said.

The discovery, the largest one to date, came less than a month after the remains of 200 people, mostly children, were found in unmarked graves on the grounds of another former boarding school in British Columbia. In July, the Penelakut Tribe in British Columbia said it had uncovered about 160 undocumented and unmarked graves.

The federal government and several provinces have earmarked millions of dollars for Indigenous communities to search for remains, a process that will likely take years to complete.

These schools were part of a system that took Indigenous children from their families over a period of about 113 years and forced them to live in boarding schools, where they were prohibited from speaking their languages.

This summer’s burial discoveries have given new impetus to the nation’s debate on how to atone for its history of exploiting Indigenous people. Many are asking how so many children could have wound up in those burial spaces.“For many Canadians and for people around the world, these recent recoveries of our children — buried nameless, unmarked, lost and without ceremony are shocking, and unbelievable,” said RoseAnne Archibald, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, the country’s largest Indigenous organization, in a July media release. “Not for us, we’ve always known,.”

An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children passed through the schools between their opening, around 1883, and their closing in 1996. Since taking office in 2015, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has prioritized putting in place a list of 94 actions for commemorating the students and improving the lives of Indigenous people. But Indigenous leaders believe the government still has a long way to go.

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A gathering outside the former Kamloops residential school in May after the remains were discovered.Credit...Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

About 20 years ago, an effort to find remains started at the Kamloops school, which operated from 1890 until the late 1970s and was once Canada’s largest, with 500 students at its peak. Members of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation made their grim discovery after bringing in ground-penetrating radar.

Initially they reported finding 215 remains. But about a month later, after further analysis of the scans, they lowered the count to about 200. Among the bodies found by the radar, there appears to be one of a child who died as young as 3, said Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc. All of the children were buried decades ago, she said.

As of mid-July, 160 acres of the grounds still needed to be scanned. Chief Casimir said she anticipated that more remains would be discovered as the scanning continues. The community is now working with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the coroner’s service in British Columbia.

Chief Casimir said the bodies found so far appeared to be buried in separate “unmarked burial sites that are, to our knowledge, also undocumented.”

The discovery in Saskatchewan was made by the Cowessess First Nation at the site of the Marieval Indian Residential School, about 87 miles from the provincial capital, Regina. Like Kamloops, the Marieval school, which opened in 1899, was operated for most of its history by the Roman Catholic Church for the government of Canada. It closed in 1997 and was subsequently demolished.

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The Kamloops Indian Residential School in 1937.Credit...National Center for Truth and Reconciliation

Some Indigenous communities have begun investigations, a handful of them involving the police.

In August, members of the Tsleil-Waututh, Musqueam, and Squamish nations launched an investigation into deaths and disappearances at St. Paul’s Indian Residential School in what is now North Vancouver, British Columbia.

Police and the coroner's office in Ontario have also received a request from Indigenous police to assist in a criminal investigation at the Mohawk Institute Residential School, where school records show that 54 students died. Leaders of the Six Nations of the Grand River, where the school was located, say that human bones were dug up on its grounds during the 1980s and reburied without any formal investigation.

On Aug. 10, the government announced an additional 320 million Canadian dollars for Indigenous communities facing the fallout of the residential school system. Of that, 83 million dollars which will go toward burial site search efforts and commemoration for the victims.

The federal department that oversees Indigenous relations will also be creating an advisory committee, including experts in archaeology, forensics and mental health, to work with the government and affected communities as the search for graves continues.

A special investigator will also be appointed by Canada’s minister of justice to make recommendations regarding the burial sites as well as changes to federal laws.

In the late 19th century, Canada set aside land for Indigenous people through often dubious treaties, while outright seizing Indigenous land in some places, particularly in British Columbia.

Around 1883 the government added a new dimension to its exploitation of Indigenous people. Indigenous children in many parts of Canada were forced to attend residential schools, often far from their communities. Most were operated by churches, and all of them banned the use of Indigenous languages and Indigenous cultural practices, often through violence. Disease as well as sexual, physical and emotional abuse were widespread.

The Kamloops school was operated by the Roman Catholic Church until 1969, when the federal government took over the school system. Reports by an inspector and a doctor indicated that the students at Kamloops were severely malnourished at times.

A National Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the Canadian government spent six years hearing from 6,750 witnesses to document the history of the schools. In a report in 2015, it concluded that the system was a form of “cultural genocide.”

The commission also called for an apology from the pope for the Roman Catholic church’s role.

In June, Pope Francis agreed to meet with Indigenous leaders later this year to discuss coming to Canada to apologize for the church’s role in operating schools.

Some former students testified before the commission that priests at the schools had fathered infants with Indigenous students, that the babies had been taken away from their young mothers and killed, and that in some cases their bodies were thrown into furnaces.

Many students also died from disease, accidents, fires and during attempts to escape, according to the commission.

Schools suffered mass deaths when infectious diseases swept through them, according to a report this year on the burial sites by Scott Hamilton, a professor of anthropology at Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ontario.

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Children at the Kamloops school in 1931.Credit...National Center for Truth and Reconciliation

When children died at residential schools, their families were often given vague explanations or told that they had simply run away and vanished, the commission found. When the schools acknowledged the deaths of children, they generally refused, until the 1960s, to return their bodies to their families. Remains were sent back only if it was cheaper than burying them at the schools.

In its report, the commission estimated that at least 4,100 students had died or gone missing from the residential schools, and demanded that the government account for all of those children. It did not, however, definitely say how many had disappeared.

Murray Sinclair, a former judge and senator who headed the commission, said in an email in June that he now believed the number was “well beyond 10,000.”

Since the commission ended, a federal project has been underway to document the fates of the children who never returned to their families after being sent to residential schools, and who are generally known as “the missing children.”

Remains in unmarked graves have appeared or been discovered through construction or natural events at the sites of other former schools, although nothing on the scale of Kamloops.

Dr. Kisha Supernant, an Indigenous woman who directs the Institute for Prairie and Indigenous Archaeology at the University of Alberta, has been leading teams that use ground-penetrating radar and other technologies to hunt for remains.

Professor Hamilton said that simply locating burial sites was often difficult because of poor record-keeping, lost records and the relocation of some schools.

“These graveyards are often now unmarked,” he said. “What they were like 50 or 60 years ago is anyone’s guess. The challenge here is that they have not been maintained. Once the schools were closed, the properties were often abandoned.”

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A commemoration of the children whose bodies were found took place before a Stanley Cup playoff game in Toronto on May 31, 2021. Credit...Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

Vjosa Isai contributed reporting from Toronto.

A native of Windsor, Ontario, Ian Austen was educated in Toronto and currently lives in Ottawa. He has reported for The Times about Canada for more than a decade. More about Ian Austen

A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 6 of the New York edition with the headline: The Vanished Indigenous Children in Canada. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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