It has been reported by Canadian authorities that the bodies of 751 children have been found in the grounds of a residential school that was used to imprison indigenous children.
The discovery was made at the Marieval Indian Residential School in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan. The school was run by the Roman Catholic Church. The mass grave discovery comes just a short time after the bodies of 215 children were found at another residential school in Canada.
The residential schools were used from the 19th century up until the 1990s to adapt indigenous children to a Western Christian way of life, they were famed for their brutality in which children were not allowed to speak to their families or speak their own language. Mass sexual and physical abuse took place in the schools.
It is believed that as many as 6,000 children died while attending the schools, in part due to poor sanitation and poor medical treatment, most were then thrown in unmarked graves.
This year teams have been scouring the lands of residential schools with sonar equipment in order to find the bodies of children who may be buried there.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said the find is a:
"Shameful reminder of the systemic racism, discrimination, and injustice that Indigenous peoples have faced."
In total, over 150,000 children passed through the schools from 1863 to 1998. In 2008 a report was begun into why so many native children had disappeared and not returned to their families after entering the Canadian residential school system. The Roman Catholic Church ran over 70% of these schools.
One former pupil, Florence Sparvier, said of their time in the system:
"They made us believe we didn't have souls. They were putting us down as people, so we learned to not like who we were."
[h/t: BBC]
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