Two churches burnt down in Canada after unidentified graves were found at Catholic boarding school with the remains of 750 Indigenous children

Two Catholic churches in the southern interior of British Columbia, Canada, were set on fire on Saturday in connection with the discovery of the bodies of more than 750 Indigenous children buried in a boarding school.

Lower Similkameen Indigenous Community Leader Keith Crow said he received a call warning him that the Choapaka church was on fire and that when he arrived at the scene only ashes remained, according to Canadian media CBC. “I’m angry. I don’t see anything positive about it,” said Crow, who later found out that the Santa Ana church, located in the indigenous community of Upper Similkameen, had also been set on fire.

Crow believes the events “are no coincidence,” as the two fires started just an hour apart and immediately after two other Okanagan churches were destroyed earlier this week.

“Both churches were destroyed,” Sgt Jason Bayda of the Canadian Mounted Police said in a statement.

Authorities consider Saturday’s fires “suspect” and are looking “to see if they are related to the June 21 church fires in Penticton and Oliver,” Sgt.

Investigations into the June fires are ongoing.

These attacks on churches come as part of an investigation that found over 750 anonymous graves near an Indigenous juvenile boarding school, amid the controversy aroused in the country by the discovery of several graves in schools that were erected for the forced assimilation of the indigenous population.

The chief of the Cowessess tribe, Cadmus Delorme, reported this discovery and confirmed that “This is not a mass grave”, but “nameless graves” in the cemetery that the Catholic Church supervised until 1960, which the chief said removed the graves.

The Marieval Indian Residential School, where the graves were found, operated from 1899 to 1996 in the area where the Cowessess tribe now resides, approximately 140 kilometers east of the city of Regina, capital of the province of Saskatchewan . Although the school was demolished, the church and the cemetery remained.

This is believed to be the largest announcement of the discovery of graves at Indigenous juvenile residential schools to date, following the announcement in late May of the discovery of more than 210 bodies of children buried more than 40 years ago in the city. old Kamloops Indian Residential School. .

The grave findings rekindled the trauma suffered by some 150,000 Native American, Métis and Inuit children who were separated from their families, languages ​​and cultures and forcibly enrolled in 139 residential schools across the country until the 1990s.

Many of them suffered ill-treatment or sexual abuse and more than 4,000 died, according to a commission of inquiry which concluded that Canada had committed “cultural genocide”.

Following the discovery, the Canadian Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, was “very saddened” and promised that “they will honor his memory” and speak “the truth about these injustices”, because “no child should have been separated from his family and his community and stripped of his language, culture and identity “. ”.

Last Friday, the prime minister has apologized for his country, asked the Pope to do the same and has not ruled out a criminal investigation.

For Trudeau, these findings “reaffirm a truth they have known for a long time” and “worsen the pain felt by families and Indigenous peoples”, a “trauma” which is “Canada’s responsibility”, for which the government will continue to act. provide the necessary resources to “expose these terrible evils”.

(with information from EP and AFP)

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