by Craig Colby
215 children’s bodies in a mass grave. The youngest was three years old.
The remains were discovered by ground radar, on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops B.C., the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced.
Even that limited amount of information says a lot, not just about what happened in the past, but where Canada is today.
The number itself tells us that children at this school were regularly killed, either through intent or neglect. The school was open from 1890 to 1978 with a peak enrollment of 500 students. It’s unlikely that half the school’s population died in one big purge. This must have been a steady stream of fatality.
Worked Into the System
If that’s the case, the mass grave reveals a system created to dispose of a child’s body secretly. If the new guy at school killed a child, or if one died because of malnutrition or disease, one of the senior staff would have to show this new employee what to do with the body. “You put the corpse here” would be part of the system like “this is where you do your laundry” or “the cleaning supplies are in this closet”.
The mass grave also tells us the deaths were covered up. 51 deaths were reported at the school over the years. Therefore, there are at least 164 deaths unaccounted for at this school alone. The children’s lives weren’t honoured with a ceremony. They weren’t returned to their homes so their families could grieve. They were thrown out like trash.
The cover up shows that the deaths were okay with whoever was running the school. No one reported them to their superior, or the school system, or the church, or the government. There were no investigations to find the guilty and no procedures were put in place to prevent anything like this from happening in the future. The disposal of children was just part of getting things done.
The entities getting things done were the two most powerful forces in the country, the government and the church. Their goal was never education. Their goal was to eliminate Indigenous culture and lives. The schools have been referred to as cultural genocide. The mass grave tells us that the softening descriptor of “cultural” doesn’t go far enough. Genocide is the only word you need here.
The bodies were discovered through the efforts of the the Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation. Despite Truth and Reconciliation and a formal apology, the government isn’t unearthing Canada’s terrible history. That work is left to the victims.
“Moral Superiority”
When I moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario from Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1971, I heard over and over again that the United States was terrible, and Canadians were just naturally better. I was assured that Canadians were more educated, kinder, less racist. The underground railroad was trotted out time and time again. One colleague said flat out that what Canada really had over the United States is “moral superiority.” 215 young bodies tell a different story.
I’ve listened to white people complain about Indigenous people, either because of perceived traits, government payouts or free education. I’ve heard claims that the residential schools did a lot of good, even after the horrible truth came out. I can’t even repeat some of the phrases used or venom spewed about the people who have been crushed under the bootheels of white expansion.
It’s Not Just History
Canadian history is as horrible as anyone else’s. Until Canadians own their villainous past, we can’t fix our ugly present. In this century Indigenous women have been abandoned and forced into sterilization. First Nations communities still lack clean drinking water. None of that will change until white Canadians quit being smug about a moral superiority that doesn’t exist.
Canadians need to call this what it is. The two pillars of colonial society stole children, killed them and hid the bodies. They didn’t create schools, they built concentration camps. The number of children killed at these institutions is believed to be 4,100 but we don’t know for sure. The government and the church haven’t bothered to find out how many children they killed let alone who they were. It hasn’t ben a priority. This is what white supremacy looks like in Canada.
The 215 dead children aren’t a tragedy from a terrible past. They are the evidence of a white supremacist society that continues today. That’s what needs to change.
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Craig Colby is a television executive producer, producer, director, writer and story editor. He runs a storytelling consulting and production service for businesses.