Canada eyes school grave protection
Print Edition
Canada announced on Tuesday it would appoint an independent official to help locate and protect thousands of unmarked graves at former indigenous residential schools.
The specialist is expected to make recommendations on reforming government policies and laws to address historical wrongs against indigenous people. But they will not have powers to prosecute what Assembly of First Nations chief RoseAnne Archibald called 鈥渃rimes against our children.鈥
鈥淭his person will assist in charting a path forward,鈥 Justice Minister David Lametti told a news conference.
Until the 1990s, some 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis youths were forcibly enrolled in the schools, where students were physically and sexually abused by headmasters and teachers who stripped them of their culture and language.
The recent discoveries of more than 1,200 unmarked graves at school sites in British Columbia and Saskatchewan provinces convulsed the nation.
Many more graves are expected to be found as searches continue, with thousands of students estimated to have died of disease, malnutrition and neglect in what a commission of inquiry concluded was 鈥渃ultural genocide.鈥
Indigenous communities continue to deal with the lasting trauma of the government鈥檚 failed assimilation policy, and several indigenous leaders have demanded criminal probes of the student deaths, some dating back to the late 1800s.
Lametti said the special prosecutor would work with tribes and the Catholic Church which ran the schools, as well as a newly created committee of 鈥渋ndigenous knowledge holders鈥 and other experts.
Meanwhile, the government and indigenous leaders are mulling options for the schools themselves, including possible demolition, as they hold painful memories for former students.
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