In response to the shocking discoveries of mass graves of Indigenous children, cities across Canada and foreign embassies decided to cancel Canada Day festivities on July 1.
The federal government didn’t officially cancel celebrations, yet amended the programing. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says that this year’s Canada Day will be a moment of “reflection” to consider Canada’s historic wrongs and the steps being taken towards Indigenous reconciliation.
The findings of over 1,000 child graves in three former Indigenous residential schools have forced the country, considered around the world as a proponent of human rights, to reckon with its dark past.
On June 30, a mass grave of 182 Indigenous children was found near a parochial residential school in British Columbia. It was the third discovery of a burial site within a few weeks.
A week earlier, an unmarked burial site of 751 Indigenous children was uncovered near a former residential school in Saskatchewan. In early June, a mass grave holding an estimate of 215 remains belonging to Indigenous children was found in British Columbia.
The remains have yet to be exhumed.
Following the gruesome discoveries, over a dozen churches across Canada were vandalized. Four churches were burned down. Canadian police have called the fires “suspicious.”
The findings only scratch the surface of the inhumane Canadian residential school system for Indigenous children that has shaped the lives of Indigenous communities across the country for over a century.
Starting with the Indian Act of 1876, Indigenous children were taken from their families, forced into remote boarding schools where they were forced to renounce their language, customs and beliefs and often abused.
According to the government-led Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), over 150,000 children were forced into the Indigenous residential schools over the program’s century-long existence. Thousands vanished without a trace.
The last federally operated residential school closed in 1996, but the extent of the brutality has yet to be examined.
In 2015, the Commission published a report calling the “Indian residential school system” cultural genocide, placing the number of potential victims at over 4,100.
But the recent findings show that the actual number of deaths may be way above initial estimates.
Brian Martell, 50, who is a member of the Waterhen Lake, a Cree First Nation band government, says more horrific findings are coming.
“There were about 140–150 schools like this across Canada, imagine the bodies they are going to find,” says Martell, who attended the Beauval residential school in the late eighties.
Aggressive assimilation
Martell was part of the last generation of Indigenous children forced to attend remote residential schools.
Martell attended the Waterhen Lake Indian Day School through middle school. He was later forced to attend the Beauval Indian Residential School located 230 kilometers away.
“I wasn’t legally obligated to attend the school, but no other school would take in Indigenous children,” says Martell.
Despite the fact that both schools were transferred to the state from the Catholic Church years prior, endemic racism and brutality persisted. Martell says he experienced it first hand in both schools he attended.
“In first grade we were obligated to speak only in English, even to ask permission to go to the bathroom,” says Martell. “A girl in my class had problems saying it properly in English, she wasn’t allowed to leave the classroom. She defecated herself and was forced to sit in the classroom,” Martell recounts.
“The teacher laughed,” he adds. “We were punished for speaking Cree.”
Physical abuse, lack of proper medical assistance and negligence was a common theme during his studies. Martell has a settlement with Indian Day Schools and can’t disclose in detail the abuse that he witnessed as a child.
Martell says that his generation had an easier time. Grandson of Fred Martell, Chief of Waterhen Lake First Nation, he remembers horrendous stories told by his aunts and uncles of rape, torture and death in parochial schools.
“We were telling (the state), there are graves here and graves there,” says Martell. “Now, they are finding them.”
Following the Indigenous North-West Rebellion of 1885, the government of Canada intensified restrictions placed on Indigenous communities by the Indian Act.
First Nations were bound to camps known as “Indian reserves.” A pass system was introduced, denying Indigenous people the right to leave the reserve. Their children were forced to attend remote residential boarding schools governed by the Catholic Church.
Parents weren’t allowed to see their children. When children disappeared, no investigations were launched. Allegations are now mounting that those who didn’t survive were dumped in mass graves on the schools’ property.
In 2008, the government of Canada issued an official apology to the Indigenous community and launched the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The Commission’s final report described the policies of the Indian reserve system and the Indian residential school system as ‘aggressive assimilation.’
Out of the 94 recommendations put forward by the commission, the government of Canada has fulfilled 13.
Staked red dresses are seen along the highway near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School w in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada, on June 3, 2021. (Photo by Cole BURSTON / AFP)
Long way to go
Over the last fifteen years, the Canadian government has reached billions of dollars in settlements with Indigenous communities.
In 2006, the government signed the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement with 86,000 residential school survivors. According to the agreement, a total of $1.9 billion was to be paid to survivors.
An additional $3 billion was paid to Indigenous school survivors suffering damages beyond those covered by the initial settlement.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said that Canadians are “horrified and ashamed” by their government’s long-time policy of forceful assimilation.
“It was a policy that ripped kids from their homes, from their communities, from their culture and their language and forced assimilation upon them,” said Trudeau on June 25.
And yet, according to Martell, ending endemic racism towards Indigenous people in Canada still has a long way to go.
Martell moved to the U.S. in the early nineties where he received a degree from the California State University following a 10-year long battle for higher education.
He has made trips back to Canada since leaving and says society hasn’t changed.
“I went to a high-end suit store in Edmonton where I was promptly told: ‘hey, you don’t want to shop here, it’s too expensive, you can’t afford it,’” says Martell. He says a potential employer at a government agency laughed at him when he said he didn’t have a criminal record during an interview.
Indigenous communities continue to face difficulties as a result of the forceful assimilation policies. PTSD, alcoholism, drug use and high rates of suicide are widespread among First Nations. Martell says that a lack of proper education has pushed First Nation communities into poverty.
And even with the settlements and recognition of past crimes against First Nations, Martell feels that the problem will still be swept under the rug.
He now lives with his wife in Kyiv and has no plans to move back to Canada.
“For Ukrainians, it’s easy to go to Canada, to find a decent job and opportunities; Ukrainians can blend in, for me it’s better in Ukraine,” says Martell.
