Another residential school for indigenous people, one of the first to be built in Canada, launched a search on Tuesday to try to find children’s graves on its site like those found around multiple similar institutions in the country.
The excavations at the Mohawk Institute residential school in Brantford, near Toronto, add to those taking place at the sites of dozens of residential schools across the country.
Since May, more than a thousand graves of Indigenous children have been found near residential schools, reviving a painful part of Canada’s history and its policy of forced assimilation of Indigenous people.
Mark Hill, the leader of the Six Nations of the Grand River, hailed “a first step in bringing our children home” at a press conference.
After months of planning during which police officers trained community members on the use of ground penetrating radar to scan some 500 acres of land, “we have finally come to the day when the search can begin,” said Chief Hill , specifying that the excavations and the work of analyzes could take two years.
Indigenous children who attended residential schools were subjected to mistreatment or sexual abuse, and more than 4,000 died there, according to a commission of inquiry which concluded in 2015 to a veritable “cultural genocide”.
“Survivors have been telling us for years the stories that have taken place in these so-called schools. This investigation, and all the work that goes with it, is being carried out by the survivors for the survivors, ”he explained.
From 1885 to 1970, the Mohawk Institute in Brantford welcomed between 90 and 200 students each year. This establishment was part of the network of 139 Indian residential schools that Canada has.
Between the late 19th century and the 1990s, some 150,000 Aboriginal children were forcibly enrolled in these residential schools where they were cut off from their families, language and culture.