No longer ‘the disappeared’: Mourning the 215 children found in graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School

No longer ‘the disappeared’: Mourning the 215 children found in graves at Kamloops Indian Residential School

By Veldon Coburn
Assistant Professor, Institute of Indigenous Research and Studies, L’Université d’Ottawa/University of Ottawa

Content warning: This piece contains distressing details about Indian Residential Schools

A macabre part of Canada’s hidden history made headlines last week after ground-penetrating radar located the remains of 215 First Nations children in a mass unmarked grave on the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.

Like 150,000 Indigenous children that were taken from their families and nations and placed in residential schools, the 215 bodies of children, some as young as three, located in Tk’emlúps were part of a larger colonial program to liquidate Indigenous nations of their histories, culture and foreclose on any future. To do this, Canada put into motion a system to “kill the Indian in the child.”

This system often killed the child.

Read the full article in The Conversation