“This is still a place of healing. The church still provides healing for those who choose to heal that way,” Larin said in a video statement.
On Monday, a Catholic church on Siksika First Nation land near Calgary also caught on fire briefly. The RCMP is investigating.
What are residential schools?
On June 21, ground-penetrating radar revealed more than 750 unmarked graves on the grounds of Marieval Indian school, in Cowessess First Nation lands in Saskatchewan. The youngest remains in the graves appear to belong to children around 3 years old. This came just weeks after a team of scientists, in May, found 215 unmarked graves in a Kamloops Indian Residential School in Kamloops, British Columbia. Kamloops opened in 1890 and closed just 43 years ago.
Canada’s residential schools operated from 1883 to 1996. More than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend boarding schools to separate them from their parents and families and eradicate their language and cultural heritage. In 2015, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission recorded nearly 1,500 hours of testimony from former inmates of the residential school program. The commission estimated about 6,000 of the 150,000 students died while in the schools.
The Catholic Church operated roughly 60% of the schools. The discovery of unmarked graves has ramped up calls for the Catholic Church to take greater responsibility for its role in the “cultural genocide.”
Over the past week, protesters painted graffiti on Catholic churches in Saskatchewan and Alberta. Reuters reported on Friday that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called on Pope Francis to apologize. “I have spoken personally directly with His Holiness Pope Francis to press upon him how important it is not just that he makes an apology but that he makes an apology to Indigenous Canadians on Canadian soil.”
Crow said he hopes more schools in the area will search their grounds for graves and bring more of the history of residential schools — and the pain they have caused his community — to light.
“We are still here. The residential schools did not work. We still practice our culture. We still practice our language. And we’ll be here for many, many more millennia.”
This article first appeared here.
