Canada: ‘This one unmarked grave is what genocide looks like’

Warning: The story below contains details of child abuse Montreal, Canada – “They would just start beating you and lose control and hurl you against the wall, throw you on the floor, kick you, punch you.” That is how Geraldine Bob, a survivor of the Kamloops Indian Residential School, described her experience at the facility in the Canadian province of British Columbia, where the remains of 215 Indigenous children were recently found in an unmarked grave. “And until we get to the truth, until we bring all of these children home, until we stop engaging in the actions that lead to the deaths of Indigenous peoples, the genocide continues.” ‘Shameful chapter’ Canada formally apologised for its residential school system in 2008, and as part of a class-action settlement with survivors, more than $2.68bn in compensation has been paid to more than 26,700 claimants, according to a report issued earlier this year. But Eva Jewell, an associate fellow at the Yellowhead Institute, a First Nations-led research centre, said Canada has implemented only eight of 94 Calls to Action issued by the TRC five years ago – including several related to the more than 4,000 Indigenous children believed to have died at residential schools. While residential schools may be closed, “the government pattern of behaviour towards First Nations, Métis and Inuit children has not come very far from the attitude that allowed for residential schools to go in the first place”, said Cindy Blackstock, executive director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society of Canada.