The graves of more children have been located in Saskatchewan.
The Cowessess First Nation says there’s evidence of hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Marieval, about 100 kilometers east of Regina.
Band officials say they’ll release details later today.
The First Nation said it held a Wednesday evening Zoom meeting for survivors and members to discuss the discovery.
Perry Bellegarde, chief of the Assembly of First Nations, says the news is tragic, but not surprising.
The federal government is providing 27-million dollars to First Nations to help identify burial grounds, following the discovery of the bodies of 215 children at a former residential school site in Kamloops, B-C.
Nearly 150,000 Indigenous children were sent to the government-funded and church-run boarding schools, which were set up in the 19th century and operated until the late 1990s. Many children were forcibly separated from their families to attend the schools, which were set up to assimilate them.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission said in a 2015 report that many of the students were subjected to physical and sexual abuse at the schools, which barred them from practicing their traditions and speaking their languages. It said the schools carried out “cultural genocide” and that they effectively institutionalized child neglect.
