After the discovery of the remains of 215 children buried underneath on the site of a former residential school for indigenous children run by the Roman Catholic Church in British Columbia, Canada, two Roman Catholic churches built on indigenous land were burnt down in southern Okanagan in the Canadian province, Vancouver Sun reported.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are treating the fires emerging out of the Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band land on National Indigenous People’s Day, as ‘suspicious’.
Less than two hours later after the burning of the Sacred Heart Church on Penticton Indian Band land at 3:10 a.m. Oliver RCMP and the Oliver Fire Department were informed of a fire in the St. Gregory’s Church on Osoyoos Indian Band land is also ablaze.
Vancouver Sun quoted Penticton South Okanagan RCMP spokesman Sgt. Jason Bayda who said, “Both churches burned to the ground and police are treating the fires as suspicious,”.
Once the news of the discovery of mass graves of children at the Kamloops Indian Residential School came to light, anger seethed over Canada and the Catholic Church’s treatment of indigenous people was palpable.
The 215 children found dead were as young as three years old who would have suffered abuse and beatings at the hands of Catholic priests and nuns.
These Catholic reformatory schools were started with the support from the Vatican from the 19th century until the 1970s. More than 150,000 indigenous children who the Church considered as heathens were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to ‘assimilate them into Canadian society’.
These helpless children were taken away from their parents and were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages so any connection to their culture and heritage was forgotten and this has been called a “cultural genocide,” that a six-year investigation had found in 2015.
Many children suffered all kinds of abuse from beatings to being sexually abused at the hands of priests and nuns and up to 6,000 are said to have died under these circumstances.
The Kamloops Indian Residential School was shut in 1978 and the sole purpose for establishing this boarding school is to obliterate First Nation culture.
This school was under the direct control of the Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969 and was notorious for the brutality it unleashed on the children where they lived under the mercy of sadistic priests and nuns after being forcibly from their families.d
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada concluded that the residential schools were a system of “cultural genocide” and at least 4,100 students died while attending the schools, many of them due to abuse, negligence, disease, or accident.
The report highlighted in great detail the horrific physical abuse, rape, malnutrition, and other atrocities suffered by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, typically run by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa from the 1840s to the 1990s.
“The news that remains were found at the former Kamloops residential school breaks my heart – it is a painful reminder of that dark and shameful chapter of our country’s history. I am thinking about everyone affected by this distressing news. We are here for you,” Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau tweeted Friday.
The Indian Residential School Survivors Society (IRSSS) urged the federal government and the Roman Catholic Church to take action and in a media release.
IRSSS co-chair Rick Alec, a member of the Ts’kw’aylaxw First Nation said, “My Creator is asking their God why disciples would do this to us,” he said. “The Pope needs to answer this question. There is no more denying it. Now there is physical evidence from these unmarked graves.”
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