Hey remember when they found over 200 bodies of native children buried behind a residential school and the world cared for... what, a week?
They've counted about 6,000-7,000 now, for those of you who do still care
It should NOT fall on Indigenous people's shoulders to keep this known still. We’ve been doing that for generations at this point and NO ONE wants to listen to us.
We’re tired, mourning and constantly reopening our trauma and pain to keep people caring about us. It’s terrible.
I should start by noting that I am white, and not Canadian, and that if op wants me to remove this comment for any reason, please let me know.
This is a map of all the residential schools in Canada:
[link to the article it’s attached to, it’s interactable there, so you can get a better look around]
Each dot on this map represents a residential school. Blue dots mean the school is considered completely searched. Yellow dots mean they are either in the process of being searched or there are plans to be searched. Red dots indicate that no search has happened and that no search is currently planned
There were more than 130 residential schools in Canada. This map suggests that only six have been fully searched, and a little more than a dozen partially searched (I counted 15 yellow dots). That leaves at least 109 schools completely untouched.
Let that sink in; if 6,000-7,000 unmarked, indigenous children’s graves were found by searching less than a fifth of all the schools, how many are still undiscovered.
Wikipedia estimates that the body count could be over 50,000, and honestly, that could be a low estimate
[ID: A map of Canada with dozens of dots on it, 6 of which are blue and 7 of which are yellow; the rest are red. Later there is a screenshot from wikipedia reading, “Estimates range from 3,200 to over 50,000 children that were killed. Most of the recorded student deaths at residential schools took place before the 1950s. /end ID]
The residential school system was a calculated, open, and forthrightly declared attempt at the total genocide of all indigenous peoples in this country. It was literally meant to wipe them out entirely, through a combination of attrition and assimilation.
Never forget that this is what Canada is really built upon.
These are the residential schools in the U.S. I've mapped out the ones in California and there are articles about burials on these sites, some marked and some not.
I hope Secretary Haaland's Federal Indian Boarding School Initiative investigates every single one; their report is Due on April 1, 2022,
reminder that genocide doesn’t just include ending people’s lives, it includes eradicating their culture. forced assimilation of an entire people is an attempt at genocide.
Also a little add in: states like Texas didn’t have any residential schools because they kicked all the natives out. Not because they’re better.
