The legacy of the Residential School system in Canada has just taken a dive into a deeper and darker realm. The discovery of a grave with more than 200 children – apparently undocumented deaths – at the former Kamloops Indian Residential school is heartbreaking.
There is very little information about this gruesome find, and therefore there is little to say specifically about the who, what, when, where, and why. But the fact that there are bodies of children buried near the school is enough to bring the work of reconciliation between Church and First Nations peoples to a new stage.
This discovery – I would say “new” discovery except that apparently it was an open secret that children were buried near the school – will necessarily open up a lot of wounds among the First Nations people. It will also, one hopes, open up the hearts of Church leaders.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission finished its inquiry and sent out its 94 Calls to Action in 2015.
Since then, the Catholic Church has been making efforts to follow through with those calls to action that concern the Church. The problems run deep and the work that needs to be done to bring reconciliation between the Church and Aboriginal peoples is daunting. And it just became more difficult. This wound that has just been opened will lead to much anger and many accusations.
There is a field on the edge of Fort Providence, Northwest Territories, in which there is a monument to some 300 people, mostly children, who died and are buried in the cemetery there. A problem is that back in 1948 the fence for the cemetery was removed and since the graves were unmarked, the people lost sight of where the graves are. No one knows exactly where the bodies are lain.
It is hard to fathom how one can lose a cemetery but this speaks to the same problem of insensitivity to the plight of First Nations people, especially in the early 20th century, as we are seeing in this developing story of the Kamloops Residential School.
We, the Body of Christ, need to pray for the souls of these children, for their families, and for wisdom and understanding to help us confront the deficiencies and flaws in our past dealings with our Aboriginal brothers and sisters.
Father Larry Lynn is a Vancouver priest and cinematographer who directed In the Spirit of Reconciliation, a documentary about residential school survivors in 2017.
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