Canadian Indian residential school gravesites

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The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. Directed and funded by the Department of Indian Affairs, and administered mainly by Christian churches, the residential school system removed and isolated Indigenous children from the influence of their own native culture and religion in order to forcefully assimilate them into the dominant Canadian culture. Given that most of them were established by Christian missionaries with the express purpose of converting Indigenous children to Christianity, schools often had nearby mission churches with community cemeteries. Students were often buried in these cemeteries rather than being sent back to their home communities, since the school was expected by the Department of Indian Affairs to keep costs as low as possible. Additionally, occasional outbreaks of disease led to the creation of mass graves when the school had insufficient staff to bury students individually.^[1]

An unknown number of students died while attending the Canadian Indian residential school system.^[2][3] Comparatively few cemeteries associated with residential schools are explicitly referenced in surviving documents; however, the age and duration of the schools suggests that most had a cemetery associated with them.^[1] Most cemeteries were unregistered, and as such the locations of many burial sites of residential school children have been lost. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has called for "the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried."^[4]

Bodies, unmarked graves, and potential burial sites have been identified near residential school sites across Canada since the 1970s, mainly using ground-penetrating radar. To date, the sites of unmarked graves are estimated to hold the remains of more than 1,900 previously unaccounted individuals, mostly children.^{[citation needed]} However, across the entire residential school system, the number of identifiable children who are documented as having died while in their custody is over 4,100 individuals; the fourth volume of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) "identified 3,200 deaths on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students and the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential School Students".^[4] The issue of unmarked graves gained renewed attention after an anthropologist detected ground disturbances on radar at Kamloops Indian Residential School in May 2021, and concluded that these were 215 "probable burials" (this number was later revised to 200).^[5][6] Several similar announcements followed over the ensuing months, leading to commemorations and protests, followed by a series of arsons against Christian buildings and the 2022 "penitential" visit to Canada by Pope Francis.

Some politicians and journalists^[7] have openly denied the existence of some or all residential school burial sites.^[8] Indigenous groups^[7] and academics^[9] have dismissed such denials, with Canadian state media columnists opining that "[t]here is no big lie or deliberate hoax", but is instead "the complicated nature of what the TRC calls the 'complex truth'".^[8] The Department of Justice has considered action to criminalize these denials.^[7][10]