Unmarked Graves Found at Another Indigenous School in Canada

Unmarked Graves Found at Another Indigenous School in Canada

 

A First Nation in Canada says it has discovered hundreds of unmarked graves at the site of another former residential school for Indigenous children.

By Associated Press
June 23, 2021

 

....Last month the remains of 215 children, some as young as 3 years old, were found buried on the site of what was once Canada’s largest Indigenous residential school near Kamloops, British Columbia.

Cowessess Chief Cadmus Delorme and Chief Bobby Cameron of the federation planned to hold a news conference Thursday to provide more details about the new find at the Marieval Indian Residential School, which operated from 1899 to 1997 where Cowessess is now located, about 87 miles east of Regina, the capital of Saskatchewan.

 

 

From the 19th century until the 1970s, more than 150,000 First Nations children were required to attend state-funded Christian schools as part of a program to assimilate them into Canadian society. They were forced to convert to Christianity and not allowed to speak their native languages. Many were beaten and verbally abused, and up to 6,000 are said to have died.

 

The Canadian government apologized in Parliament in 2008 and admitted that physical and sexual abuse in the schools was rampant. Many students recall being beaten for speaking their native languages; they also lost touch with their parents and customs.

 

Indigenous leaders have cited that legacy of abuse and isolation as the root cause of epidemic rates of alcoholism and drug addiction on reservations.

 

https://www.usnews.com/news/world/articles/2021-06-23/unmarked-graves-found-at-another-indigenous-school-in-canada

Aboriginal affairs ministers ask premiers to look at reparations for Sixties Scoop adoptions

Aboriginal affairs ministers ask premiers to look at reparations for Sixties Scoop adoptions
CHINTA PUXLEY   WINNIPEG — The Canadian Press Monday, May. 19 2014
Canada’s aboriginal affairs ministers are asking the country’s premiers to look at compensation, counselling and repatriation for thousands of aboriginal children adopted into white families during the so-called Sixties Scoop....

It’s estimated that up to 20,000 aboriginal children were taken from their homes by child welfare services and placed with non-aboriginal families. Many consider the adoptions an extension of residential schools, which aimed to “take the Indian out of the child.”

Adoptees from the Sixties Scoop have said their time for reconciliation has come and they want an apology from the federal government....
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/aboriginal-affairs-ministers-ask-premiers-to-look-into-sixties-scoop-adoptions/article18752180/

Judge sentences Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro to life, plus 1,000 years, Diaries kept by Ariel Castro's captives paint picture of torment, trauma, Aboriginal children used in medical tests, commissioner says

Judge sentences Cleveland kidnapper Ariel Castro to life, plus 1,000 years By Drew Griffin, Chelsea J. Carter and Eliott C. McLaughlin, CNN  Thu August 1, 2013

Cleveland (CNN) -- In handing down a sentence of life in prison plus 1,000 years to Ariel Castro, an Ohio judge told the kidnapper on Thursday that there was no place in the world for his brand of criminal.

Castro pleaded guilty to 937 counts, including murder and kidnapping, in connection with the kidnapping and abuse of Michelle Knight, Georgina DeJesus and Amanda Berry, whom he held captive for a decade in his Cleveland home. As part of the plea deal, the death penalty was taken off the table.

"You don't deserve to be out in our community," Cuyahoga County Judge Michael Russo said after an hours-long hearing in which Castro, at times, appeared to defend his actions. "You're too dangerous."

In his oft-disjointed statement to the court, Castro referred to himself as "very emotional" and "a happy person inside."

Despite his repeated insistence that he wasn't making excuses for his conduct, Castro played the victim....

Russo handed down the stiffest sentence allowed as part of the deal after investigators, psychologists and one of the victims painted a horrifying picture of physical and emotional abuse at the hands of Castro, including brutal beatings and repeated rapes that resulted in pregnancies that he would terminate by punching the women in the stomach.

All three women kept diaries, with Castro's permission, that provided many of the details of their abuse....

In a pre-sentencing evaluation, Dr. Frank Ochberg, a pioneer in trauma science, wrote that Knight suffered "the longest and most severely."

"It was Michelle who served as doctor, nurse, midwife and pediatrician during the birth (of Berry's child). She breathed life into that infant when she wasn't breathing," he wrote. "At other times, she interceded when Castro sought to abuse Gina, interposing herself and absorbing physical and sexual trauma. But each survivor had a will to prevail and used that will to live through the ordeal."....

Wearing eyeglasses and an orange prison uniform, the shackled Castro characterized his crimes in a far gentler light than did the book-length indictment against him: "I'm not a violent person. I simply kept them there so they couldn't leave."

Testimony from authorities and mental health experts didn't jibe with Castro's recollection, however. Police recalled how the women were forced to play Russian roulette and how Castro would throw money at them after raping them....
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/01/justice/ohio-castro/index.html


Diaries kept by Ariel Castro's captives paint picture of torment, trauma
By Emma Lacey-Bordeaux , CNN Thu August 1, 2013

(CNN) -- Amanda Berry and Gina DeJesus weren't in the Cleveland courtroom Thursday for the sentencing of their captor, Ariel Castro. But their words, recorded in diaries, gave authorities a window into the horror they suffered for a decade.

Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Timothy McGinty wrote about the diaries in a sentencing memo. Berry, DeJesus and Michelle Knight did "everything humanly possible to retain a sense of normalcy" McGinty said, including marking the passage of time through written diaries.

The diaries provide further details of the women's life and torment. McGinty reveals that one diary's descriptions of abuse provided evidence his office used for many of the specific counts against Castro.

Castro has pleaded guilty to 937 counts of kidnapping, rape and murder. Diaries kept by the women contain descriptions of these crimes, including sexual abuse, being locked in a dark room and being chained to a wall. McGinty says other entries contain anticipation of abuse yet to come, including Castro's death threats. But the diaries also showed traces of hope, including "the dreams of someday escaping and being reunited with family."

Amanda Berry's entries focused on her mother, according to psychiatrist Frank Ochberg's assessment of the women's captivity as part of the sentencing statement. Ochberg, an expert in trauma, wrote that the diaries showed the women's "will to prevail."....
http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/01/justice/castro-diaries/index.html


Aboriginal children used in medical tests, commissioner says
Truth and Reconciliation Commission seeks further documentation on tests
CBC News Jul 31, 2013

Aboriginal Canadians were not only subjected to nutritional experiments by the federal government in the 1940s and 1950s but were also used as medical test subjects, says the chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

In an interview with CBC Radio's All Points West on Tuesday, Justice Murray Sinclair told host Jo-Ann Roberts that commission staff has "seen the documents that relate to the experiments that were conducted in residential schools."

Other documents related to experimentation in aboriginal communities outside of residential schools have not yet been obtained, Sinclair said.

"We do know that there were research initiatives that were conducted with regard to medicines that were used ultimately to treat the Canadian population. Some of those medicines were tested in aboriginal communities and residential schools before they were utilized publicly."
Sinclair said some of those medicines developed were then withheld from the same aboriginal children they were originally tested on....

The residential schools system, which ran from the 1870s until the 1990s, removed about 150,000 aboriginal children from their families and sent them to church-run schools under a deliberate policy of "civilizing" First Nations.

Many students were physically, mentally and sexually abused. Some committed suicide. Mortality rates reached 50 per cent at some schools....
http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/07/31/medical-testing-on-aboriginals-murray-sinclair-trc.html