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Introduces the discovery of suspected unmarked graves and explains why Indigenous communities were not surprised. It frames the residential school system as a long-running policy of assimilation and genocide.
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the discovery of hundreds of suspected unmarked Graves at a former residential school for indigenous children in Canada made headlines in 2021 but while many around the world were shocked by the news Canada's indigenous people were not they havelong known about the damage these schools designed to assimilate and strip indigenous children of their identity has caused to their communities people in power examines the long-term consequences of the residential school system and what's actually been done towrite that historical wrong
thank you
in school yields churchyards and graveyards across Canada a grim search is underway investigators are using ground penetrating radar technology to look for evidence of what is now widely acknowledged as genocide I humbly stand before you to offer along overdue apology a genocide perpetrated by the white settlers who founded this country against the indigenous population who've lived here for more than twelve thousand years we lost our families we lost our siblings our communities many lost theirpride
Canada now recognizes that it was wrong to forcibly remove children from their homes and we apologize for having done this I was ashamed of who I was I was ashamed of my family I was ashamed of my peopletoday we recognize that this policy of assimilation was wrong has caused Great harm and has no place in our country in May 2021 Canadians were shocked at the discovery of 215 suspected unmarked Graves at the site of aformer state-sponsored residential school in British Columbia there are mass Graves the fact remains that there's our ancestors under the ground and to get them home we need resources and we need the will of the federal government in theweeks and months that followed more potential unmarked Graves were found across the country
to many Canadians and uh they could they were driven by emotion but and they were sometimes surprised that we didn't have that same reaction and the reasonable is because we've known for decades more than 130 residential schools operatedacross Canada the aim was to isolate the children from the influence of their home families traditions and cultures and to assimilate them into the dominant culture we know that thousands of children die
outright mass murders you're taking children away from their parents and into a community where you're trying to transform them that's genocidal it is genocide uh in my view clear and simple it means the United Nations definition of genocideso I call it genocidein October 2022 parliamentarians unanimously passed a motion acknowledging a genocide had taken place on Canadian soil Member of Parliament Leah gazan said what happened in residential schools was a genocide I'm grateful to parliamentarians who unanimously passed my motionrecognizing the truth of Canada's history
this wasn't a one-off thing this is pan-national my friends this goes from Halifax to Vancouver 140 of them this one closed down in 1997.this one closed down in 2003.this isn't ancient history it's not in our rearview mirror this is very present more than 150 000 children were forcibly taken from their homes between the 1880s and the late 1990s and placed in distant boarding schools the schoolswere run by different churches though the majority were operated by the Catholic Church so far the official number of children who died at the schools is four thousand one hundred and twenty but it's believed many more lost theirlives in the government-funded education system we as a society were all complicit we supported the system that did this
Follows investigators and researchers as they use archives, oral histories, and ground-penetrating radar to uncover what happened at former residential schools. The segment focuses on Saint Mary's and the broader effort to document burials and missing children.
we're traveling from coast to coast to uncover how and why these schools School existed and ask if decades after the residential school system shuttered its does the Canadian government is doing enough to support First Nations children their familiesand Indigenous communities overall there is this whole broad sweeping inequality that really acts as a prison for First Nations children and families and really gets in the way of them being able to recover from the trauma residential schools
life expectancy is 15 years less for indigenous Canadians suicide rates are five times higher and Indigenous communities have higher rates of alcoholism drug addiction and homelessness the legacy of genocide in Canada is felt every single day in everysingle indigenous Community we see this in continued patterns of addiction and substance abuse of child welfare and of ongoing issues imposed by the government's one in six First Nations communities do not have clean drinking water it means thatyou'll get 30 to 50 percent less in education funding maybe your kid's going to go to a mold infested School in child welfare we had studies saying that it was 30 percent less than everyone else was getting eventhough the high need was higher because of residential schools there are more children in the child welfare system now than there were at the height of the residential schools my suspicion is that Canada will not release data that
these calls action are calling for because it will illuminate their liability and the Discrimination that they have been perpetuating yeah the government of Canada doesn't want to count what it could be held accountable for Saint Mary's residential schoolin Mission British Columbia opened in 1863 this was the longest continuously operating residential school in West today it's the site of extensive searches using ground penetrating radar literally the architecture tells a significant part of the narrative about theattitude the mental constructs and the minds of the people that created these institutions and how they were designed built and implemented you know how they were administered and for what reasons isolation separation control it's all about the theintent to do away with indigenous peoples Dr David sheffy is leading the team surveying the site of this former residential school yeah I mean that's something that always sort of uh shocks me a little bit about these so
many of these schools have their own Cemetery in them this is a cemetery it's a complicated situation because it's currently active it's not just for children it's unclear overall who exactly was buried there over time but we doknow that many of the markers are missing and then so part of our job is to do our best to sort out what we know about burials in the cemeteryright now Dr sheffy and his team are just one of dozens across Canada who are trying to piece together the Grim Legacy of Canada's residential school system the work is slow and painstaking we look at archival information weare looking at Oral historical information we're looking at all sorts of documentary information we're looking at information that can come from the land itself through the application of Technologies like drones and lidar mapping and ground penetrating radar we
we approach this in a very holistic manner the search at St Mary's is still ongoing but regardless of what is found it's clear that these buildings and the people who worked in them have devastated this community
Shares personal accounts from survivors of Saint Mary's and other schools, describing abuse, cultural loss, addiction, and family breakdown. These stories show how the trauma of residential schools continues across generations.
why I make art goes way back when I was in residential school grade one I already like started being abused since I got there so by April um it came Easter time and their in their cultures oh wegot to draw some rabbits so I went and I drew a rabbit and everybody just liked my drawing so much at that age at six years old I decided oh I'm going to be an artist then at thatage or I'm going to create Beauty for the people to see
sculptor Carl San was taken from his community when he was a small child he says his experience at Saint Mary's residential school has shaped his entire life I got on a boat and all these kids were crying sohard man I had no idea what was going on what I was getting into and now we got shipped off to residential school there in Mission City there called St Mary's then night time came and it wasn't agood environment there there was the supervisors the main guys there they made us all line up to their to their bedroom and they took us all in one by one sexually abusing us every night every night all ofus kids who had to do that that next day that same man he he cut my hair remember sitting on this they call it the barber chair sitting there and they could smell him so bad I it makes
me sick if I smell chopped hair now deprived of his language and culture subjected to hard labor and sexual abuse kull fell into alcoholism and drug abuse I didn't didn't know why um I drinking was so much becauseI I had really drowned out what had happened to me in school I had really drowned it out
more and more survivors are now speaking out about the abuses they endured at St Mary's residential school sadly my research shows that there were pedophiles and physical abusers and sadistic mental like cruel people people who were mentally cruelin the school systems throughout the last 80 90 years it's very very clearwell I had growing up in my community I would have learned the language I would have learned how to hunt and fish and learn about the ceremonies that we had in place do you regret that oh heck yeahbecause I can't teach my children all of those things I was sexually abused it wasn't my priest or brother it was by one of them first incident was by an older boy and the second time was a boysimilar to my age but still didn't make it right anyway I remember the awful loneliness the feeling abandoned and mistreated like we were we were nothing we were really taught that we were stupid um ignorant and that we
had nothing to offer it within Society and that's today sadly a lot of our people still suffer that because we were displaced we had to in our homes had to move and then the children were taken you knowa lot of them went to residential school but in our community a lot of people move a lot of people moved away he went to the states they went down just to different placessoit was hardship for our people you know and like we said that there weren't any children so you lose your way and a lot of drinking took place all my family members from the oldest of the youngest Ihad five brothers and three sisters and we were all alcoholics and um my siblings they took all of their stories to the Grave with them and they never did get out of alcoholism so that was one of the
toughest things about trying to be a family because we didn't talk to each other about whatever happened to us a lot of our men just lost their way because of the abuses that happened with them and all ofthat came out years later and they're still living that you know and then we've lost so many of them in our own families we all know of a relative that was abused that um from drinking or the drugsor suicide foreign
Examines Justin Trudeau's promises, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and the limited implementation of its calls to action. It also looks at government responses and the ongoing social and economic inequality facing Indigenous communities.
Canada elected Justin Trudeau as prime minister Trudeau promised to reset the relationship with Canada's indigenous communities and respect their rights Trudeau promised us everything thought he could things better and I was yay Trudeau yay I hope he winsand Peter's sitting beside me on the couch he won't be able to do anything he listens to Dusty old men industrial offices he said it was going to be a priority for him and I think probably in hisheart that's what he thought was going to be his priority but when he got into Power there are massive Lobby groups the same year Trudeau was elected the federal government received a report from an independent Truth and ReconciliationCommission part of an agreement to settle multiple lawsuits brought by former residential school students it is important for Canadians to start somewhere and ultimately to create those tools of reconciliation that will live beyond today Justice Maurice Sinclair's report
on the findings of the commission identified systemic failings and abuses that took place in the residential school system and put forward 94 calls to action to write its many wrongs but eight years later researchers say only 13 callsto action have been fulfilledthat there's been very minimal progress that there's been almost a glacial pace the federal government told me in a statement collaboration is ongoing across our government to identify the necessary steps to accelerate implementation address systemic challenges hindering progressand involve all Partners indigenous people are poorer sicker less educated more prone to alcoholism and drug abuse more likely to be homeless and die sooner than the rest of Canada's population you know we are some of the poorestpeople in this country and we actually should be the richest because all of the resources that are extracted from our lands contribute incredible wealth to this country we're traveling down through British Columbia to Victoria where the province's minister
for indigenous Affairs has granted us an interview Murray Rankin is the man responsible for British Columbia's indigenous communities you can't manage something if you don't measure it and we have uh metrics we've agreed upon with the First Nationleadership to manage and describe specific actions that need to be taken we're the only jurisdiction in North America to have approved the Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples act which is our road map so I mean speakingabout metrics though I mean unfortunately indigenous communities kind of lead the way in you know the metrics such as rates of suicide of alcoholism and sort of Health outcomes how big of a challenge is it going to beto kind of get those metrics where they should be it's an enormous Challenge and those negative metrics if I can call it that are all too true and we all agree agree as a society that we need to
do much much better this is the legacy of colonialism we all know that to be true we're trying to take steps to to empower indigenous communities self-determination self-government these are the things we think will make a difference butwe do have an enormous way to go
Visits the Mohawk Institute to show how abuse, neglect, and child labor were built into the residential school system. The chapter closes with current efforts to use radar, legal reforms, and community pressure to bring children home and force real accountability.
so imagine being an adult in a community where there are no kids like that was that's what it looks like and imagine that happening for over 100 years to your kids and then when they close the government saysyou know what um we're going to give you less help than everybody else to overcome that Legacy and then when you fail to be able to look after the kids to the same standards as everybody else we're goingto send in job welfare and we're going to remove your kids again even at higher rates that's what's happened to the Mohawk Institute in Brantford Ontario this was one of Canada's oldest and longest running residential schools opened in1831 it was only closed in 1970.this place was full of predators so not only were these children taken from their Community not only were they put in a Strange Land with strange languages they were put around some of the most reprehensible adults you can
imagine and I want to show you this room not to glorify it but to educate you guys on on how horrible this place could be at sometimes so
thank you this is the Boiler Room the infamous Infamous Mohawk Institute Boiler Room when this thing was going it would have been so loud and the reason that this is a room of regret is because because of thesound because it was away from the school this is where a lot of the sexual abuse happened um and again when the children knew when they were tapped on the shoulder and told to come here it just musthave been such an ominous feeling for them knowing what was waiting ahead so if you want to go you can I'm going to stay at the doorway the Mohawk Institute is more than 4 000 kilometers away from SaintMary's school but the stories here are depressingly similar like so many schools from coast to coast this was an institution where neglect abuse and child labor were commonplace when I hear the term residential school it actually makes me
angry there was no learning going on it was a Work Camp a number of the staff were also predators the Canadian government did a study and they wanted to know how many predators were throughout the 140 residential schoolsthat existed and the answer was close to six thousand only 50 face Justice why don't you knock them down uh why did we all knock Auschwitz down and the reason is because it's a place of conscience so ifwe are never to repeat the events of History we we must learn from themso as part of that they're doing ground penetrating radar with the Survivor Secretariat and that's what these grids are and that's happening at a lot of residential schools today if Canada is sincere and genuine about reconciliation help usbring our kids home so part of that is by doing ground penetrating radar the gut we talked about the federal government what they can do put some resources into this right you're wrong you know all we're trying to
do is get to the truth and the truth is there weren't Mass murdering sites but there are mass grades right and there's a difference in there and however we want to heal that onion the fact remains that there'sour ancestors under the ground and to get them home we need resources and we need the will of the federal government so in 2016 Canada adopted the United Nations Declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples and it wasenshrined into law in 2021 once implemented the Declaration would give indigenous people more control over their lands greater protection of their language and culture and more political representation but the communities I talk to say the words of thepoliticians in Ottawa aren't backed up by concrete actions I don't think there's any trust whatsoever I don't think that there is good enough reason to have trust that Canada is coming to reconciliation in good faith particularly when they've
fought so hard against the most vulnerable members of our community and that is children I am always reflective on the fact it took a international news story which Kamloops became to really spur the government to actin March 2023 U.N special reporter Jose Francisco calizai highlighted the appalling Legacy of the residential school system on a visit to Canada he called on the government to work more closely with indigenous communities every Ministry in our governmenthas a piece of the action and those actions are meaningful they're tangible they're concrete they're not Pie in the Sky they're things that we can measure and point to which we hope will make a difference as ground penetratingradar work continues all across this vast country more uncomfortable truths about the residential school system will emerge there's long threads of Injustice from residential school they continue to be woven forward in Canadian Society to the detriment of First
Nations children but to the detriment of the Canadian country as well this is a process that will take potentially decades this is children these are missing children and a child's life is priceless and these nations really want tobring these children home when Canadians pay attention and demand action it happens when they fall asleep children die