Indigenous activists from Tampa Bay will demonstrate at the Canadian Consulate on Friday to address the mass children’s graves recently discovered in British Columbia and throughout Canada.
The Florida Indigenous Alliance (FIA) is calling on Canada to take responsibility for the killing of Native children and to help with the search for the remaining graves. They’ll gather at the Canadian Consulate at 200 S Biscayne Blvd in Miami at 4 p.m. Friday to have their voices heard.
More than 1,800 children’s bodies have been found in unmarked mass graves in Canada over the past two months, FIA says. Less than 5% of the residential schools, where the Native children were tortured and killed, have been searched.
“To date, the Canadian federal government and provincial governments have refused to pay for ground-penetrating radar searches of the remaining 130 or so Indian Residential Schools,” FIA wrote in a press release. “To date, the searches have been commissioned by First Nation governments or donated by Ground Penetrating Radar companies.”
The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (CTRC) found that Native children in the schools were routinely beaten, sexually abused, tortured, and killed for any attempt to see or speak with their parents, speak their language, or practice traditional forms of Indigenous spirituality. Some were even shocked by electric chairs. The CTRC created 94 recommendations to bring justice to those who suffered the atrocities and their families, but FIA says only 10 of them have been met.
The CTRC discovered that over 4,000 Indigenous children were killed and locatable in marked graves on the grounds of the 139 Indian Residential Schools in Canada, but the search for unmarked graves continues.
Beyond the demand for the graves to be discovered, FIA asks that those who committed the atrocities be brought to justice by the government of Canada.
“We ask all human beings to join FIA in demanding that the government of Canada complete the recommendations of the CTRC, comply with the demands of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, and turn over to the International Court any living priests, nuns or staff from the residential schools identified by survivors as having committed crimes against humanity,” the press release reads.
Removing children from their family and nation with the purpose of destroying the culture and causing assimilation is defined as genocide by the 1947 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide Article II (b)(c) and (e).
The Roman Catholic church ran approximately 60% of the Canadian Residential schools. The FIA says they have to account as well. But the intent, process, removal, and contracts for 100% of the schools were performed by the Canadian government, FIA says.
For 158 years, Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their families and incarcerated in the residential schools, which Natives say was just another term for concentration camps. The purpose of these schools was to indoctrinate the children against their own families, culture, language and religion.
“We ask human beings to join us in front of the Canadian Consulate in Miami to let Canada that human beings across the Earth know what Canada has done and there can be no pride in genocide!” FIA wrote.
More information about the event can be found at FIA’s event page.
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This article appears in Jul 22-28, 2021.