A residential school survivor in this province says the churches have to be held accountable for the pain and suffering inflicted through the residential school system.
Toby Obed was responding to the shocking news out of Kamloops, BC where ground-penetrating radar discovered the unmarked graves of 215 children on the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School which closed in 1969.
Obed says while he was aware there were unmarked graves at some former institutions, the scale of the discovery in British Columbia is something he’s still trying to process.
The largely church-run institutions, many of which were established in the late 1800s and ran well into the 20th century, operated under the premise of educating Indigenous children, but removed children from their families, language, and culture.
Obed says it was the churches that made the decision to open up boarding and residential schools, and it is the churches that must be held accountable “to the fullest extent.”
