STORY: Human rights abuses behind Canada's unmarked graves
DATELINE: Sept. 2, 2023
LENGTH: 00:02:13
LOCATION: SASKATCHEWAN, Canada
CATEGORY: SOCIETY

SHOTLIST:
1. various of the cemetery
2. SOUNDBITE 1 (English): CANDYCE PAUL, Member of Emergency Management Team in La Plonge at The English River First Nation, Saskatchewan
3. SOUNDBITE 2 (English): DAWN MCINTYRE, Offspring of a survivor in Saskatchewan
4. SOUNDBITE 3 (English): PATRICK DJONAIRE, Survivor of Beauval Indian Residential School
5. various of a memorial monument

STORYLINE:

Recently, 93 potential unmarked child and infant graves were uncovered at a former residential school in Saskatchewan, Canada.

Local residents believe that colonialism and human rights abuses behind the residential school system are continuously challenging Canada.

SOUNDBITE 1 (English): CANDYCE PAUL, Member of Emergency Management Team in La Plonge at The English River First Nation, Saskatchewan
"We want the government to acknowledge those deaths and those wrongdoings, whether those missing people are people who died under questionable circumstances, or whether they just weren't recorded. Colonization has been a very traumatic thing and it's benefited Canada more than it's benefited the indigenous people by a long shot."

SOUNDBITE 2 (English): DAWN MCINTYRE, Offspring of a survivor in Saskatchewan
"Our people are still suffering, our youths are suffering, our children are still being born into very dysfunctional families that were created because of the IRS (Indian Residential School) system, so now we have a whole host of problems."

The testimonies of survivors of Canada's residential school system were appalling.

SOUNDBITE 3 (English): PATRICK DJONAIRE, Survivor of Beauval Indian Residential School
"I never told my parents how school was, because we were scared, because the priests and the nuns, the Catholic people that ran the schools. So sins were never told in public like what happened bad and fights and people doing this and that. I never talk, we never talk to my parents about it. I didn't want it to. I was scared to say."

Over 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were separated from their families and forced to attend government-funded schools between the 1870s and 1997.

In 2015, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission appointed by the Canadian government concluded that children were physically and sexually abused and died in the schools.

While it has documented at least 4,100 deaths, the commission said the real numbers may never be fully known.

Xinhua News Agency correspondents reporting from Saskatchewan, Canada.
(XHTV)