Canadian residential schools, and donation suggestions
Content warning for discussion of the Canadian residential schools and other horrific anti-Indigenous behavior by governments.
Background: For over 100 years, the Canadian government funded boarding schools that it forced 150,000 Indigenous children to go to. The schools were administered by various Christian churches.
At least 2%, and possibly as many as 20%, of those children died at the schools. Many of them were buried in unmarked graves, and there aren’t many records of the deaths.
For more details, see Wikipedia.
(Side note, lest anyone think that Canada was alone in this behavior: the US did similar things, over a longer period.)
This has all been in the news lately because recently, nearly 1,000 unmarked graves have been found at two former residential-school sites, and there are presumably many more that haven’t yet been found.
Here are a couple of recent articles on these topics:
If you want to help “support survivors [of the residential schools] and further reconciliation,” here’s a list of six Canadian organizations to donate to.
(Note that this list was published after the first recent round of discoveries of unmarked graves, but before the latest round.)