Rosanne Casimir, community leader in Kamloops, British Columbia, said the preliminary discovery represented an unthinkable loss that had never been documented by school administrators.

Canada’s residential schools were compulsory boarding schools run by government and religious authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries with the goal of forcibly assimilating Aboriginal youth into European culture.

The Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest in this system. Opened under Catholic administration in 1890, the school had 500 students at its peak in the 1950s.

The central government took over management of the school in 1969, turning it into a residence for students from the area until 1978, when the school was closed.

Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said the remains were found using ground-penetrating radar during a search of the school.

“As far as we know, these missing children died without papers,” Casimir said.

“Some were only three years old.”

“We seek a way to confirm this with the deepest respect and love for these lost children and their families, knowing that Tk’emlups te Secwepemc is the final resting place for these children.”

Natives said they sought out the home communities whose children attended school. They plan to announce preliminary results in mid-June.

British Columbia’s Chief Medical Examiner, Lisa Lapointe, told Canadian television broadcaster CBC that “we are only at the very beginning of the information-gathering process”.

The reaction to the discovery was one of shock, sadness and regret.

“The news that remains was found at the old Kamloops boarding school breaks my heart,” Trudeau wrote on Twitter.

Canadian Indian Affairs Minister Carolyn Bennett said residential schools were part of a “shameful” colonial policy. The government is committed to “remembering those innocent souls lost”, she said.

Terry Teegee, regional chief of the British Columbia Assembly of First Nations, called the discovery “urgent work” that “uncovers the pain and loss” of communities in the region.

These views have been echoed by other Aboriginal groups, including the First Nations Health Authority (FNHA). “The fact that this situation exists, unfortunately, comes as no surprise and illustrates the detrimental and lasting effects that the residential school system continues to have. have on First Nations people, their families and communities,” CEO Richard Jock wrote in a statement.

From approximately 1863 to 1998, more than 150,000 Indian children were removed from their families and placed in these schools.

Children were often not allowed to speak their language or learn about their culture, and many were abused and abused.

A commission launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their home communities.

The landmark Truth and Reconciliation report, published in 2015, said the policy amounted to “cultural genocide”.

In 2008, the Canadian government officially apologized for the system.

The Missing Children Project documents the deaths and burial locations of children who died while attending school. To date, more than 4,100 children who died while attending residential school have been identified, the report said.

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