What is the story behind the remains of children found in former residential school sites in Canada?
History to date: In late June, Cowessess First Nation, an indigenous organization, found the remains of 751 people, mostly indigenous children, at the site of a former residential school in Canadas Saskatchewan province. This, according to Cowessess, was the most significant essential discovery of autochthonous childrens graves to date in the country. Indigenous groups have discovered two more sites in former residential schools in recent months, both in British Columbia, taking the number of unregistered graves found as of May 29 to 1,148. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canadians today are horrified and ashamed of the way our country behaved. Local organizations have urged his government to investigate the schools and speed up reconciliation measures. This week, the Cowessess First Nation signed an agreement with Saskatchewan and the federal government claiming its right to care for its children. The residential school system was a federal government initiative aimed at forcibly adopting indigenous children into the European way of life. Beginning in the 19th century, there were at least 130 residential schools throughout the country. The schools were funded by the federal government department of Indian affairs and were run by the church, mainly the Catholic Church. Editorial | Cultural Genocide: On the discovery of hundreds of graves in Canada  In 1883, Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald defended the system in Parliament. When the school is in reserve, the child lives with her parents, who are wild  it has been strongly pressured to me, as the head of the Department, that Indian children be withdrawn as much as possible from the influence of the parents, and the only way to do that would be to place them in central industrial training schools where they would acquire the habits and ways of thinking of white people, he said. An amendment to the Indian Act of 1894, under Prime Minister Mackenzie Bowell, made attendance at these schools compulsory for indigenous children. They were forcibly taken away from their families. Between 1883 and 1996, about 150,000 indigenous children were sent to these schools. Many of them never reunited with their families. In residential schools, children were not allowed to speak their own language or practice their own culture. Many were emotionally, physically and sexually abused. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, set up in 2008, estimated that some 4,100 children attending these schools either died or went missing. The commission said it was impossible to reach a conclusion on the exact number of deaths due to the school burial policy and poor data retention. In most cases, the authorities did not even hand over the bodies of the children to their families. The Canadian governments Indian affairs policies were to hold schools accountable for funeral expenses when a student died at the school. The commission wrote, the requests of the parents to return the bodies of the children home for burial were generally rejected as too costly. Children died mainly due to tuberculosis, malnutrition and other diseases caused by inhuman conditions within schools. Murray Sinclair, a former judge and senator who chaired the commission, recently said the current death toll could be over 10,000. Indigenous organizations have also claimed that the current number is more than official estimates. In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued the first official government-level pardon to the indigenous community for residential schools. The government-appointed Truth and Reconciliation Commission collected about 7,000 statements from school survivors to prepare a detailed report revealing the truth behind the system. He also made 94 recommendations for reparation and reconciliation. The Commission report, published in 2015, concluded that the school system reached a cultural genocide. The recommendations included independent investigations into past crimes and measures to protect indigenous rights and culture. Read also | Pope Francis must apologize in Canada for the deaths of indigenous children: Justin Turdeau  Mr Trudeau had promised during the campaign that addressing the indigenous question would be essential to his agenda. But indigenous groups say the federal government has been slow in responding to the Commissions recommendations. Some early nations, which are using ground-penetrating radar technology to mark underground human remains, have sought help from the government to quickly discover graves. The Trudeau government had set aside C $ 27 million to search for graves, but left no funds until the remains were found in British Columbia earlier this year. The commission also asked the Catholic Church to apologize and take steps for reconciliation. Following the recent unveiling of the graves, Pope Francis said the sad unveiling further raised awareness of the pain and suffering of the past, but stopped apologizing. In 2018, the Canadian Conference of Catholic Bishops said the Pope could not personally apologize for the residential school system.