St Eugene’s was run by the Catholic Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, which operated 48 schools, including the Marieval Indian residential school at Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan and the Kamloops Indian residential school.
“I’m still trying to find an answer for why he did it. Coping with with rape and the beatings and starvation must have been too much for him,” said Kruger. “He must have felt that he had nothing left.”
Like thousands of others who attended the schools across the country, Kruger witnessed rampant sexual and physical abuse of his classmates and friends. His best friend took his own life at the age of six after he was raped by a priest, he said.
“I lost my language for 40 years because they told me it was the ‘devil’s tongue’. I was brainwashed so badly. I didn’t speak to no one in it – and I didn’t let anyone speak the language to me.”
When Kruger arrived at the school, he was beaten for speaking nsyilxcən, the Syilx language he spoke with his family.
The school opened in 1890 and became an industrial school in 1912. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, it was the site of recurring outbreaks of influenza, mumps, measles, chicken pox and tuberculosis. In 1969, the federal government took over the operation from the Catholic ch...
“As they uncover more graves at other sites, I’ll have to relive it all over again. I don’t anticipate that I’ll stop having nightmares or pain for the next two years. The next two years, you’re going to find many, many, many, many more graves.”
“People are finally listening to us. And I’m glad that they’re finding them and taking care of what needs to be taken care of,” said Jack Kruger, who, in 1956 was taken from his family and transported by train and cattle truck to St Eugene’s. He was six years old at the time.
Many survivors of the school say that their trauma was compounded by Canada’s failure to face up to what they have known for years: that countless friends and relatives died at the institutions which were supposed to be caring for them.
The discovery at St Eugene’s adds to the growing list of unmarked graves. Last week, the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced the discovery of 751 possible unmarked graves. Last month, the Tk’emlúps te Secwe̓pemc announced they had found 215 unmarked graves, most of which are ...
From the 19th century until the 1990s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded schools in an campaign to forcibly assimilate them into Canadian society. Abuse was rife at the schools where thousands of children died of disease, neglect and other causes.
From the 19th century until the 1990s, more than 150,000 Indigenous children were forced to attend state-funded schools in an campaign to forcibly assimilate them into Canadian society. Abuse was rife at the schools where thousands of children died of disease, neglect and other causes.
“It is believed that the remains of these 182 souls are from the member Bands of the Ktunaxa Nation, neighbouring First Nations communities and the community of ?Aq’am,” the Lower Kootenay band said in a statement.
The Lower Kootenay Band said on Wednesday that ground-penetrating radar had revealed 182 human remains at St Eugene’s Mission residential school, near the city of Cranbrook, British Columbia. Some of the remains were buried in shallow graves only three and four feet deep.
A First Nations community in western Canada has discovered the remains of nearly 200 people on the grounds of a former residential school, adding to the growing tally of unmarked graves across the country.
“And yes, the prosecutors are responsible for this,” she added in a separate tweet. “They can have some of this smoke, too.”