Residential Schools: Canada’s Shame

On October 27, 2022, Canada’s parliament unanimously recognised the country’s residential school system as genocide. More than 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes between the 1880s and late 1990s, and placed in distant schools where they were stripped of their identity.

Officially, more than 4,100 children died at the schools, but it’s believed many more lost their lives while in the government-funded system. At least 1,300 potential unmarked graves have been identified using ground-penetrating radar at just four of the 139 residential schools nationwide.

Now, new revelations are emerging as investigators search the lands surrounding former residential schools across the country. People and Power joins teams as they try to seek justice for the thousands of children who went missing and looks at the long-term consequences of the system.