Country / Region Overview

Canada is a federal democracy with a strong international reputation for stability and prosperity. Beneath this image, however, lies a history of deep harm toward Indigenous peoples.

Beginning in the late nineteenth century, the Canadian government partnered with churches to run the residential school system, designed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children. For more than a century, tens of thousands of children were removed from their families, subjected to harsh discipline, and often cut off entirely from their languages and cultures. The system, which operated until the 1990s, is now widely recognized as a central mechanism of cultural genocide against Indigenous peoples.

The legacy of these schools has reemerged with painful urgency since 2021, when ground-penetrating radar surveys began revealing hundreds of potential unmarked burial sites on former residential school grounds. Survivors had long testified that children had died at the schools from disease, neglect, abuse, and sometimes violence, but their accounts were rarely investigated. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission documented thousands of deaths and called for further inquiry, leading to a national reckoning. Each discovery confirms what communities had carried in memory: that many children never returned home, and were buried without dignity or record.

As communities continue their searches, the dual responsibility of church and government remains central to Canada's reckoning, exposing how spiritual institutions enabled and perpetuated policies now widely recognized as cultural genocide.