The Cowessess First Nation announced a preliminary finding of 751 unmarked graves on June 24, 2021, at a cemetery near the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan.
This grim discovery added more intergenerational trauma and pain which is already being suffered by the First Nation communities.
The residential schools were a collective, calculated effort of churches and the government to eradicate Indigenous language and culture that the Truth and Reconciliation commission called a policy of cultural genocide. From 2008 to 2014, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission heard stories from thousands of residential school survivors. In June 2015, the commission released a report based on those hearings. From that came the 94 Calls to Action: individual instructions to guide governments, communities, and faith groups down the road to reconciliation.
Only few of them have been completed so far which is pathetic progress in the reconciliation and healing process. Centrist Party demands complete investigations, criminalizing those who are responsible and compensate the victims or their families for their loss. Centrist Party shares their grief and calls on the government of Canada for rapid timelines to deliver on the Truth and reconciliation calls to action.