Canadian police are regarding as ‘suspicious’ the razing of two more Catholic churches – two others were destroyed by fire a week ago – in indigenous communities in western Canada on Saturday.
The BBC reports that the fires come in the wake of a discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves at sites of former ‘residential schools’ in Canada. The government-funded compulsory schools were run by religious groups in the 19th and 20th centuries with the aim of assimilating indigenous youth.
On Saturday, fires at St Ann’s Church and the Chopaka Church began within in an hour of each other in British Columbia.
Officers said both buildings were completely destroyed, and that they are treating the fires as ‘suspicious’.
The first two churches were destroyed by fire in the province as Canada marked National Indigenous People’s Day.
In May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation announced the discovery of the remains of 215 children at a school in British Columbia.
They found them at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, which was opened under Roman Catholic administration in 1890 and closed in 1978.
And on Thursday, the Cowessess First Nation said it had found 751 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Saskatchewan. The Marieval Indian Residential School was also operated by the Roman Catholic Church.
Between 1863 and 1998, more than 150 000 indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in these schools throughout Canada.
A commission launched in 2008 to document the impacts of this system found that large numbers of indigenous children never returned to their home communities. The commission’s landmark report said the practice amounted to cultural genocide.