Unmarked graves at Canada’s residential schools are ‘tip of the iceberg’: minister

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller says the searches on the grounds of former residential schools to date are just the beginning.

Nearly one year ago, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced ground-penetrating radar had found the possible remains of about 200 children on the site of a former residential school near Kamloops, B.C.

The 2015 report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had found, through records and accounts shared by survivors, that thousands of children had died at these institutions, or gone missing.

Still, the discovery in Kamloops brought the devastation caused by the church-run, government-funded residential school system into focus for many non-Indigenous Canadians, and renewed calls for justice.

Miller says that since there are 140 former residential school sites in Canada, the searches to date are just the “tip of the iceberg.”

0:46 Pope Francis to visit Canada’s Indigenous communities in a step towards reconciliation

He promised the federal government would keep offering financial supports.