Friday's letters: Prosecute residential school crimes

Edmonton Journal Friday, June 11,2021

It is hard to think about the discovery of children buried in mass grave sites at the Indian Residential School. These kids didn’t die rock climbing, or drag racing, or from some terrible cancer. They died going to school. I grieve for them and their families.© Provided by Edmonton Journal Hundreds of children's shoes remain in place at a memorial outside the Alberta Legislature building in Edmonton on Monday May 31, 2021. A vigil was held Sunday May 30, 2021 in memory of the 215 indigenous children whose remains were discovered on the grounds of a former Roman Catholic church residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

I’m waiting for a politician to pledge that they will ensure that the people responsible will be tracked down and held accountable. But all I’ve heard is crickets. Why is that? There is no statute of limitation on rape, murder, or negligent homicide in Canada.


It’s time good people made noise. How many children in residential schools in Canada died? What were the circumstances? What are their names, ages? 0Will there be justice?

We cannot stay silent on this. Is it ever too late to do the right thing? We have the strength to reckon with our past and build a better future. We must.

Peter Lee, Edmonton

Residential schools a product of racism

The story of the 215 burials found in the Indian school in Kamloops is so tragic that no adjective in the English language can express the hurt it caused.

This was the doing of not a few individuals, whose names are in the press. It was systemic racism for which nations are responsible. It was and still is the idea of “cultural fit.” It was the conception of the time that to be successful in a certain society, people must fit a cultural norm. Indian schools were established to change their culture. Sadly, they lost their own and were not accepted by others.

Video: The efforts to include more about residential schools in Canadian education (cbc.ca)

Many, like Kipling, believed the “white man’s burden” was the duty of white men to bring education and salvation to people around those deemed uncivilized, savages.

I learned about the schools in 1960, coming from India, when I was enrolled at the University of Alberta, in the faculty of education. I recall the discussions where no one saw anything wrong with having Indigenous residential schools, rather students and professors earnestly believed that the schools were for the benefit of the Indigenous people. It is the best that “we” could do for them. That was the sincere and earnest belief of most.

Kuldip S. Riar, Edmonton