Another tragedy has been unearthed in Saskatchewan when the Cowessess First Nation discovered another mass grave at the Marieval Indian Residential School.

The New York Times reported that  761 people, mainly Indigenous children, were found there, and it is just a chilling number.

Bobby Cameron, the chief of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, the provincial federation of Indigenous groups, spoke out about this: “There was always talk and speculation and stories, but to see this number — it’s a pretty significant number. It’s going to be difficult and painful and heartbreaking.”

He added, “This is what the Catholic Church in Canada and the government of Canada of the day forced on our children.”

It will likely be a while before we get more numbers, but just 761 is enough to make your blood run cold. This follows the discovered remains of 215 children were discovered at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia earlier in May.

Right now, Canada’s Indigenous citizens make up about 4.9 percent of the population, and this serves as a moment of collective mourning for their communities. It is also a reminder to non-Indigenous people of the centuries of discrimination and abuse and intergenerational trauma passed along to survivors of residential schools.

Back in 2008, a national Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established to “investigate, expose and document the history and consequences of the residential schools,” says the Times.

It is unclear how the children died at the church-run schools, which were buffeted by disease outbreaks a century ago, and where children faced sexual, physical and emotional abuse and violence. Some former students of the schools have described the bodies of infants born to girls impregnated by priests and monks being incinerated.

The commission estimated that about 4,100 children went missing nationwide from the schools. But an Indigenous former judge who led the commission, Murray Sinclair, said in an email this month that he now believed the number was “well beyond 10,000.”

As we have new technology that enables this kind of thing to be possible, I am sure there will be more revelations of this kind of brutality. If we did investigations like this in America, I’m sure we would find something eerily similar. Right now, what matters is showing support to the Indigenous communities dealing with this re-triggering event and holding the Canadian governments and Catholic church responsible for the sexual, emotional, and cultural violence they perpetuated on children.

Considering the American Catholic Church wants to take away Joe Biden’s ability to receive communion over his stance on abortion, you would think they should have something to say about the murder of children in their own schools.

(via New York Times, image: COLE BURSTON/AFP via Getty Images)

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The post Over 700 Bodies—Mostly Indigenous Children— Found in Mass Grave in Saskatchewan first appeared on The Mary Sue.