An Untold Story in Kamloops, Canada

The recent news about the discovery of 215 remains of indigenous children in a former Indian Residential School in Kamloops (Read here) instantly brought back memory of our visit to this town way back in August 2017, just over four years ago. 

Kamloops was a total unknown before we planned our trip to Canada.  In the sector of our driving tour between Hope and Revelstoke via Kalowna which is approx. 440Km, we decided not to drive this route in one go but to look for an intermediate place to spend a night. We chose Kamloops.

That evening in Kamloops, we walked to Riverside Park. Little did we knew that we were just over 4Km away from the former Indian Residential School, at the opposite side of Thompson River. At that point of time, the tragedy had not been uncovered yet.

The bodies in unmarked graves were uncovered using ground penetrating radar equipment. The discovery triggered massive grief and anger among the indigenous community across the whole of Canada. Some went so far to say that it was a genocide of the indigenous people.

The former Residential School was run by Catholic Church from 1890 to 1969 before it was taken over by the Canada federal government to serve as day school until 1978. The aim of the original school was to assimilate the indigenous children into Canadian society. Kids as young as 3 years old were taken from families and put there. They were forced to convert to Christianity. Records show that children were punished for speaking their Aboriginal language, bedwetting, running away and smiling at children of the opposite sex. Punishment could be in the form of whipping, strapping, beatings and other forms of abuse and humiliation. It was a tragedy of unimaginable scale. Some claimed that as many as 6,000 children had died.

These days, has this superiority complex of certain people ceased? Probably not. Malaysia too is guilty of this. Attempt had been made by the previous Harapan government to discourage this (Read here). 

The previous Minister in the Prime Minster's Department said that people should recognize and respect the religion and culture of the Orang Asli and not to assimilate them into the cultural and religious norm of other societies.

In a society where the political system that thrives on race and religion, the dominant race seems determine to up the number of a particular race to ensure they are always in the dominant position. An easy way is through assimilation. 

The attempt to undo assimilation may therefore prove difficult because the policy of assimilation was more for political reason then genuine integration into the multi-ethnic society of Malaysia.

Each peg marks the remains of a child.