The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous children directed and funded by the Department of Indian Affairs. "A genocidal policy, operated jointly by the federal government of Canada and the Catholic, Anglican, United, and Presbyterian Churches... rife with disease, malnutrition, poor ventilation, poor heating, neglect, and death," the goal of the residential school systen between 1828 and 1997 was "assimilating First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children into white settler society". Over 4,000 students died while attending Canadian residential school. Students' bodies were often buried in school cemeteries to keep costs as low as possible.
Comparatively few cemeteries associated with residential schools are explicitly referenced in surviving documents, but the age and duration of the schools suggests that most had a cemetery associated with them. Many cemeteries were unregistered, and as such the locations of many burial sites and names of residential school children have been lost.
Some individuals engage in denialism about the existence of some or all residential school burial sites. Indigenous...