Two years ago, Canada was rocked by claims that mass unmarked burial sites had been discovered near its infamous ‘residential schools’.

In May 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation announced that ground-penetrating radar (GPR) surveys had revealed the unmarked graves of 215 children near the former site of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Residential schools were set up in 1883 to ensure that Inuit and First Nations children were educated and assimilated into Canadian society.

The last school was closed in 1996. They had long been accused of mistreating their pupils. But the discovery of ‘mass graves’ suggested these institutions had been involved in crimes of a wholly different order. The Kamloops story understandably shocked the nation.