Indigenous residential school : Châteauguay supports First Nations

Châteauguay city officials passed a resolution expressing the municipality’s support of First Nations communities, following the discovery of the remains of 215 children on the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, British Columbia.
“We found 215 children on the residential school site. It was the largest indigenous residential school in Canada. We also discovered something else. We discovered that from the time of Confederation onward, the federal government sought to—in the words of Prime Minister Macdonald ‘get the Indian out of them’,” declared Mayor Pierre-Paul Routhier at the city council meeting held on June 14. 
“We didn’t learn those things in our history books, but we know them now,” affirmed the city magistrate. 
Châteauguay’s city council has thereby asked the federal government and all religions that managed similar residential schools to open up their books and archives so that we can shed light on what took place. 
Mayor Routhier stressed that the neighbouring community of Kahnawake included members who were once in residential schools. He expressed the city’s “most sincere regards” to those on the reserve. (Translation Amanda Bennett)