Story at a glance
- Four churches on Indigenous land in Canada have been destroyed in suspected arson.
- The fires follow the unearthing of a mass grave of Indigenous children at a residential school in Canada.
- The Royal Canadian Mounted Police are treating the fires as suspicious and looking at “any possible connection.”
Two more Catholic churches on First Nations lands in western Canada were destroyed in “suspicious” fires over the weekend as the Indigenous community responds to the unearthing of a mass grave of Indigenous children at a residential school earlier this month.
“So many memories from that church and [it] was taken away by vandalism. I am Indigenous, and this upsets me, because it does hurt our elders seeing these historic buildings being taken away,” Rose Holmes, a member of the Indian Band in Vernon, told a local news outlet. “This isn’t justice for what’s happened to our people. This is stupidity by some individuals.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) are looking at “any possible connection” to two fires on June 21 — National Indigenous Peoples Day — at Catholic churches on the Penticton Indian Band and Osoyoos Indian Band in British Columbia. On both days, the two fires occurred within hours of one another.
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“We are sensitive to the recent events, but won’t speculate on a motive,” said Jason Bayda, Media Relations Officer for the Penticton South Okanagan RCMP, in a release after the initial fires.
Solar lights and flags now mark the spots where 751 human remains were recently discovered in unmarked graves at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School on the Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan on June 27, 2021.
Those recent events include the unearthing of a mass grave at the Marieval Indian Residential School near Saskatchewan, with more than 750 unmarked graves. Thousands of children across the country in the 19th century, most of whom were Indigenous, were separated from their families and forced to attend the residential schools that were operated by the Catholic Church. Pope Francis has addressed the discovery but did not make a direct apology for the church’s involvement.
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“There is a lot of anger here now against the Catholic church. There is a lot of blame for what happened to the children,” Keith Crow, Chief of the Lower Similkameen Indian Band, told Native News Online. Still, he added, “The church burning is devastating to our community. Some of our members attended church. Memories were made at the church. There have been weddings in the good times and funerals held there in the bad times. Whoever did it should know it was just wrong.”
A third church in the Gitwangak First Nation was also damaged by fire on Saturday, reported the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, but the St. Paul’s Anglican Church, built in the 1890s and made entirely of wood, was no longer in use, and volunteer firefighters were able to put out the fire quickly.
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