Remains of 215 children found at centuries old indigenous school in Canada

The remains of 215 children, some as young as three years old, were discovered on the grounds of a former residential school for indigenous children, a discovery that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau described as heartbreaking on Friday. According to Tk'emlúps at Secwépemc Nation, the remains are of the children who studied at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

"We in some leads in our community that we're able to verify," Rosanne Casimir, head of Tk'emlúps in Secwépemc, said in a statement. "Right now, we have more mysteries than answers," she said

Canada's residential school system, which vigorously parted indigenous children from their families, was 'cultural genocide', a six-year investigation into the current practice discovered in 2015.

The report revealed the horrendous physical abuse, rape, starvation, and other horrors experienced by many of the 150,000 children who attended the schools, usually by Christian churches on behalf of Ottawa, from the 1840s to the 1990s.

It was found that more than 4,100 children died when they were in the residential school. It is believed that the deaths of the 215 children buried on the site of the former Canada's largest residential school were not included in the figure and were apparently not recorded until the finding.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau addressed in a tweet that the news "breaks my heart - it's a painful remembrance of that dark and shameful part of our country's history."

In 2008, the Canadian government formally apologized for the system.

The Tk'emlúps at Secwépemc Nation said he is working on the coroner and reaching out to the home communities whose children attended school. They suspect to have preliminary findings by mid-June.

In an announcement, Terry Teegee, British Chief of Regional Nations, called the finding of such burial sites 'urgent work' that 'revived the grief and loss for all First Nations in British Columbia'. '