Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc and the Honourable Steven Guilbeault, Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister responsible for Parks Canada, yesterday announced the designation of the Former Kamloops Indian Residential School as a national historic site under Parks Canada’s National Program of Historical Commemoration.
The Former Kamloops Indian Residential School is located on Kamloops Indian Reserve #1 of Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc.
The building was nominated for designation by Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc.
Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc renamed the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site the Chief Louis Centre in honour of the visionary leader, also known as Clexléxqen or Petit Louis (1828-1915), who advocated for schooling that would benefit the Secwépemc people. Circa 1930.
Photo: Archives Deschâtelets-NDC.
Run by the Roman Catholic congregations of the Oblates of Mary Immaculate and the Sisters of St. Ann, the Kamloops Indian Residential School was the largest institution in a system designed to carry out what the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada described as cultural genocide. Many, including Pope Francis and the Canadian House of Commons, have referred to it as genocide. The traumas experienced by Survivors have had profound, lifelong, and intergenerational consequences that continue today.
Among the students who attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School were children between the ages of four and 18 from over 108 communities and at least 38 Indigenous nations from across British Columbia and beyond. Forcibly removed from their homes, these children experienced physical, emotional, spiritual and sexual abuse, forced labour, malnutrition, inadequate and overcrowded living conditions, poor healthcare, and high rates of infectious diseases and death.
Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc members chose to preserve several of its buildings to commemorate and teach about the impacts of residential schools on children and families and to serve as a place for teaching Secwépemc language and culture as an act of reclamation.
The school was part of a system of residential schools instituted by governments for Indigenous Peoples, working with Christian churches in the 19th and 20th centuries. As part of the government policy of forced assimilation, these institutions separated Indigenous children from their families and communities in order to eradicate their cultures, spiritualities, languages, and traditions.
Born of colonial policies in Canadian history, the residential school system is a tragedy that has adversely affected generations of Indigenous peoples, with lasting repercussions on First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities, cultures, economies, traditional knowledge and ways of life, languages, family structures and ties to the land.
