Christianity was a major part of Indigenous boarding schools – a historian whose family survived them explains

Gilda Soosay, president of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Parish Council in Maskwacis, Canada, where Pope Francis visited the site of a state school for Indigenous children. Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images

During a weeklong trip to Canada, Pope Francis visited a former residential school for Indigenous children in Maskwacis, Alberta, on July 25, 2022. The Ermineskin Residential School operated between 1895 and 1975 in Cree Country, the largest First Nations group in Canada.

As at many boarding schools set up to assimilate Indigenous children, students were punished for speaking their language and sometimes experienced abuse. According to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, 15 children died at this particular school over the years. Several of them succumbed to tuberculosis.