Niagara Catholic District School Board has issued an apology over social media, following a post on the school board’s Facebook page in relation to the 215 dead Indigenous children found buried under a Kamloops residential school. In a statement acknowledging the discovery of the mass grave, NCDSB wrote that while most Indigenous children who ended up in residential schools were taken by force, ‘some children and their families chose to go to the schools,’ because they ‘wanted to fit in with the changing world around them as newcomers came onto the land.’
An extensive 2011 report by RCMP regarding the police force’s involvement in the residential school system found that fines were issued to families whose children did not go to the schools, and that ‘truant officers’ from the Mounted Police searched the lands, apprehended and returned children to the residential schools - information that was left out from NCDSB’s post.
The wording caused swift online backlash, prompting the school board to delete its original statement and issue a new one, apologizing for the initial wording, however screenshots of the post made its way onto social media, where it caused many viewers to express anger and shock over the way that the post was written.
‘It was not our intention to cause further hurt by our words. Words have power, and we are sorry that the words in the post hurt so many. The offensive statement has been removed, and we sincerely regret the harm it caused,’ NCDSB wrote in the post, that was locked for public comment.
This week, many government buildings in Niagara, including NCDSB, lowered its flags in honour of the 215 Kamloops children.
