Organizers raise $77,000 to help Snuneymuxw First Nation identify unmarked graves
CBC
WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
Organizers of an online fundraiser will be giving $77,000 to the Snuneymuxw First Nation on Wednesday to help it search for and identify possible unmarked graves in and around the former grounds of the Nanaimo Indian Hospital.
The Nanaimo, B.C., hospital was one of 29 run by the Department of National Health and Welfare across Canada for Indigenous patients from 1946 to 1967. The hospitals were intertwined with the residential school system.
Steve Sxwithul'txw of the Penelakut Tribe, one of the organizers of the fundraiser, said "the hospital was a nightmare for our people on so many different levels."
"A lot of atrocities happened at that hospital," Sxwithul'txw, a filmmaker, told host Michelle Eliot on BC Today.
"Shifting [focus] to that hospital to find out if some of our lost children and peoples are in and around those grounds is a critical point that a lot of people are asking and wanting, especially the people that attended that hospital."
There were three such hospitals in B.C., in Nanaimo, Prince Rupert and Sardis. At the time, treatments for tuberculosis were not well developed and particularly painful. There were also reports of physical and sexual abuse at the facilities.