Unmarked graves of Indigenous children: Queen Victoria statue toppled in Canada by protesters

Statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth II were toppled in Canada’s Manitoba by protesters amid outrage over the recent discovery of hundreds of unmarked graves of Indigenous children.

Protesters who gathered at Manitoba legislature grounds on Thursday pulled down the statues and defaced them on Canada Day on 1 July, a national holiday to mark the country’s confederation.

One person was arrested as the situation turned chaotic. The circumstances are unknown but the man was reportedly angry at the crowd for pulling down the statue of Queen Victoria.

Protesters wore orange shirts to honour the Indigenous children whose lives were lost in notorious residential schools during the late 1800s until the 1990s.

The protesters also covered the Queen Victoria statue with red paint and left a sign that read, “We were children once. Bring them home.”

This comes amid growing outrage after at least 750 unmarked graves were found at Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan and another 215 were found buried in Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia.

At least 150,000 Indigenous children were separated from their families to attend government-funded, church-run boarding schools as part of a campaign by the government to forcefully assimilate Indigenous children into Canadian society.

Belinda Vandenbroeck, a survivor of a residential school, expressed anger at the queen for giving away the land.

“This queen is the one that gave our land away just like that to her merry gentleman — her fur traders,” she told CBC news..

“So I really have no place for her in my heart. I never did. She means nothing to me except that her policies and her colonialism is what is dictating us right to this minute as you and I speak,” she said.

During the reign of Queen Victoria, Canada entered the Confederation and signed treaties with Indigenous Peoples. The residential schools policy was also enacted during the monarch’s rule from 1837 till her death in 1901.

The discoveries of graves overshadowed Canada Day celebrations as people asked to cancel the festivities usually marked with fireworks and celebrations.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau acknowledged the country’s failures and injustices on the federal holiday.

“The horrific findings of the remains of hundreds of children at the sites of former residential schools in British Columbia and Saskatchewan have rightly pressed us to reflect on our country’s historic failures, and the injustices that still exist for Indigenous peoples and many others in Canada,” he said in a statement.

“We as Canadians must be honest with ourselves about our past,” he said.