Toys and pink flags are seen placed on the ground to mark suspected child or infant graves in Beauval, Saskatchewan, Canada, on Aug 31, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

OTTAWA - In late May 2021, remains of 215 indigenous children were found in Canada, smashing the nation's hypocritical facade and stunning the world.

Two years after the suspected unmarked graves were identified at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, thousands of burials were found at former Indian residential school sites across the country.

A total of 93 potential unmarked child and infant graves have been uncovered at the former Beauval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan in central Canada.

"This is not a final number. It breaks my heart that there are likely more," English River First Nation chief Jenny Wolverine said, revealing the facts during a news conference.

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"We were not sure what to expect and what we would find. But we did know the stories that were shared over generations about the treatment of the students and those students who never returned home," she said.

In the village where the school was located, local residents told Xinhua that colonialism and human rights abuses behind the residential school system have been challenging Canada.

Too scared to say 

Patrick Djonaire, a 65-year-old survivor of Beauval Indian Residential School, shared his harsh experience in the school. He attended the school at eight and graduated, having got no guts to tell his parents the bad things.

Toys and pink flags are seen placed on the ground to mark suspected child or infant graves in Beauval, Saskatchewan, Canada, on Aug 31, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

Our people are still suffering, our youths are suffering, our children are still being born into very dysfunctional families that were created because of the IRS (Indian Residential School) system, so now we have a whole host of problems.

Dawn McIntyre, Descendant of a survivor in Saskatchewan

"I never told my parents how school was, because we were scared, because the priests and the nuns, the Catholic people ran the schools. So sins were never told in public," he said. "I was scared to say."

READ MORE: Canada reaches agreements to compensate indigenous children

He even witnessed one of his friends probably molested by a priest. "It's a sexual assault. It was scary like those other things and I didn't want to mention it to people. Like to this day, I still hold it."

Djonaire said he became an angry person thinking about the negative impact.

"Every time I see a priest or a French-speaking person, I get scared, I get nervous. It's like you have to pay attention all the time," he said.

Djonaire said that although he went to Northern Teacher Education, he couldn't be a teacher when he was 26 after a job in a mining company. "I couldn't manage those children. I couldn't manage those children like the way those nuns and those priests managed us," he said.

People still suffering

Dawn McIntyre, a descendant of a survivor in Saskatchewan, said they have all attended the residential school as part of their lives.

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"Through generations, we've all heard stories. We knew that the children were disciplined harshly and as we got older we learned more and more stories about physical and sexual abuse," said McIntyre, who is a Cree woman from the Canoe Lake Cree First Nation and lives in La Plonge Reserve, part of the English River First Nation.

"Our people are still suffering, our youths are suffering, our children are still being born into very dysfunctional families that were created because of the IRS (Indian Residential School) system, so now we have a whole host of problems."

Toys and pink flags are seen placed on the ground to mark suspected child or infant graves in Beauval, Saskatchewan, Canada, on Aug 31, 2023. (PHOTO / XINHUA)

She explained that when children were taken away from their families they didn't learn family values and how to raise their own children.

"People who've been subjected to abuse will grow up and often maybe cannot cope," she said, adding that they turned to other ways of coping and it has led to a lot of violence and addictions in the communities.

READ MORE: 'More than 160 graves found near ex-indigenous school' in Canada

"It continues to go through generations and it continues to snowball and it takes a really great deal of effort for a person to lift themselves out of that."

Loss of identities

Candyce Paul, who is married to a survivor from the residential school, said the elders from the past were comfortable in their own being and their own identity but the generations that went to the residential school weren't.

Paul has lived in northern Saskatchewan for more than four decades with her husband, Marius Paul.

"There was so much loss of culture, identities and language," she said. "They were told you're not as good as the white man and then the whole white man system is imposed on him."

Paul said it's taking generations to heal and people are relearning their ways.

"We want the government to acknowledge those deaths and those wrongdoings, whether those missing people are people who died under questionable circumstances, or they just weren't recorded."

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Over 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were separated from their families and forced to attend government-funded schools between the 1870s and 1997.

In 2015, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission appointed by the Canadian government concluded that the children were physically and sexually abused and died in the schools.

While it has documented at least 4,100 deaths, the commission said the real numbers may never be fully known.