Lower Similkameen Indian Band Chief Keith Crow said he received a call at about 4 am PT that the Chopaka church was on fire. By the time he arrived about 30 minutes later, it had burned to the ground, reported CBC News.
A child's dress is hung on a cross, near the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, Canada. Pic/AFP
In a written statement, RCMP said both fires started within an hour of each other early Saturday morning. They said the Chopaka church fire had spread to nearby brush, but BC Wildfire crews were able to attend to it before it spread. Meanwhile, Crow said that the fire in his community is still under investigation, adding that the fact it came on the heels of overnight fires that destroyed two other churches in the Okanagan earlier this week is suspicious.
"There's got to be something more to it," he said. "It's not just coincidence." RCMP said they're treating Saturday's fires as suspicious, and investigating any possible links to the Okanagan church fires, reported CBC News. The RCMP on Monday said that the Sacred Heart church on Penticton Indian Band lands and St. Gregory's church on Osoyoos Indian Band lands burned to the ground and police were treating the fires as suspicious.
The incident comes days after 751 unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school for indigenous children in Canada's Saskatchewan province, the second such discovery here in less than a month as the country confronts one of the darkest chapters in its history. The discovery came less than a month after the mass burial place of 215 children, some as young as three years old, was found at the site of a school, closed in 1978, near the Canadian town of Kamloops. Following the discovery of graves, a probe has been opened into the circumstances and the accountability of these fatalities. Under the Canadian schooling system for indigenous children during the 19th century, at least 150,000 students were forcibly separated from their families and incarcerated in residential schools. It is estimated that up to 6,000 children could have died in such schools.
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