More than 150,000 Indigenous children attended 140 residential schools across Canada over more than a century Memorial lists over 4,000 children who died; former Truth and Reconciliation Commission chair estimates toll at 6,000 or more Canada marks Truth and Reconciliation Day as searches for unmarked graves and missing children continue Canada marked its National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Wednesday, commemorating Indigenous children who died or disappeared while attending residential schools and survivors of a system that separated more than 150,000 children from their families over more than a century. For Canada’s more than 1.8 million Indigenous people — about 5% of the population according to the 2021 census — Sept. 30 is also Orange Shirt Day, symbolized by an orange shirt taken from six-year-old residential school survivor Phyllis Webstad in 1973.

Webstad had arrived at St. Joseph Mission Residential School in British Columbia wearing a new orange shirt bought by her grandmother. School staff took the shirt along with the rest of her clothes, and she never saw it again.

Orange Shirt Day began in 2013, while Sept. 30 became the federal National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in 2021. The government says the orange shirt now symbolizes the loss of culture, freedom and self-esteem experienced by many Indigenous children.

Over 150,000 children sent to residential schools The residential school system stretched back to the 19th century and continued into the 1990s. Canada’s federal government recognizes 140 former residential schools under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and at least 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children attended the institutions.

The schools were funded and regulated by the federal government but largely operated by churches. About 60% were run by Roman Catholic organizations, about 30% by the Anglican Church and roughly 10% by the United and Presbyterian churches, according to records cited in a report on the residential school system.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) said the residential school system was designed to assimilate Indigenous children by separating them from their families, languages and cultures and replacing Indigenous ways of life with European-Canadian Christian norms, a policy it calls “cultural genocide.”In 1920, residential school attendance became compulsory for many First Nations children between the ages of seven and 15. Authorities could prosecute parents who refused to send their children and, in some cases, police were used to return children to the schools.

Canada’s first prime minister, John A. Macdonald, laid out the assimilationist reasoning in Parliament in 1883, saying a child educated while remaining with an Indigenous family was “simply a savage who can read and write.”He argued that Indigenous children should instead be removed from parental influence and placed in industrial schools.

The system was chronically underfunded and overcrowded. Survivors described physical and sexual abuse, harsh punishment for speaking Indigenous languages, inadequate food and medical care, and prolonged separation from their families. Thousands died, many never returned home The exact number of children who perished at the schools remains unknown.

The NCTR’s National Student Memorial includes more than 4,000 named and unnamed children identified through records and family and survivor accounts. In September 2025 alone, researchers verified 1,143 additional names and updated information on more than 1,000 other students, underscoring that the record remains incomplete.

Former TRC Chairman Murray Sinclair estimated that 6,000 or more children may have died. Disease, malnutrition, neglect, fires, accidents, violence and other causes were among the factors documented in residential school deaths. Many children who died were not returned to their families.

The TRC found that students were often buried in cemeteries on school grounds or in nearby church, reserve or municipal cemeteries. Indian Affairs officials opposed transporting bodies home in many cases because of the cost, leaving some children buried hundreds or thousands of kilometers from their communities.

Records of some cemeteries were incomplete, while markers — often made of wood — disappeared over time and some burial grounds became overgrown, abandoned or difficult to locate. Search for unmarked graves continues That history has driven a new wave of Indigenous-led searches using archival research, survivor testimony, ground-penetrating radar, LiDAR scanning, human-remains detection dogs and other methods.

The issue drew international attention in 2021 when the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc announced preliminary findings indicating more than 200 potential burials, initially reported as 215, at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia. The First Nation stressed that the investigation was continuing. In February 2026, it said ground-penetrating radar, LiDAR and detection-dog findings overlapped in several areas and that investigators had found signatures resembling burials, while some other locations had been ruled out.

Ground-penetrating radar does not by itself identify human remains. It detects disturbances or features beneath the soil that can warrant further investigation, meaning radar anomalies and potential burial sites should not be reported as confirmed graves without additional evidence. Search work is now taking place across Canada.

As of January 2026, Ottawa had 164 funding agreements worth about C$280 million ($196.7 million) with Indigenous communities and partners for efforts to locate, document and memorialize burial sites.

Federal briefing material said ground searches reported under funded projects in seven communities had identified more than 370 subsurface anomalies and confirmed 88 unmarked graves. Those figures cover reported work under the program and are not a national total.

In the 2025-2026 fiscal year alone, the federal community support fund approved 52 projects worth C$37.4 million, including 24 involving technical field investigations.

The work has also led to the return of remains. In October 2025, the remains of a child who attended the Fort Resolution residential school in the Northwest Territories in the 1940s were identified and repatriated to her home community for reburial beside her mother.

Access to records But communities say access to records remains crucial. The NCTR continues to build its National Student Memorial and a repository of residential school burial sites, while Indigenous communities seek government, church, hospital and other records that could help establish what happened to children who never returned home.

Tk’emlups te Secwepemc said this year that its investigation was still being hindered by restrictions on government records and slow access to Roman Catholic Church material covering the Kamloops school’s 88 years of operation.

The broader reckoning grew out of the TRC, which gathered nearly 7,000 survivor and family statements and examined about 5 million documents before ending its mandate in 2015. It issued 94 Calls to Action, including six specifically addressing missing children and burial information. Those efforts continue beyond formal government programs.

At Loyalist College in Belleville, Ontario, near Tyendinaga Mohawk Territory, the school this week unveiled a large timeline installation called Truth Before Reconciliation, tracing colonial policies, their effects on Indigenous peoples and Indigenous resistance.

“This timeline was created to help us tell a story about how colonial policies have shaped Indigenous experiences in Canada,” Indigenous Studies professor Katharine Davis said.

On Parliament Hill in Ottawa on Wednesday, First Nations, Inuit and Metis residential school survivors raised the Survivors’ Flag in memory of the children who never returned home — five years after Canada first formally observed the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation.