'It's Canada's history' - Trudeau meets school survivors
STORY: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Wednesday, March 30, met with the Williams Lake First Nation in British Columbia which had said 93 unmarked graves of children were found at the site of the former St. Joseph's Mission Residential School in Williams Lake.
Trudeau spoke with Williams Lake First Nation Chief Willie Sellars and also survivors of abuse at the residential school.
The visit comes as survivors of Canada's residential schools this week asked Pope Francis to guarantee unfettered access to Church records on the institutions where indigenous children were abused and their culture denied.
Francis met for about an hour each with representatives of the Métis and Inuit nations on Monday, the first of four meetings this week with Canada's native peoples in what both sides have called a process of healing and reconciliation.
Canada's indigenous peoples and the Canadian government want the pope to visit Canada to make an apology there for the Church's role in the schools.
The scandal at residential schools broke out again last year with the discovery of the remains of 215 children at the former Indian Residential School in Kamloops in the Western Canadian province of British Columbia.
The discovery at the school, which closed in 1978, reopened old wounds and brought fresh demands for accountability. Hundreds more unmarked burial sites have been found since.
