KAMLOOPS, Canada – On the verge of tears, Stephanie Gutierrez helped place 215 tiny pairs of children’s shoes on the steps of the Kamloops courthouse in western Canada — a gesture that the indigenous woman said symbolized her intent “to stand strong for my people.”
A week after the remains of more than 200 students were discovered in unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, approximately a dozen indigenous Canadians, mostly women, gathered at the building Wednesday to demand justice via the memorial.
Each pair of shoes represents one of the children who died at the boarding school, set up more than a century ago to forcibly assim…
Keep on reading: Hundreds of shoes highlight horrors of Canadian indigenous schools