WARNING: This story contains distressing details.
A southwestern Manitoba First Nation connected with visitors from Colombia this weekend to better inform its ongoing research into unmarked graves at a former residential school.
Sioux Valley Dakota Nation hosted delegates from the Committee for the Rights of the Victims of Bojayá on Saturday for an event at Brandon University called “Knowledge Exchange: Conversations about Community-Led Exhumations, Identification, and Final Burial in Bojayá, Colombia.”
In May 2002, 102 people — including at least 48 children — were killed at the Apostle Catholic Church in Bojayá, Colombia. At the time, army officials said fighting broke out between the leftist Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and rival right-wing paramilitary groups.