Concerning the latest mission school scandal in Kamloops, B.C., those Catholic members of clergy (in that era) believed that in order to save the souls of the Natives, it was their duty to God, to convert the Natives to Catholicism, and that converting the children, was the best place to start.
Religion is what caused the problem to exist in the first place. It's known as "Missionary" work, and many devotees of divisive religions suffered, and many still suffer, the same mentality of, "God wants us to give others the good news of his truth, or to die trying."
How sad, that only human animals suffer from such thought processes. If we believed (as did the scientist Stephen Hawking, before he died,) that the universe always existed, we would then conclude that the universe never was created. That mentality would do away with urges to indoctrinate others to one's own personal version of spiritual truth. Humans would still harm and kill each other, but no more would they be motivated to do it, in the guise of serving a holy god.
June Vandermark
McBride