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Two back-to-back discoveries this year of the unmarked graves of hundreds of Indigenous children are sending shockwaves across Canada and throughout North American Indigenous communities. The children, who were students at residential boarding schools from the mid-1800s to mid-1900s, died far from home after having suffered brutal abuse and neglect. For decades, Indigenous children in both Canada and the United States were taken away from their families and sent to boarding schools, where they were forced to assimilate to Euro-American culture.

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Canadian authorities are investigating multiple fires that destroyed four Catholic churches on Indigenous land in the past week.

They are the latest in a string of recent events affecting the country’s Indigenous communities. The churches were destroyed as Canada confronts its history of systemic abuse of Indigenous communities with the recent discoveries of hundreds of human remains at the sites of two former boarding schools, which were operated by Catholic religious groups.

Police and firefighters responded early Saturday morning to a fire at the St. Ann’s Catholic Church on Upper Similkameen Indian Band land. Within the hour, someone called police to report that the Chopaka Catholic Church on Lower Similkameen Indian Band land was also burning, said Sgt. Jason Bayda of the Penticton South Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

A field near the former Marieval Indian Residential School, where the Cowessess First Nation say they found the unmarked graves of hundreds of people, is seen near Grayson, Saskatchewan, Canada in a still image from video June 24, 2021.

Authorities described the fires on Saturday and two other fires that took place last week as suspicious, Bayda said in a statement. The investigations are ongoing with no arrests or charges, police said.