The purpose of this study is to determine the association of face-to-face contact with biological parents and externalized behaviors, while taking into account placement instability and foster parent interactive sensitivity.

Canada’s first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation will be held on September 30th, 2021.

The U.S. and Canada are starting to face their history of forcing indigenous children into abusive boarding schools. Here's everything you need to know:

What was the school's goal?

Simply put, cultural genocide. In the 19th and 20th centuries, the U.S. government and religious leaders used compulsory boarding schools to force young Native Americans to give up the languages and cultures of their ancestors, which were considered self-evidently inferior to a Christian, Western-style upbringing. Boarding schools were made mandatory for Native American children in 1891. This often meant forced separation from their families and communities. And because these schools were underfunded, crowded, and often unsanitary, thousands of students died of disease. Canada also coerced at least 150,000 indigenous children into a network of residential schools that were mostly run by the Catholic Church; last June, researchers uncovered 1,148 unmarked graves on the grounds of three schools. U.S. Interior Secretary Deb Haaland, a member of the Laguna Pueblo people whose maternal grandparents were forced to board, has opened an investigation into America's boarding-school policy. "This attempt to wipe out Native identity, language, and culture," she wrote in a June Washington Post article, has "never been appropriately addressed."

Former Canadian senator Murray Sinclair and a group representing survivors of the Sixties Scoop are calling for a federal inquiry into the actions and policies of governments that led to thousands of Indigenous children being taken from their homes over four decades and placed with non-Indigenous families.

Kisha Supernant has brought radar technology to the search for burial sites in Canada while she works to reshape her profession’s relationship with Indigenous communities.

In this episode of Full Story, a podcast from the Guardian, Rachel Humphreys speaks to Barry Kennedy, a survivor of the Marieval residential school where 751 bodies were found.

"The revelations that there are hundreds of indigenous children buried in unmarked graves at the sites of former residential schools have shaken Canadians," says this article from BBC News. "They have also increased calls for changes to the country's foster care system, where indigenous children are vastly overrepresented"

"Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan is the first Indigenous group in Canada to ink an agreement with Ottawa for federal funding of locally controlled child welfare services since the Act Respecting First Nations, Inuit and Métis Children, Youth and Families came into force last year," says this article from CBC News.

In this video from the Guardian, Leyland Cecco explains how the discovery of more than 1,000 unmarked graves on the grounds of former church-run residential schools in Canada is just the tip of the iceberg in uncovering Canada's traumatic colonial past.

"The unmarked graves of more than 751 people have been discovered at the site of the former Marieval Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan, after hundreds of remains were found in other provinces in the past month," says this article from Politico.