Calls are growing louder in Canada for church-goers to stay at home as a sign of solidarity with the country’s natives, amid growing discoveries of the bodies of indigenous children on the grounds of former church-run residential schools.

The Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, Kinistin Saulteaux, the Shoal Lake Cree Nation, and others are also angry with the Catholic Church over other issues related to a campaign of brutal assimilation for more than a century until 1996. 

First Nation leaders are demanding the Catholic Church pay the entire $25 million settlement that it has promised to pay residential school survivors in 2005. To date, only $4 million has been settled. In 2016, attorneys for the Catholic Church took the case to court and argued that the deal was only obligated the church to only make their ‘best efforts’ for the total amount to be compensated. A judge ruled in the Church’s favor.

Critics argue the government should foot the bill since it funded the boarding schools.

They also say it is upsetting that the church officials claim they don’t have money for the survivors but at the same time building new and renovating new churches across the country. The First Nations are also calling on the church to release all documents related to the residential schools and for Pope Francis to come to Canada and make an apology.

The country is confronting a dark history. At least three sites, near church-run boarding schools, containing more than 1000 unmarked graves, mostly children, who had been subject to torture, physical and sexual abuse including rape; abuse that essentially led to their death, have been found.

Experts say the discoveries are just the tip of the iceberg in Canada’s 154-year history when colonialists began wiping out the natives in a ‘cultural genocide’. In other developments, statues of Queen Victoria and Queen Elizabeth second have been toppled while police say at least 10 churches have been vandalized amid growing anger.