Special interlocutor calls for Indigenous-led investigation into missing children
Kimberly Murray presented her final report with 42 ‘obligations’ for an Indigenous-led Reparations Framework
An empty chair sits on the stage at the last National Gathering on Unmarked Burials in Gatineau, Que., to honour and remember the children who never made it home. (Photo by Kierstin Williams)
A final report on missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites at residential schools is calling for the federal government to establish an Indigenous-led commission to investigate missing and disappeared children with funding for a 20-year mandate.
“Canada has a legal and moral obligation to ensure that a full investigation is conducted into the deaths of these children,” said special interlocutor Kimberly Murray.
Murray, a Mohawk lawyer who was appointed by the federal government to the position in 2022, presented her final report Tuesday at a gathering with residential school survivors and advocates in Gatineau, Que.
She said the commission should respect Indigenous sovereignty and be governed by Indigenous law.
Her two-year mandate was to provide recommendations for a legal framework for the treatment of unmarked graves and burial sites of children associated with former residential schools.
Murray acknowledged the strength of survivors to share their truth for many decades and efforts to hold governments to account.
“The greatest and most important obligation that we all have is to the survivors,” she told the gathering.
“They must be honoured and acknowledged for their courage, determination, and advocacy to raise public awareness about the truths of unmarked burials of children.”
The two-volume report laid out 42 “obligations” for governments, churches, and other institutions for truth, accountability, justice and reconciliation to implement an Indigenous-led Reparations Framework.
Murray said that in the report, she opted to identify “legal, moral, and ethical obligations” rather than recommendations because “governments often do not implement recommendations.”
As special interlocutor, she met with residential school survivors and Indigenous community members from across the country over two years to discuss investigations into unmarked graves and protection and preservation of burial sites.
Searches for unmarked graves began across Canada after ground-penetrating radar found 215 potential unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in Tkemlúps te Secwépemc Nation in 2021.
In January, Murray travelled to Iqaluit for the sixth gathering, held at the Aqsarniit hotel, where she heard the northern perspective of survivors of residential schools and tuberculosis sanitoriums.
More than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their homes and forced to attend the government-funded institutions over a period of around 150 years.
There were 13 residential schools that operated in Nunavut. Kivalliq Hall in Rankin Inlet, which closed in 1997, was Canada’s last residential school according to Nunavut Tunngavik Inc., the organization responsible for ensuring obligations to Inuit under the Nunavut Agreement are met.
Toward the end of her remarks, Murray urged the federal government to honour the 42 obligations identified in the final report and stated that “every child matters in life and in death.”
Wonder , how much $$$$ is this going to cost
The need for high end Lawyers, or a law team, with cooperation from the Federal Government may be essential to moving forward. The issue had national scope and must be resolved. asap.
Give someone untethered power!
Everyone should read book call “Grave Mistake”
I fail to see how this will assist reconciliation.
I wager, it will cause a greater rift than there already is.
Follow the money. Chasing this unfound narrative is big business for a select few elite consulting firms and families
“The definition of misinformation has metastasized to encompass not just incontrovertible lies, delusions… but also facts and arguments that are simply inconvenient to the culturally dominant class.” – Quillette Editorial Board
I read an interesting letter by the owner of the Washington Post yesterday, Jeff Bezos (Isn’t this your model, Nunatsiaq, the Washington Post of the North?). In it Bezos noted that among professions journalists rank lowest in terms of trust and reputation.
Why?
Bezos argued that regardless of their commitment to reporting accurately, readers must ‘believe’ a commitment to truth exists.
By shutting down any serious commentary here, allowing only marginally loony, anodyne non-sense about “following the money” Nunatsiaq abets the illusion that there are no serious critiques. Your readers know better than that, and we expect you do too.
Selective censoring shows priority to something other than impartiality, and by consequence “truth.” Ironic perhaps, given how this publication loves to pretend that is its guidepost.
It is worth noting that in a news release last May the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc no longer referred to specter of 215 graves, but to 215 anomalies. We’ve come a long way from ‘Mass graves.’
Oddly, some media refuse to acknowledge how this story has evolved and changed over time.