Challenges for Special Interlocutor

Fredy Peccerelli says Indigenous communities can and should develop own forensic anthropology capacity

Warning: This story contains distressing details.

CBC News: The head of a Guatemalan forensic anthropology group is offering his support for Indigenous communities in Canada as they investigate unmarked burials linked to residential schools. When he was nine, Fredy Peccerelli’s family fled Guatemala’s civil war to New York City after his father was threatened by government death squads, but he later resolved to return.

Today, after leading searches for the war’s mostly Mayan victims for 26 years, he’s known as one of Guatemala’s foremost experts in the field, and he’s willing to share his expertise with Indigenous communities here. “You’re not alone,” he said.

“Your Mayan brothers and sisters have gone through this for the last many decades searching for their loved ones.”

Peccerelli is the executive director and co-founder of the Forensic Anthropology Foundation of Guatemala (FAFG), that travels the country applying a multidisciplinary victim-identification system to seek, exhume, identify and return remains.

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He was struck by the detection of more than 200 suspected unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia in 2021 and felt obliged to reach out. “I immediately thought that the First Nations could use, should use and can develop their own forensic capacity,” he said.

The disappeared

Guatemala is a mountainous Central American country, about one-tenth the size of Ontario, situated on Mexico’s southern border. Its civil war began in 1960 and ended in 1996, pitting the country’s military against leftist guerilla groups.

As part of the peace process, the United Nations-backed Commission for Historical Clarification was established to seek truth and reconciliation in Guatemala. In 1999, the commission concluded agents of the Guatemalan state committed acts of genocide against Mayan groups, finding the military treated the entire Mayan population as an enemy of the state.

The commission found roughly one in five of the conflict’s more than 200,000 dead were subjected to human rights violations like arbitrary execution, forced disappearance and clandestine burial. 

They’re known as the disappeared. 

Eighty-three percent of fully identified victims, the commission said, were Mayan but in 2014 Guatemala’s congress rejected the genocide finding and passed a non-binding resolution denying it.  The FAFG recovered more than 8,000 victims, of whom 3,700 have been identified. What follows is inhumation: when the bones come home. 

Once they arrive, an expert places them anatomically in a coffin as the community bears witness, a heavy and emotional process, but one that’s dignified and provides a sense of closure. “It’s almost as if the person is appearing before your eyes again,” Peccerelli said. “It humanizes the victim and the family in a way that is difficult to explain.”

Outreach prompted by Kamloops

Peccerelli is tied to Canada through honorary doctorates from Canadian universities. He visited Canada twice following the Kamloops announcement and still watches reports closely.

Truth is what tortures us. When we don’t have it, our minds just find explanations for why.- Fredy Peccerelli

Kimberly Murray, the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves associated with Indian residential schools, invited Pecerelli to give a keynote address at a gathering in Edmonton last fall. Following the event, she suggested the FAFG’s Indigenous-led approach offers a model for communities here. She cited it approvingly in a recent brief to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

• Winnipeg-based group ‘deeply concerned’ by federal contract with international group to advise on graves
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Murray noted the ongoing debate about how, if and when to repatriate remains is one of several barriers communities leading searches face. Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 concluded the federal establishment and operation of residential schools was central to Canada’s policy of cultural genocide. 

An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children attended the schools, which for more than a century aimed to strip them of their culture, corrode family ties and assimilate them into mainstream society.

In a supplementary report, the commission said it was unable to fully investigate unmarked burials and cemeteries. As communities now complete that work, success will mean different things to different people, Peccerelli said. Some may choose to leave the earth undisturbed, but the Guatemalan experience taught him that families, more than anything, want truth.

“Truth is what tortures us,” he said. “When we don’t have it, our minds just find explanations for why things happened, and what happened.”

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour service at 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat. 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brett Forester, Reporter

Brett Forester is a reporter with CBC Indigenous in Ottawa. He is a member of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southern Ontario who previously worked as a journalist with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

NationTalk: CTV News: OTTAWA –  As some private landowners restrict residential school survivors from performing ceremony or searching their properties for possible unmarked graves, a federal minister says Ottawa is open to legislating new protections for the possible burial sites.

Kimberly Murray, who was appointed by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government to provide it with advice on how to handle such sites, testified before the Senate on Tuesday about her role and the main concerns she says she has heard from Indigenous communities. “We need access to land,” Murray told senators at a committee hearing. “This is what keeps me awake many nights, thinking about how some things could escalate.”

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She said there is currently no federal law in place to protect suspected gravesites or grant communities access to land that is privately owned but is believed to be home to unmarked graves. When residential schools were closed, Murray said, the lands they were located on were not turned back over to First Nations or other Indigenous communities — “the rightful landholders,” as Murray put it.

Speaking at a separate event, Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller told reporters that many former sites are located on provincial Crown land, and there is “an immense amount of complexity” around who controls such areas. While some landowners have shown “good faith” in their willingness to help communities, others have not wanted to give up their property or have increased the purchase price when it comes to surrendering their lands, he said.

“There are potential conflict points.” Miller said the government is open to legislating protections of such sites and is awaiting advice from Murray’s office.

The final report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, which spent more than five years investigating the residential school system, says that more than 150,000 First Nations, Metis and Inuit children were forced to attended the government-funded church-run institutions.

It estimated that more than 6,000 children died at these facilities. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, which archives testimony and other records from that period, maintains a student memorial register that includes more than 4,000 recorded names. However, many experts believe the number to be much higher.

Murray said Tuesday that some landowners have refused to provide access to their properties “even to do ceremony, let alone to search the grounds,” adding that her office has had to write letters and meet with landowners to try and convince them otherwise. “We have landowners that have campers on top of the burials of children, known burials,” Murray said. “We don’t have any law to put a stop to this.”

In her testimony, Murray did not elaborate on specifics, but told senators such lands ought to be protected. She said that while provinces have various laws that protect lands for different reasons, these are often not enforced and are unlikely to provide cohesive protection for unmarked graves. “We have a big gap federally in the legislation.”

Murray said the only recourse a survivor or community currently has is to go to court.

She pointed to a recent case in Quebec, where a judge granted an injunction after a group of elders known as Mohawk Mothers said the bodies of Indigenous patients of the Allan Memorial Institute and the Royal Victoria Hospital were buried at a site McGill University had slated for redevelopment.

The judge granted Murray intervener status in the case and ultimately ruled that the parties needed to discuss a plan to search the site for graves. “Do we have to go to court to get injunctions to stop development on lands where there are burials?” Murray asked senators Tuesday. “There’s got to be a better way.”

Murray was appointed to her role last June, fulfilling a promise made by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government that it would seek independent advice on how to help Indigenous communities that want to search for unmarked graves.

First Nations from across Western Canada and in parts of Ontario have been conducting such searches. In May 2021, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc Nation announced it had detected 215 possible unmarked graves at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C. That number sent waves of shock, grief and anger rippling through the country and saw Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities renew calls for federal and church authorities responsible for the system to be held accountable.

But nearly two years later, Murray said many Indigenous communities are still battling denialism. “Every time an announcement of anomalies or reflections or recoveries are made, communities are being inundated by people emailing them and phoning them and attacking them and saying, ‘This didn’t happen,”‘ she told senators.

“I sit here and tell you: this happened. I have seen the records. I have seen the photographs of children in coffins. We need to all fight this denialism and it shouldn’t be left to the survivors to have to do that.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published March 21, 2023.

If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419, or the Indian Residential School Survivors Society toll-free line at 1-800-721-0066.

Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.RELATED IMAGES

The Survivors’ Flag hangs to honour Indigenous Peoples who were forced to attend residential schools, on the grounds of the legislature in Victoria, B.C., on Sept. 28, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Chad Hipolito

Author

Stephanie Taylor, The Canadian Press, Staff

Ottawa announced contract with International Commission on Missing Persons in February

CBC News: A group dedicated to supporting Indigenous communities as they look for children who went missing at residential schools says it will not participate in an engagement process on DNA collection to identify unmarked graves at the former school sites.

In a statement released Monday, the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials said it is worried by the federal government’s decision to hire an organization based in the Netherlands to do the work — and the decision happened without consultation.  “We remain deeply concerned that such an important and sensitive process has been entrusted to a non-Indigenous organization with no prior history of working with residential school survivors,” the statement read. 

The national advisory committee is an independent body working under the guidance of a Circle of Survivors. It is chaired by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and co-administered by the NCTR and the federal department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs.

Committee member Harley Crowshoe, a Blackfoot elder from the Piikani Nation in southern Alberta, said the federal government failed to consult with the group before hiring the Netherlands-based organization.  “If it’s not Indigenous-led, how do you feel the impact of our families being at residential school and experiencing the pain and the abuse?” Crowshoe said. 

The federal government contracted the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) to do outreach and engagement with Indigenous communities about identification and repatriation of remains from unmarked graves at former residential schools, according to a government news release from February. 

CBC News contacted Indigenous Services Canada about the decision to hire the ICMP but did not receive a statement by time of publishing. The ICMP will receive roughly $2 million to carry out the work. Communities do not have to work with the ICMP, the February news release said. 

The special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials at residential schools and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation have expressed concerns with the contract.

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The February news release also said “local Indigenous facilitators will lead every step of the process” as the ICMP works with interested communities. The statement from the national advisory committee said “a federal engagement process aimed at developing a common national strategy on DNA, identification, and repatriation for residential schools missing children must do more than simply employ Indigenous staff: it must be Indigenous-led and survivor-led to ensure that no further harm is done.”

“We need to listen to the circle of survivors because their wisdom is sacred,” Crowshoe said.

The advisory committee includes experts in archival research, ground searches, forensic police investigations and trauma, which Crowshoe said leaves them “best-positioned” to support survivors and communities through the process of repatriating remains. 

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or online at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Samantha Schwientek, Samantha Schwientek is a reporter with CBC Indigenous based in amiskwacîwâskahikan (Edmonton). She is a member of the Cayuga nation of the Six Nations of the Grand River, and previously worked at CBC Nova Scotia. 

Trigger warning: readers may be triggered by the recount of Indian Residential Schools. To access a 24-hour National Crisis Line, call: 1-866-925-4419. Community Assistance Program (CAP) can be accessed for citizens of the Anishinabek Nation: 1-800-663-1142.

NationTalk: ANISHINABEK NATION HEAD OFFICE (February 23, 2023) – Anishinabek Nation leadership is confounded by the recent announcement of a $2 million dollar deal between Canada and the International Commission on Missing Persons organization. The arrangement is structured to produce a report giving recommendations on identifying and uncovering human remains at the sites of former Indian Residential Schools.

Anishinabek Nation Indian Residential School portfolio holder and Anishinabek Nation Lake Huron Regional Deputy Grand Council Chief Travis Boissoneau expresses bewilderment on the recent federal government decision to utilize an international group when there is a Special Interlocutor already functioning and carrying out these same goals.

“We shouldn’t be finding out about this deal after it is already in the process of being finalized. Where was the consultation and engagement with First Nations and Survivors of Indian Residential Schools and their families to determine if this was necessary and supported?” says Regional Deputy Grand Council Chief Boissoneau. “Why not further support these Indigenous leaders who are well-known and trusted across the country?”

Kimberly Murray was appointed in 2022 as the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites to make recommendations for a new federal legal framework to ensure the respectful and culturally-appropriate treatment of unmarked graves and burial sites of children associated with former Indian Residential Schools.

“We are uncomfortable with the fact that Canada did not follow the recommendations of the jointly appointed Indigenous experts that are just beginning their work. Is the federal government impatient to close this dark chapter by seeking to outsource reconciliation?” asks Anishinabek Nation Grand Council Chief Niganobe. “The concept of reconciliation is difficult to contemplate when we are not yet done reclaiming the remains of Anishinabek children whose lives were unjustly and inhumanely ended by genocide. The act of remembering our ancestors is part of traditional law – and we need to reconnect with their spirits to move forward with any possibility of healing intergenerational trauma.”

The Anishinabek Nation is a political advocate for 39 member First Nations across Ontario, representing approximately 65,000 citizens. The Anishinabek Nation is the oldest political organization in Ontario and can trace its roots back to the Confederacy of Three Fires, which existed long before European contact.

–      30     –

For more information, please contact:
Laura Barrios
Communications Coordinator
Anishinabek Nation
E-mail: laura.barrios@anishinabek.ca
Phone: 705-498-1957

$2M deal with International Commission on Missing Persons comes with significant oversight

CBC News: The Canadian government will heavily supervise an international group hired to provide Indigenous communities with options on unmarked burials at former residential school sites, a contract released Friday shows. Publication of Ottawa’s $2-million technical arrangement with The Hague-based International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) follows criticism from Kimberly Murray, the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves.

Murray expressed concerns last week the agreement contains an unreasonable timeline, overlaps with her mandate and gives bureaucrats at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) too much power. “It’s very controlled by CIRNAC,” she said. 

The now-public contract confirms CIRNAC retains broad oversight of the commission — including the right to comment on its draft report, participate in meetings and request briefings at any time — while it operates domestically.

The ICMP works with governments and civil society groups all over the world to help locate people gone missing through armed conflict, human rights abuses, disasters and other causes.  While Murray praised the commission’s work and said it offers Indigenous communities an important option, she called the process too cozy with Ottawa.

The deal taps a CIRNAC representative, whose name is censored in the published contract, to be “responsible for all matters concerning the content of the work” the commission will carry out. That means conducting countrywide engagement with Indigenous communities on options for the identification and repatriation of missing children, including assessing interest in DNA matching and other forensic approaches, the statement of work says.

The ICMP will provide this official with bi-weekly overviews following engagement sessions, roundtable discussions and town halls. A senior government official will join the commission to offer introductory remarks at opening and closing town hall meetings.

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The commission will convene an in-person roundtable discussion of roughly 25 technical experts “with participation from CIRNAC,” the deal says. CIRNAC officials will further attend these events “as appropriate and determined by CIRNAC.” The commission agreed to identify eight regional Indigenous facilitators “with input from CIRNAC” to help.

The ICMP will provide CIRNAC with a work plan, a rolling schedule of engagement sessions, an outline of materials and various other documents. The commission will maintain regular communication with CIRNAC and “provide ad hoc written status updates” at any time.

Report can be published ‘subject to Canada’s approval’

Once all this is done, CIRNAC’s representative will get the chance to review and comment on the commission’s draft report, supplied in a format pre-determined by the government, by May 15, 2023. 

The commission will then provide its final report by June 15, 2023. The commission retains the right to publish the document “after the acceptance of the report and subject to Canada’s approval.” The ICMP agreed confidential information will stay secret.

Murray further questioned whether the commission has sufficient expertise concerning Indigenous rights, sovereignty, self-determination and protocols in a Jan. 30 submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

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• National Gathering calls for records to help in search for missing residential school children

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller and ICMP director-general Kathryne Bomberger addressed some of those concerns in their joint release Friday. “Indigenous communities across Canada are leading the difficult and important work of uncovering the truth at the sites of former residential schools, and our government will continue to support them in that process, whether they choose to use the services of the ICMP or not,” Miller said.

Bomberger said the group looks forward to meeting with Indigenous communities across Canada to explore options for identification and repatriation of remains. “The families of the missing are central to addressing the issue of missing children and unmarked burials,” she said in the release. “Their needs, knowledge and views must lead the way.”

Murray did not immediately reply to requests for comment Friday.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brett Forester, Reporter

Brett Forester is a reporter with CBC Indigenous in Ottawa. He is a member of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southern Ontario who previously worked as a journalist with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

Nishnawbe Aski Nation hosting gathering of 18 communities this week

CBC News: As searches for potential unmarked graves at former residential school sites in Canada continue, representatives of First Nations from across Ontario gathered in Thunder Bay this week to discuss best practices.

The Residential School Site Search Forum took place at the Best Western Plus Norwester Hotel and Conference Centre from Tuesday to Thursday. It included a number of addresses covering topics like investigation planning, workflow management, the limitations of ground-penetrating radar, and investigation jurisdiction and policing in site searches.

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“This gathering … is hosted by Nishnawbe Aski Nation, and their goal was to bring together the 18 communities in Ontario that are leading the work of searching for children on the former grounds of Indian residential schools and other sites,” said Kim Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children, Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites for the federal government.  “They really want to bring communities together to share best practices from other communities that may have already started their ground penetrating radar, may have already started looking for the archival records, so that they can learn from each other, and also connect communities with experts in the different areas that are important to do these searches,” Murray said.

Potential remains have been found at former residential school sites across Canada, including more than 170 “plausible burials” at the former St. Mary’s Indian Residential School in Kenora. Those findings were announced last month by Wauzhushk Onigum Nation.

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Murray was appointed special interlocutor last summer, and said her role involves meeting with survivors, community members, and community leaders to discuss the barriers they’re facing as they conduct the searches. Murray also spoke at this week’s gathering in Thunder Bay. She said it’s important to make sure the work of searching the sites is being led by survivors.

“I think all communities are trying to ensure that that the process is survivor-led so that we are not coming in and taking over and doing things to survivors again,” Murray said. “We want to make sure that we have the proper health supports in place when they gather like they’re gathering this week in Thunder Bay, and most importantly, that we hear and we listen to their voices.”

At the end of her two-year mandate, Murray will make recommendations on the creation of “a new legal framework to help protect the burial grounds of the children,” she said.

• Over 170 ‘plausible burials’ detected in search for unmarked graves at former Kenora residential school site

That’s one of her goals. She also hopes to see land that was expropriated returned to First Nations; if the land is in private hands, Murray said First Nations should be compensated. Further, Murray said records “need to be given back to First Nations communities.” “We need to get them out of these archives,” she said. “It’s about land back, records back, and protection and dignity for the children.”

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools, and those who are triggered by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Kimberly Murray flags lack of transparency on agreement to UN Indigenous rights rapporteur

CBC News: The special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials at residential schools is calling out the federal government over a deal with an international group tasked with locating missing people lost through armed conflict, human rights abuses and other causes.

Kimberly Murray says she’s “very concerned” Canada’s $2-million technical agreement with the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) lacks transparency and places the commission under the influence of bureaucrats at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC). 

She’s urging Minister Marc Miller to release the agreement so communities can see the details for themselves. “It should be made public,” Murray said. “Canada and the ICMP entered into the agreement without telling anyone that they were entering into an agreement. They didn’t actually consult with any of the national Indigenous organizations. They didn’t have any input on the contract.

“There was no transparency to it.”

• Ottawa to pay international organization $2M to advise Indigenous communities on unmarked graves
• Over 170 ‘plausible burials’ detected in search for unmarked graves at former Kenora residential school site

Based in The Hague, Netherlands, the commission will undertake countrywide outreach, offer expert information on DNA analysis and other forensic approaches, and then provide the Canadian government with a final report, Miller said in a Tuesday statement to the Canadian Press.

The group’s work will be independent and led by local Indigenous facilitators, according to Miller, but Murray said the agreement must be published so communities can confirm it. Miller’s office refused to provide a copy of the deal when asked. “Agreements and documents will be shared when appropriate to do so, with input from all parties,” his office said in a statement Thursday.

CBC News is awaiting a response from the ICMP.

Concerns feds want ‘shadow report’

Murray flagged the lack of transparency last week in a written submission to the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, who is slated to visit Canada in March.

The Jan. 30 submission said Murray has questions about ICMP’s experience and expertise concerning constitutionally protected Indigenous rights, sovereignty, self-determination, laws and protocols

She said Wednesday she wonders if Ottawa officials and politicians want a “shadow report” to have in their “back pocket” in case they don’t like the findings Indigenous-led offices like hers make.

“The commission’s developing a report that will be delivered to Canada, not the community, but to Canada,” she said. “It’s not at arm’s length. It’s very controlled by CIRNAC.”

Despite those concerns, Murray said the group does good work, adding that communities should have the option of bringing in the commission if they deem it helpful — “without Canada controlling it.”

The statement from Miller’s office said engagement and co-operation between the interlocutor, the commission, the unmarked graves national advisory committee and the Winnipeg-based National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation “is essential to seeing this work through.” “These conversations will be valuable to provide support to communities faced with very difficult decisions regarding options for consideration — should they wish, and provide the federal government recommendations on tools and supports needed.”

Questions about how data will be handled

Leah Redcrow, executive director at the Acimowin Opaspiw Society, oversees an ongoing investigation into unmarked burials at Blue Quills residential school in Alberta.

The Saddle Lake Cree Nation located what it believes is an undocumented mass grave at the site in 2004. Redcrow said it’s imperative Indigenous communities know how the international commission will handle DNA, records and any other important, sensitive data.

“Information and data sovereignty is a very important thing with these investigations,” she said. “Where is the information going to go and what is their objective? Just to get another report? That helps the government. That doesn’t help us. We have to try and repatriate remains here.”

Redcrow said her group wasn’t consulted on the agreement and agrees it should be public.

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Both the Assembly of First Nations and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami had no comment.

Métis National Council President Cassidy Caron said via statement “we were not consulted on the work that will take place with the ICMP” but that she hopes the process helps communities. “Ultimately, we are supportive of any and all processes that will assist our communities in the uncovering of unmarked graves and the work that needs to continue as we heal from the traumas of genocide and colonization,” Caron said.

Métis children often attended the same residential schools as First Nations children, though the exact number of Métis pupils is difficult to assess, the TRC said in its 2015 report, which described the system as a core element of Canada’s policy of cultural genocide.

An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children passed through the system over more than 150 years.

Support is available for anyone affected by their experience at residential schools or by the latest reports.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.

Mental health counselling and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or online at www.hopeforwellness.ca.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brett Forester, Reporter

Brett Forester is a reporter with CBC Indigenous in Ottawa. He is a member of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southern Ontario who previously worked as a journalist with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network

UN Indigenous rights expert heard ‘numerous concerns’ about deal during official visit

CBC News: The top official at the International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) wants to ease concerns the organization’s contract with the federal government could compromise its independence as it works with Indigenous communities in Canada. “I don’t have those concerns,” said Kathryne Bomberger, director-general of the Netherlands-based organization, told CBC News earlier this month. 

Canada is paying the commission $2 million to offer Indigenous communities advice on unmarked burial sites tied to former residential schools, a deal some Indigenous leaders say they didn’t know about until it was announced.

Last week, United Nations Indigenous rights rapporteur José Francisco Calí Tzay said he heard “numerous concerns” about the arrangement during his 10-day official visit to Canada that ended March 10. “I fully support Indigenous peoples’ calls for a survivor-centred, Indigenous-led investigation to mitigate against further harm,” he told reporters in Ottawa.

The deal was reportedly concluded without consulting Indigenous peoples, Calí Tzay said, adding that investigations must respect Indigenous laws and protocols concerning grieving, death and burial.

Kimberly Murray, special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials at residential schools, first questioned the deal in a written brief to the UN rapporteur in late January.

Bomberger, who spoke with CBC News during the UN envoy’s visit, said the ICMP always puts survivor groups first, and was first contacted by an Indigenous community here. The commission has helped identify the disappeared in more than 40 countries, whether lost through war, human rights abuses or natural disasters.

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In Canada, the ICMP will hold roundtable discussions, town halls and community engagement sessions before providing the federal government with a report. Among other things, the contract gives Canada the right to comment on the draft report and approve the final version before it’s published.

Bomberger said she understands why clauses like that may stir up concern given Indigenous communities’ distrust of the federal government, but she said the commission takes its independence seriously. “This is a hugely political issue in every single area I’ve ever worked,” she said.  “It’s a highly emotional issue, and I completely understand that. But I’m not worried about this being an independent report.”

International probe still needed, says national chief

Assembly of First Nations (AFN) National Chief RoseAnne Archibald said she was glad to see the UN rapporteur highlight concerns because she too questions Canada’s motive for hiring the ICMP. Hundreds of chiefs from across Canada meet twice annually to mandate the national chief, as head of the AFN, to advocate for the rights of First Nations people.

About a year ago, Archibald demanded a “full-fledged” independent international probe into whether acts of genocide were committed at Canadian residential schools, but she said no government official ever called her to discuss contracting the ICMP. “I think that’s very problematic,” Archibald said on Friday, following the UN rapporteur’s report.

The church-run, state-funded residential school system operated for more than a century, separating an estimated 150,000 Indigenous kids from their parents in an effort to assimilate them into mainstream society.

Archibald still wants a fully independent genocide investigation in Canada, and worries Ottawa could use the ICMP arrangement to deflect from that. “It could be a way for them to sidestep an international independent investigation because they can easily say, ‘Hey, listen, this what we’ve done. We’ve brought in people from The Hague,'” Archibald said. 

“That’s my main concern.”

For its part, the Canadian government has said a desire to support communities, whether they choose to use the commission’s services or not, motivated the ICMP’s hiring.

Sheila North, a Cree leader in Manitoba and former CBC broadcaster, works with the ICMP as a program manager for Canada. She said officials at Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada (CIRNAC) haven’t tried to control the process. “I don’t see any direction coming from CIRNAC or anyone from the federal government,” she said. “I haven’t received any notion of interference so far, and I don’t suspect any.”

Recovering remains from unmarked burials is technically, legally and logistically complicated. It can involve exhumation, forensic archaeology, genetic testing, DNA matching with living descendants and eventual reburial.

North said First Nations leaders she’s spoken to look forward to learning about this process and how it could, potentially, bring their children home. 

In the end, everyone must answer to the survivors, she said. “Ultimately, this is justice for the dead.”

Bomberger said the commission’s first order of business is getting the deadline for its final report, initially scheduled for June, pushed back.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Brett Forester, Reporter

Brett Forester is a reporter with CBC Indigenous in Ottawa. He is a member of the Chippewas of Kettle and Stony Point First Nation in southern Ontario who previously worked as a journalist with the Aboriginal Peoples Television Network.

APTN News: Kimberly Murray is a little more than six months into her new role, but it’s become clear that new truths are being spoken.

In June of 2022, Murray was working with residential school survivors looking to search the grounds of the Mohawk Institute at Six Nations of the Grand River.

That’s when the federal government came calling to see if she would take on the role of Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children Unmarked Grave and Burial Sites associated with Indian residential schools.

As the former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, it’s work that Murray knows well. But even she says new details are being shared.

“We’re really seeing this trading or transferring of the children from one institution to the other,” says Murray on the latest episode of Face to Face.“ These entities and organizations that operated the Indian residential schools and the federal hostels, were also operating the hospitals and were in the other types of institutions, the sanitoria and the reformatories,” says Murray.

“So, those same things that happened to the children in the residential schools , were happening to them when they got sent to these other institutions. I think that’s part of the history and the truth that is really starting to come out now that the TRC didn’t talk about.”

Murray believes more will come to light as more records are located and as they hear from more survivors.

She has been given a two-year mandate and a budget of $10.4 million.

Murray says when she took on the role, she told David Lametti, minister of Justice and the Attorney General of Canada, that she didn’t think it would be enough money but adds, “I’m not going to be whining about money and time, that’s not what I’m about.”

Despite being funded by the federal government, Murray says she has asserted the independence that her title comes with. One example of that is spending more than Treasury Board guidelines allow for on meals for people at the national gatherings that are being held.

Part of the reason for the national gatherings like the one recently held in Winnipeg is to get to as many people as possible in the two years that she has been allotted.

At last count, Murray says nearly 90 organizations and communities have received some money from the federal government to begin work on searches. She knows that number will continue to grow given there were 140 schools, and then when you add in Indian hospitals and other institutions.

She views the role as a continuation of the work she did as executive director of the TRC. Murray says the commissioner were clear that the TRC was only the start of the work that needed to be done. She’s disappointed in the lack of movement on the TRC’s calls to action.

“I remember that day when the announcement came about the grounds of the Kamloops Indian Residential School and feeling that sadness and that grief and that loss and feeling for the communities and then I quickly became angered just thinking about here we are, seven years, back then it was six years later and none of the calls to action, 71 through 76 had been implemented. None of them,” says Murray.

Murray says the government’s failure to support Indigenous peoples is shameful and continuing today with survivors not receiving funding for community wellness and wellness centers.

Murray has similar concerns about her final report not being acted on when she turns it in at the end of the second year. The report is expected to contain “recommendations on needed measures relating to federal laws, regulations, policies and practices surrounding unmarked graves and burial sites associated with former residential schools.”

For Murray to feel that her job was a success, would mean seeing the burial grounds protected, for communities and survivors to know who died, how they died and where they’re buried.

The records are important because they represent ‘a path to the truth,’ says Kimberly Murray.

The fight is not over to find records that could answer “hard questions” about unmarked graves at Canada’s residential schools, including who the missing children were and how they died, said the woman appointed to work with Indigenous communities in searches underway across the country.

The Canadian government and the religious groups that signed the 2006 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement following a landmark class-action lawsuit were required to provide their records to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but many are still missing, special interlocutor Kimberly Murray said.

While most of those documents are held by Catholic entities, Murray said she has personal experience finding additional records that hadn’t been shared after Anglican officials in Canada indicated everything had been turned over.

She said she travelled with survivors of the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ont., to an Anglican diocese, where they found several boxes of files. “That’s just one diocese, and there are others across the country,” Murray said in an interview on Tuesday. “So, when the head of the church says, ‘We gave everything,’ and then we find out, well, that’s not actually true over here, so how can we know it’s true over there?”

The records are important because they represent “a path to the truth,” said Murray, who is a member of Kanesatake Mohawk Nation. Meanwhile, many other record-holding bodies, such as provincial archives, museums, universities and police departments, had no legal responsibility under the settlement agreement to share their files with the commission, she said.

Communities are going directly to those sources, trying to negotiate access to files that remain restricted, said Murray, noting police records could include information from calls to investigate abuses or locate children who fled the institutions.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has said his government is committed to sharing all the information it can possibly find about the institutions in federal records.

Without records documenting the genocide of Indigenous Peoples, Murray said, “deniers will continue to deny” and future generations could be led to forget.

Survivors of the residential institutions have a “right to know,” Murray told a national gathering on unmarked burials in Vancouver. That right is not only individual, but collective, so the country can “draw on the past to prevent future violations,” said Murray. Obtaining missing records “isn’t an academic exercise,” she said.

The records affect real people who are searching for information about their grandparents, their parents and their children, Murray said. “These records can no longer be kept in vaults with colonial institutions controlling who sees them.”

The renewed call for records comes amid a wave of searches at the sites of numerous former residential institutions across the country following the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc announcement in May 2021 that more than 200 suspected unmarked graves had been identified on the grounds of the former school in Kamloops, B.C. A war graves expert had used ground-penetrating radar to detect the areas believed to hold the remains of children who died there.

A month later, Cowessess First Nation in Saskatchewan announced as many as 751 unmarked graves had been found near the former Marieval Indian Residential School, followed by similar findings at former institutions in several provinces. On Tuesday, the Wauzhushk Onigum Nation in northern Ontario said it had uncovered 171 “plausible burials” in studies of cemetery grounds at a former residential school site.

Rosanne Casimir, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc chief, said the announcement in her community was like “ripping a Band-Aid off an old wound.” “So many people have been triggered, re-traumatized,” said Casimir, who attended the national gathering on Tuesday.

She said she understands many records related to the institution in Kamloops have been turned over to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, yet challenges persist with how that information is shared with community members. “What’s missing is the survivors today and their truth, their history as part of what really happened,” she said.

That’s why Indigenous sovereignty or control over how residential school records are accessed and used is so important, Casimir said. Her community is working with a researcher and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to compile the information needed for their investigation, she added.

Murray also told the crowd the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has said the most serious gap in knowledge stems from the incompleteness of records. Many documents from past decades no longer exist, including “200,000 Indian Affairs files” that were destroyed between 1936 and 1994, she said.

Federal policy in 1935 allowed school returns to be destroyed after five years, while reports of accidents could be destroyed after a decade, she said. It’s also become clear that “many, many, many deaths were not reported” to the former Indian Affairs Department, Murray said.

While records are crucial, Murray added “there is nothing more powerful than the first-hand accounts from the survivors” of residential institutions. “They are the witnesses themselves.”

A 4,000-page report released by the National Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 detailed harsh mistreatment at the schools, including emotional, physical and sexual abuse of children, and at least 4,100 deaths at the institutions.

Murray said the number of children who died will likely never be known in full.

Kimberly Murray says an impending bill making Indigenous policing an essential service could make the process of searching burial sites much safer for Indigenous communities.

Toronto Star: OTTAWA—For Kimberly Murray, many challenges lie behind the difficult work of crafting a legal framework that would seek justice for children who faced abuse and lost their lives at Canada’s residential schools. 

In June, Murray was appointed the country’s independent special interlocutor for missing children, unmarked graves and burial sites. 

For two years, Murray is taking on the heavy task of liaising with Indigenous communities to examine how Ottawa, provinces and territories protect and investigate these sites, with the aim of improving Canadian laws and making recommendations for a new federal legal framework. 

Nearly five months into the job, Murray says some of those challenges are more sprawling than she first believed. “The records are proving (to be) a larger concern than originally I thought,” she told the Star.

While obtaining and accessing residential school records held by churches and the federal government have long been considered a barrier to achieving reconciliation, Murray said the issue extends far beyond those entities.

She’s encountered cases of children sent to the schools, apprehended by municipal police for running away, entered into the court system and sent to reformatories, before being shuttled back to the institutions they first fled. “This systemic interconnection of all these organizations and entities and institutions is much larger than I thought,” said Murray, of attempts to lay out a clear paper trail in each of those cases.

The role of special interlocutor was first announced last summer, after ground searches confirmed the existence of hundreds of unmarked graves at the sites of several former residential schools. At the time, the federal government earmarked $83 million, on top of other investments, to research and locate burial sites, and to commemorate children who died at the institutions.

Since then, Indigenous communities have grappled with how to go about conducting searches of their own. As of September, 88 communities have received federal funding to begin that work, Murray said.

The former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission said the ongoing battle to access records — including those from local police services, hospitals and universities — is mirrored in the challenges accessing potential burial sites.

She referenced the recent example involving Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in southwestern Manitoba, whose radar survey at a campground in Brandon was stalled after the site’s owner blocked access to the area.  “There’s also issues with other sites that aren’t necessarily where the residential school was located, but was associated with a residential school, or we know that Indigenous children got sent to these places,” Murray said.

“Our legislation and our legal framework doesn’t adequately address those concerns.”

These are issues Murray raised at a meeting with federal, provincial and territorial ministers of justice two weeks ago, where she was able to discuss her mandate with government officials for the first time.

Murray said she hopes to conduct similar meetings with Indigenous relations ministers across the country as part of a wider effort to improve co-ordination between hundreds of Indigenous communities. 

One of the topics raised in her discussion with justice ministers was enshrining Indigenous policing as an essential service — a topic Ottawa is hoping to address in the form of new legislation this year.

At present, Indigenous police services are funded through the First Nations and Inuit Policing Program, which was established in 1991. While costs are split between provinces, territories, and the federal government, police services are still regularly underfunded.

Ottawa had initially hoped to table legislation on the matter as early as this fall, a deadline that has now been pushed back to this winter. The legislation is expected to help reform the way Indigenous police services are funded, which would provide communities with full-time, culturally-sensitive services. 

Murray said having a safe policing alternative is critical for communities wrestling with how to bring law enforcement into their searches.

Such police services could fundamentally change the way investigations are conducted, Murray said, including allowing families and survivors to actively take part in the process. “I am always offended when I hear a Crown attorney or a police officer say, ‘Well, we have to protect the integrity of the investigation. To me, that’s very demeaning and disrespectful to the families and their communities because nobody wants to interfere with the integrity of the police investigation,” Murray said. 

“That to me is a buzzword, a white people buzzword, for ‘Get out of our way.’” 

Having legislation in place as quickly as possible would eradicate some of that mistrust, Murray said. 

“(Indigenous police) weren’t the ones taking the kids when they ran away and bringing them back. They weren’t the ones that did the failed investigation when survivors were coming forward about sexual abuse,” Murray said. “If we have First Nations police services, trained, properly resourced, with the ability to do this investigation, that could be the solution.”

National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says decision seems to undermine Indigenous-led work in the area

CBC News: The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation says there are many problems with a $2 million contract Ottawa signed with an international group to give advice on unmarked graves.

The Winnipeg-based centre said it is “deeply concerned” with the decision by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada to hire a Netherlands-based organization to launch “an extremely sensitive engagement process” on issues surrounding possible gravesites near former residential schools.

“Beginning with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, there has been a clear understanding that any work related to the harms caused by the residential school system must be led by Indigenous peoples and that survivors must be at the heart of this work,” Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, who chairs the centre’s governing circle, said in a statement on Monday. “Putting the planned engagement process in the hands of a non-Indigenous [organization] is a misstep, and a very worrying one at that.”

The federal government recently announced it had hired the International Commission on Missing Persons to provide it with advice, based on an outreach campaign with different communities interested in hearing possible options around DNA and other forensic techniques.

• Interlocutor on unmarked graves ‘very concerned’ by feds’ $2M deal with international organization
• Feds will manage group providing options on residential school unmarked burials

While Ottawa says it hired the commission because of the feedback from communities and it has a mandate to assist their searches, the centre and other advocates say the work around unmarked graves must happen independent of the federal government, since it funded the church-run residential school system in the first place. Kisha Supernant was caught off guard by the federal government’s awarding of the contract.

Supernant — who is the director of the Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archeology at the University of Alberta as well as a member of the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials — said Monday that Ottawa is undermining the trust of Indigenous-led groups and communities. “There isn’t a good history between the federal government and Indigenous communities. And certainly around this issue of residential schools, there’s a lot of past tension,” she said.

This decision “just kind of reinforces that sense that the government is going to do what it decides to do, and that may not always be what communities actually need.”

• Feds unable to list Indigenous communities consulted on reconciliation council bill

Supernant would like to have seen Ottawa have more consultation with the National Advisory Committee and the Office of the Special Interlocutor on Missing Children and Unmarked Graves before signing the deal with the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Last week, the commission released a copy of the technical agreement it had signed with the government in January, confirming the final report will be due to the federal government by mid-June, with officials allowed to comment on drafts. The agreement itself also states Indigenous facilitators will be hired to be present at the discussions and meet the “spiritual and ceremonial” needs of participants throughout the process.

Stephanie Scott, executive director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, said seeing the agreement itself raises more questions.

The centre provided a list of where it says the agreement falls short and risks causing further harm to Indigenous communities and survivors. Among its concerns are that the contract does not say the commission’s work needs to take place in a trauma-informed way, and that it fails to recognize the central role residential school survivors must play.

Even more egregiously, the centre suggested, is the appearance that the work Ottawa is contracting out overlaps with Indigenous-led efforts that are already underway. This “implies a purposeful undermining of their work,” the centre’s statement said.

The agreement does not mention the need to work with the national advisory committee the government has already tasked to explore the issues around unmarked graves and missing children, the centre said. Nor does it mention the special independent interlocuter, Kimberly Murray, who was also appointed to work on the matter.

Eugene Arcand, who sits as a member of its survivors circle, said he cannot understand why Ottawa would look to an international group that lacks knowledge of the residential school system and “cultural competency” needed for such sensitive discussions.

Supernant agreed. “One of the dangers is when this process happens without clear leadership from Indigenous peoples, is that there’s a real danger that we re-traumatize survivors, that we undermine trust,” she said. “There needs to be respect for the processes that are put in place as opposed to turning to an international body without that guidance.”

The centre said it has already raised concerns with Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller and plans to make more recommendations. His office said the agreement is subject to amendments to be “jointly considered” by federal officials and the international commission.

With files from Nathan Liewicki