The Current - Report on unmarked graves at residential schools calls for new laws, reparations

Episode Date: October 30, 2024

It's been three years since Indigenous leaders in Kamloops, Cowessess and other First Nations revealed there were hundreds of unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools. Kimberly Murray, who was appointed special independent interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, talks about her new report — and the 42 obligations Canadian institutions must meet.

In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news, so I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with Season 3 of On Drugs. And this time, it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy.

On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. This is a CBC Podcast. Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is The Current Podcast. Three years ago, Indigenous leaders in Kamloops, Cowessess, and other First Nations revealed disturbing news. Hundreds of unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools. The government appointed an independent interlocutor. Kimberly Murray's mandate was to engage with communities and make recommendations to ensure that these burial sites are treated with honor, respect, and dignity. And yesterday,

she delivered her highly anticipated report in an event that began with a ceremony and was attended by survivors. These children did not just vanish. They were not disappeared by accident. The forced removal and transfer of Indigenous children was Canadian law and Canadian policy. Those in charge of these institutions knew that the children's chances of surviving were low. Kimberly Murray joins me now from Ottawa. Good

morning. Good morning. You know, the work you've been doing is really engaging with some pretty painful history. And you say in your report that the greatest and most important obligation that we all have is to the survivors. What do you mean by that? survived. And they're aging, and we're losing them every day. So it's so important that we need to support them as they come forward and share more of these truths, so that they can educate Canadians and correct the historical record and ensure that this never happens again in this country. And you spoke with so many survivors and families who lost loved ones. What did they hope would come out of this process? Well, first of all, I mean, their number one hope was to find their missing loved one. And, you know, we had some success over the last two years in supporting families and finding where

their child was buried. But many are still searching and still trying to find where their loved one is. Kimberly, you report that many children described as missing were in fact disappeared by the state and that the government is still actively disappearing them by concealing their fate still. That's a very blunt analysis. How do you want to see that change? Well, first of all, it's a legal analysis

and that's the law, the international law of enforced disappearance. And to change it, we need Canada to step up and change its laws that are blocking access to the archives. We need the government to give full access to the records that will help communities and families find where their loved one's missing. You know, I've been saying this for two years. The churches in Canada know that the children died in these institutions. The churches in Canada know that they buried them on the grounds of Indian residential schools. Yet they're not helping the communities find those burial grounds and they're blocking access to very important information that they're holding on to. us to very important information that they're holding on to. From your study and research over these years, what don't we know about what happened to these children? Well, we don't know their causes of death. You know, this is very troubling because when we look at some of the records that we have

seen and some of the death certificates, they're signed by the Indian agent. The cause of death is identified by the Indian agent. The cause of death is identified by the Indian agent. We don't know for what happened to these children, what caused their deaths. We don't know. What we do know is that there were medical experiments that were being done on the children. So how can we have any trust in these records that exist that say the children died of TB? And even if they died of these diseases, Canada knew they were dying of these diseases, and they created the conditions for these children to die in these conditions. And so there has to be some accountability for that as well.

In your report, you rephrase, you know, the typical recommendations and call them obligations, which is a very interesting way to put it. And one of them is you've called for a commission of investigations into the enforced disappearance of Indigenous children and for it to have a 20-year mandate and funding. So what could this commission do that others like the Truth and Reconciliation Commission or your own report have not done? Well, importantly, it could have powers, and it needs to have powers. Neither my office or the Truth and Reconciliation Commission were granted powers. We had no powers to compel the production of records.

We had no powers to go onto sites, and we had no powers to compel testimony. It's really imperative that any kind of commission of investigation into disappeared people have those type of powers so that we can get to the bottom, so we can get to the truth. And what's the significance of a 20-year mandate? Well, this work is very complex. It takes a long time to do the research. It takes a long time to do the research. It takes a long time to do the ground searches. And importantly, we know that it's more than the Indian residential schools recognized under the Indian residential school settlement agreement. We know that kids were transferred between Indian residential schools and between and to other institutions, Indian hospitals, TB sanatorium,

and to other institutions, Indian hospitals, TB sanatorium, reformatories, homes for unwed mothers, places for disabled children. And we know that the children died in these other institutions and they're buried in graves all across the country. Some are in marked graves, some are in mass graves, unmarked mass graves in cemeteries. The families do not know where their children are. So this is going to take a lot of time when we start looking at all the missing and disappeared children. And part of that in your report is you're calling for governments and churches to fund Indigenous-led search and recovery efforts that you just mentioned. You know, the federal government has put in place the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund,

and as of March, they've committed, I think, about $200 million to these projects. So what else is needed? Yeah, and it's important to understand that that fund, an important fund, only includes certain sites. And as I said, there's all these other sites that need to be investigated. And so we can have these, you know, limitations and barriers, we have to follow the truth wherever it leads us. If a child was taken to a residential school and then transferred to

a TB sanatorium, the funding should not stop, because you want to continue to search where that child died and find where they're buried. And that's the problem that we have with the funding. And the other thing that, you know, I've been saying this as well, we can't treat the search for missing and disappeared children as a program, as a government program. This is a legal, international legal obligation on the state to support the finding of truth is part of a reparation package that needs to go for Indigenous communities to be able to heal and to find the truth and to find where the children are buried. Kimberly, do you think that there is the political will to make these types of things happen and to spend the money that it would take to do so? I think that the government,

I feel that the government wants to be seen as doing something, but is limiting what they should be doing. And, you know, appointing me as the special interlocutor is a good example. You know, they came out immediately after TKMLMS made their announcement saying they would appoint me, not me, but they would create a special interlocutor. But then they limited my powers. And many people in the community were concerned about the appointment because they thought, well, they're just pretending to be doing something. And they're not taking all the necessary steps that they need to take. And it's part of the sort of piecemeal ad hoc approach that Canada has taken over the years in responding to the harms that have been perpetrated against Indigenous people.

We need a more holistic approach for reparations than what we have right now in the country. In 2017, it felt like drugs were everywhere in the news. So I started a podcast called On Drugs. We covered a lot of ground over two seasons, but there are still so many more stories to tell. I'm Jeff Turner, and I'm back with season three of On Drugs. And this time it's going to get personal. I don't know who Sober Jeff is. I don't even know if I like that guy. On Drugs is available now wherever you get your podcasts. You've mentioned the legal basis of which you write, and you've also called for amendments to the criminal code that would make it an offense to deny or minimize the effects of residential schools. What are you saying there? And why is that necessary?

Well, we have to criminalize the incitement of hate against Indigenous people. And we're seeing a rise in the country of denialism in relation to the Indian residential schools and the harms of the system and the denialism towards the to the Indian residential schools and the harms of the system, and the denialism towards the missing and disappeared children. You know, it's very violent. And our laws don't protect hate. And we need to make it very clear in the criminal code that this is not acceptable behavior to victimize Indigenous people in this way. behavior to victimize Indigenous people in this way. Just staying with the legal aspects of your four-volume report, I think you called for an acknowledgement from the government that forcing

Indigenous children into residential schools was a crime against humanity that should be adjudicated by the International Criminal Court. This has been tested. It's been rejected by that court once already because of jurisdiction. Why do you believe that it could meet that bar now? Well, what's important to understand about enforced disappearance is the crime of enforced disappearance is that it's an ongoing crime. That means it's a crime. It doesn't matter when the child or the person was disappeared, if we still don't know the fate and whereabouts of the person that was disappeared. If the state is concealing the fact of where the child is buried. And so I say that Canada committed the offense of enforced disappearance yesterday.

It's committing it today and it's going to be committing it tomorrow because it's not, it's still concealing the fate of the children. It knows, the government knows that these children died in these institutions, and the government knows that there were burial grounds. And they have the records, and they need to produce those records to communities as well as the churches. The churches were the agents of the state. And so the concealing of the fate makes it an ongoing crime. And I think that the International Criminal Court should be investigating the disappearances of the children in Canada. And I also think that the Working Group Against Enforced Disappearances needs to come visit Canada. They've never been to this country. And it's time that we get that committee to come here and look at the situation of the disappearances.

And from the survivors you've spoken with, how would these kinds of legal measures help with reconciliation? It will help with accountability. You know, we can't have reconciliation if there's no accountability. Very few perpetrators have been charged and convicted of offenses in relation to Indian residential schools while they were operating and after they closed. Canada has taken many steps to ensure that there is no accountability and no avenue for survivors and Indigenous people to pursue in the international forum by failing to sign many conventions. Yesterday, Justice Minister Araf Farani received a copy of the report in person from you. We asked for him on the program today. His office told us he won't be doing interviews until they have had time to absorb this report.

He did express gratitude for your work and committed to, quote, continue the government's efforts towards reconciliation. What do you want from the Justice Minister and the federal government in the days and weeks ahead? Well, I'd like to see a commitment to implement all of the 42 obligations that are identified in the report. And I would like the Minister of Justice to realize that we need accountability. He speaks about reconciliation and healing, but he doesn't talk about accountability. And that's what survivors and Indigenous people want.

They want to see some accountability for the harms that were perpetrated against their children. I want to go back to something you mentioned earlier in our conversation. It's an important one. Your report calls for wide access to residential school records. Why has it been such a challenge for families to get those records? Well, there's a complex web of legislations, provincial and federal legislation, privacy laws, access to information laws,

library and archive laws, laws around the destruction of records. Churches are hiding behind privacy laws that don't apply to them. And it's sort of this whole maze that communities and survivors are having to go through. Now, I want to recognize that there have been some of the churches and some of the archives have been very open, have entered into agreements, and it is possible to get those access. But too many are still blocking access for communities. I mean, we have an urgent need to have an Indigenous data sovereignty strategy in this country so Indigenous people can get their records back. And amongst your obligations, you talk about full reparations and compensation for family members.

Do you know what kind of a cost that would be, what the government and Canadians should be prepared to pay? You know, it's not about the financial compensation. You know, reparations include many things. And I speak about this a lot in my report, the need for public education, the need to correct the historical records, the need for commemoration and memorialization to have memory laws so that this never happens again, those are all part of reparations. You know, too many people are fixating on compensation and no more money given to Indigenous people. But, you know, I can say that the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement and the compensation that was provided was to survivors that were sexually and physically abused in the institution. Families whose loved ones were taken from them and died in these institutions and never returned home were never compensated for those losses of those little lives.

And our apology that was issued by the Prime Minister at the time had one line in it about the children that died in the institution. One sentence. And so absolutely reparations include some restitution and compensation for those families and communities, for those lives that could have been so much if they had remained in their communities. And to that point, you recommend in your report more apologies, not just from the government, but university, medical organizations, media. What would they need to encompass? Well, first of all, they have to acknowledge

their own complexity and the Indian residential school system and these other institutions, you know, with the medical profession, and they've taken first steps in relation to this, looking at their involvement in the medical experimentation and how they benefited on those medical human experimentations that they did on the children in the institution. I think there's a need for media outlets to look at their own history of reinforcing stereotypes and discrimination and racism against Indigenous people with the way they've reported, all the way back to the operation of the Indian residential schools till today.

There are precedents around the world where media have made recommendations in New Zealand, for example, and how they reported on Indigenous people in New Zealand. Universities, you know, were involved in those medical experimentation. Their institutions sit on stolen Indigenous land. Their institutions sit on stolen Indigenous land, and those things need to be acknowledged, and they need to think about what kinds of reparations that they could provide to Indigenous communities for the harms they've perpetrated. Kimberly, you've thrown yourself into this work over the last few years, and you noted in your opening remarks that many recommendations have gone unheeded from other reports. Do you worry that this one could have a similar fate? Absolutely, absolutely worry about that. And that's why I made a point of ensuring that I identify the legal obligations.

It was important to me to deliver a report to community and survivors that they can pick up the work that I did and go to the international forum and try and get some accountability and put some pressure from the outside on the Canadian government. But I also, you know, encourage all Canadians to become upstanders to reconciliation, read the report, make a determination for yourself by looking at the evidence that's in the report, and support communities in trying to put pressure on the government to implement these and live up to their obligations that they have. We have just a minute left. What will stay with you most from what you've learned? Most importantly, I'll always carry with me the families that I helped and stood next to when they found their missing

loved one and did those ceremonies on the sites. Yeah, goes back to those unmarked graves where we started. Kimberly Murray, thank you very much for your work and for joining us this morning. Thank you, Susan. Kimberly Murray is the Independent special interlocutor for the missing children in unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian residential schools. She delivered her report yesterday. You can call the Residential Schools Survivor Support Line at 1-866-925-4419. That's 1-866-925-4419. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.