No country, state, or community should need a report that includes calls to action about buried missing children at the hands of the government, but here we are, Canada, and you refuse to listen.
Anybody saying that the 215 child deaths in Kamloops were an expected occurrence for that time period due to sanitation levels or TB is being ignorant. Know that prisoners were treated more respectfully than these innocent children.
I’ve heard people trying to rationalize it, knowing the last IRS closed in 1996. It’s not a dark chapter or history, it’s current trauma and lived experiences. Telling yourself that “surely by the time the 1990’s came around, atrocities weren’t being committed anymore” is cowardice.
We all need to do better. Don’t rely on your Indigenous friends or colleagues to educate you and do the hard work for you. Learn how to be an ally and amplify their voices, listen when they speak, hold our leaders accountable.
If you’re looking for actions aside from learning and educating yourself, or sharing on social media, you can donate to the Indian Residential School Survivor Society who provide counselling and healing for survivors at:
https://www.irsss.ca/donate
Better yet, support your community and neighbours by voting in politicians and supporting policies to do good work. Canada is a first-world country while its reserves and Indigenous communities are the equivalent to third-world countries. Many do not even have drinking water.
Many do not even have drinking water.
Time’s up, Canada. You’ve had the chance. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave you 94 actions to implement. Yes, even actions about missing murdered children.
From the TRC Calls to Action:
Missing Children and Burial Information
“71. We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
72. We call upon the federal government to allocate sufficient resources to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to allow it to develop and maintain the National Residential School Student Death Register established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
73. We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.
74. We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial location, and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.
75. We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of
appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.
76. We call upon the parties engaged in the work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries to adopt strategies in accordance with the following principles:
i. The Aboriginal community most affected shall lead the development of such strategies.
ii. Information shall be sought from residential school Survivors and other Knowledge Keepers in the development of such strategies.
iii. Aboriginal protocols shall be respected before any potentially invasive technical inspection and investigation of a cemetery site.”
This information is nothing new and can’t be brushed aside again. This conversation needs to be over, we need to move past conversation.
Canada loves to talk about diversity and welcome while blocking the door and hoping nobody looks under the rug.
(I say “you” but I mean “we”.)
Hope this finds you well,
-L
Sight Unseen 