What has happened since the discovery of the 215 Indigenous children’s remains?
Multiple more burial sites have been found, but governments’ actions and inactions leave room for worries about how to go beyond short-term, symbolic gestures.
Hey there, and welcome to the 35th issue of The Supplement, a newsletter that fills in the gaps of your other news intake. This is Alex, one-third of The Supplement team!
Each week, we pick a question submitted by you, our readers. If you’d like to submit a question for a future week, then email us at thesupplementnewsletter@gmail.com or reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram.
If you like what you read each week, consider buying us a coffee ☕
This week, we’re tackling this question: What has happened since the discovery of the 215 Indigenous children’s remains?
TL;DR: In late May, the remains of 215 children were found on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School’s grounds. Besides prompting an intensified effort to search for other burial sites, the news is forcing a national reckoning. But governments’ actions and inactions leave room for worries about how to go beyond short-term, symbolic gestures.
If help is needed, you can call the National Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866 925-4419.
Canada is aiming for truth and reconciliation, but recent news shows that the country’s settler society is still struggling with the truth.
In late May, the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation in BC found the remains of 215 children on the former Kamloops Indian Residential School’s grounds. A few days later, on June 1, the Sioux Valley Dakota First Nation identified 104 potential graves at a former residential school in Brandon, Manitoba.
A province over, the Muskowekwan First Nation found 35 unmarked graves at a former residential school in Lestock, Saskatchewan. At least 35 children’s remains were also found at the Regina Indian Industrial School.
Now, many more unmarked burial sites are expected to be discovered across Canada.
For more than a century, government agents with the RCMP’s help removed over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children from their families and forced them to attend church-run schools. The Catholic Church ran most of them, but has not apologized for their role in the system and has resisted releasing records. Across the country, there were at least 139 residential schools, and the last one did not close until 1997.
On top of stripping away the children’s identities and forcing them to assimilate to white settler society, these schools also subjected them to mental, physical and/or sexual abuse. At least 4,100 children died — though this is considered an underestimate.
(In an indictment of the education system and broader settler society: 67 per cent of Canadians who were recently polled said they knew little or nothing about residential schools before the discovery in BC last month.)
The federal government has allocated $27.1 million towards communities seeking to find and commemorate burial sites. Some provinces are doing the same: Ontario has promised $10 million over three years. But Indigenous leaders like Kiiwetinoong’s NDP MPP Sol Mamakwa, who is also a residential school survivor, have called Ontario’s funding amount “a drop in the bucket.”
Looking more broadly, can Canada create long-lasting change from this national reckoning?
The Senate passed a bill on June 16 that creates a framework for the implementation of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) in Canada. It’s a landmark legislation that has had a long journey, but more remains to be done because Canada will now need to prepare a plan on how to actually implement it.
In 2019, BC became the first province in Canada to pass UNDRIP. Less than a year later, the province’s handling of Wet’suwet’en land defenders partly led to many Indigenous people saying “reconciliation is dead.”
Similarly, over five years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada released their 94 calls to action, the vast majority of them have yet to be implemented. The Yellowhead Institute, a First Nation-led research centre, found that Canada had only completed eight calls to action as of 2020.
And meanwhile, Canada has paid over $3 billion to 28,000 residential school victims, but it has also continued to fight those from St. Anne’s residential school in court. The fight to adequately compensate First Nations children, after the state is found underfunding child welfare and other services for them, is also ongoing.
Here’s someone to follow: I’m changing things up a little bit and suggest you check out the Canadian Association of Journalists’ mentorship program instead. The list of mentors is chock-full of amazing journalists for you to follow! Bonus: if you’re an emerging reporter, I highly recommend applying to be a mentee.
Here’s a story to check out: Pride month is for both judging all the so-bad-it’s-camp merch that corporations are rolling out and remembering that rainbow capitalism leaves many LGBTQ2S+ community members behind. For instance, this Xtra story by Sarah Ratchford is a reminder that there is still a huge disparity in access to healthcare in Canada, especially for trans individuals.
Also, BONUS: please read THIS story by VICE reporter Mack Lamoureux about QAnon influencers and a woman who claims to be “the secret ruler of Canada.”