Canada must provide reparations to families of children missing at residential schools, says Kimberly Murray

Many Indigenous children who died and were buried at Indian residential schools are not missing but are “victims of enforced disappearance,” says Kimberly Murray.

Murray, who is Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, released her final report at a ceremony Tuesday in Gatineau, Que.

It outlines 42 “legal, moral and ethical obligations” of governments, churches, and other institutions in regards to children who did not return from the schools, including that Canada must provide full reparations to families of missing and disappeared children.

“Too often governments do not implement recommendations, so I’ve opted to identify the legal, moral and ethical obligations that governments, churches and other institutions have,” said Murray during the ceremony.

Over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend church-run, government-funded residential schools between the 1870s and 1997. As of 2021, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation had documented more than 4,100 deaths of children at the schools. 

Following discoveries of potential unmarked graves at former residential school sites, Murray was appointed to the role of special interlocutor in 2022 for a two-year term to identify measures and recommendations for a new federal legal framework on unmarked graves and burial sites.

Murray, a member of Kanehsatà:ke, a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community northwest of Montreal, has held national gatherings in Montreal, Iqaluit, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Edmonton over the past two years.

Residential school survivors, Indigenous leaders and advocates gathered in Gatineau Thursday for a final gathering and the release of the report.

42 obligations

Murray said the obligations in her report derive from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, Indigenous laws, international human rights law and Canadian constitutional law. 

“The greatest and most important obligation that we all have is to the survivors,” said Murray.

Murray is calling on the federal government to establish a national, Indigenous-led commission of investigation into missing and disappeared Indigenous children and unmarked burials, as well as to enact legislation to protect burial sites, support families to obtain records, and address long-term, sufficient and flexible funding.

She also wants the government to refer to the missing children as victims of “enforced disappearance” and to refer the enforced disappearance of children, as a crime against humanity, to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

“Canada has ongoing international legal obligations to determine the truth and hold perpetrators accountable for what happened to the children, their families, and communities and to make reparations,” she wrote in her final report.

“Yet Canada, as the perpetrator of atrocity crimes and mass human rights breaches, cannot investigate itself. To do so creates a fundamental conflict that is unacceptable to Indigenous Peoples.”

In 2021, a group of lawyers requested that the ICC investigate the Canadian government and the Vatican for crimes against humanity following reports of unmarked burials at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School. 

That request was declined, with the ICC stating it didn’t have jurisdiction because the court was created after residential schools closed.

Murray said that’s why she’s driving home the point that the children were disappeared.

“The crime of disappearance is ongoing,” Murray told CBC Indigenous.

“It happened yesterday. It’s happening today and it’s going to happen tomorrow … until we know where all the kids are buried. Canada is continuing that crime and so I say the International Criminal Court does have jurisdiction.”

Murray is also calling on federal, provincial, and territorial governments, churches, the RCMP, universities, and media organizations to apologize for the multiple harms they committed in supporting residential schools.

Indigenous-led reparations framework

Murray delivered a reparations framework as a part of her final report. She said the framework is not a one-size-fits-all model.

It must be Indigenous-led, she said, and be informed by a human rights approach, governed by Indigenous laws and cultural protocols, sustained by adequate and ongoing funding, co-ordinated among jurisdictions through national repatriation legislation and policy, and provide support for Indigenous families and communities navigating the repatriation process.

“The truths that I have heard must inform a new legal framework to respectfully and appropriately recover, protect, and honour the missing and disappeared children and their burial,” wrote Murray in the program for the gathering.

“The disappearances and deaths of thousands of Indigenous children is the ultimate act of injustice. Under international laws, survivors, Indigenous families, and communities, who are victims of genocide, crimes against humanity, and mass human rights violations have the right to know the truth and they have the right to reparations for these egregious harms.”

Justice Minister Arif Virani was in attendance at the gathering Tuesday to receive the report.

“It’s time for us to carefully review this report and its recommendations to consider how we move forward together,” he said.

“This work will take time and co-operation among Indigenous, federal and provincial governments, communities and religious institutions among others. While today’s gathering marks a closure in some ways it is by no means an ending. it is a milestone instead in our ongoing efforts to address intergenerational trauma of residential schools.”

Laura Arndt, the lead for the Survivor’s Secretariat, an organization leading efforts to investigate the Mohawk Institute residential school in Brantford, Ont., watched the livestream of Tuesday’s ceremony from Six Nations of the Grand River.

Arndt said she hopes Canada listens, to ensure investigation work continues.

“The report drove home really powerfully the importance of listening to the survivors and getting truth told,” she said.

“We need to move out of this culture of amnesty and impunity and let the work of reparations begin.”

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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 by online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.