Independent Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray has released her final report after two years of examining the issue of missing and disappeared Indigenous children and unmarked burials sites at residential schools in Canada.
During the ceremony last week in Gatineau, Que., Murray said governments do not often implement recommendations given on such reports. So she opted to identify 42 “legal, moral and ethical obligations” for governments, churches and other institutions. These are proposals on how to make holistic reparations to Indigenous Peoples.
Murray emphasized that the children were “victims of enforced disappearance.”
Since the 1870s and continuing for more than 150 years, over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families and forced to attend church-run, government-funded residential schools. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has documented more than 4,100 deaths of children at the schools.
After potential unmarked graves were identified at former residential school sites, the Canadian government appointed Murray to make recommendations on unmarked graves and burial sites.
The report, “Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience” focuses on aspects of the Indian Residential School experience: unaccounted missing children, unmarked grave sites, the roles of government and churches in the Indian Residential School genocide and failure to maintain records of the deaths and burials of deceased children.
The report centres Indigenous strategies for research and advances a framework of reparations to “support the search for and recovery of the missing and disappeared children and unmarked burials.” It is an extension of the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) whose final report devoted an entire volume toward missing children and unmarked burials. The newest report is even more bold than the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
The TRC report observed that “the most basic of questions about missing children — Who died? Why did they die? Where are they buried? — have never been addressed or comprehensively documented by the Canadian Government.”
Since the TRC report was released in 2015, efforts to investigate this issue of missing children and unmarked graves has increased significantly.
Reconciliation and reparations
Murray explores the issue of genocide in the Indian Residential School system in ways that indict the Canadian government and other institutions of crimes.
The report says Canada must refer to “the enforced disappearance of children,” as a “crime against humanity” and the issue needs to be taken to the International Criminal Court. It further states that the “federal government and other institutions have worked harder to protect perpetrators than they ever did to protect Indigenous children, families, and communities,” and that Canada has embraced a culture of “settler amnesia and willful forgetting.”
In support of this indictment, Murray shows how the government and church were not only responsible for acts of omission in that somehow failed to protect Indigenous children in their care. Instead, they were acts of commission: deliberately created situations in which Indigenous children in their care were severely harmed.
Murray refers to this as forced disappearances — when the liberty of Indigenous children is taken away and their fate was concealed.
In addition, the Independent Special Interlocutor also focuses on, among other things, our moral and ethical obligations as foundational frames for reparations.
A moral framework
Murray put forth 42 obligations that reflect the morally and ethically centred responsibilities of governments, churches and other institutions.
These moral and ethical responsibilities inform the reparations that Murray articulates in her report.
These responsibilities and obligations include:
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Calls for long-term financial support of investigations into missing and disappeared Indigenous children and Indian Residential School burial sites
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Support for survivors
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The recording of their stories
Core values
Underlining the report is a moral principal that efforts to find missing children and unmarked graves must be Indigenous-led.
These moral principles, this foundation for action, articulated by Murray, can provide a compelling rationale that may help change attitudes and action.
The recent report puts forth several moral and ethical principles which we need to consider.
One of the report’s powerful statements is:
“Children must be cared for in life and after death.”
This might seem to some a simple point that is obvious and even unnecessary. However, the distance between such important declarations and the policies of Canadian governments and institutions has been vast.
That this particular principle refers to the importance of care “after death” ought to be familiar to any of us who’ve lost loved ones. However, stating it clearly here strengthens the point that government and other institutions have obligations to children who died in their care.
Another important principle from the report is that “search and recovery work is sacred.”
The need to discover who died, the reasons why they died, and the location of their remains is one so connected to the emotional well-being of living descendants and fellow community members that it is a spiritual journey.
This is why the search and recovery processes must be Indigenous-led.
This report, like the TRC’s and the final report of the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, contains demands for action that should be accepted and acted upon by governments and institutions.
The moral and ethical principles that inform those demands can be as important for informing change. It is in these principles that we may find moral guidance and direction toward righteousness.
We may also find, if we’re paying attention, our humanity.