Mary Jane Logan McCallum
University of Winnipeg
At the Release of An Indigenous-Led Reparations Framework Gathering, October 29-30, 2024.
On June 8, 2022, Kimberley R. Murray, member of the Kanehstà:ke Mohawk Nation, was appointed as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools. Her Final Report was launched in October 2024 (you can find it here) and her mandate ended December 13, 2024.[1] The report has garnered remarkably little public or academic attention given its rigorous research and revolutionary findings on a topic so important at the end of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the spark of national and international attention generated by the announcement of 215 potential unmarked burials at Kamloops Indian Residential School in 2021.
Among the Interlocutor’s six guiding principles were: that the bodies and Spirits of missing Indigenous children be treated with honour, respect and dignity; that Indigenous families and communities have the right to know what happened to their children who died while in the care of the State and churches; and that the search for unmarked burials and the recovery of missing Indigenous children must be governed by Indigenous laws, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, and the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Six national gatherings of Survivors, Indigenous families, communities, search teams and forensic and legal experts informed the final report, in addition to targeted research into international law and histories of state and church apathy towards the lives and deaths of Indigenous children.
Anti-Colonial Criteria and Indigenous-Led Apology as form of Reparation
The term “reparation” features heavily in the report – especially in the context of grounding the need to create an “Indigenous-led reparations framework.” This moves us out of “reconciliation” and into naming, identifying and quantifying harms through research and education, working out how to materially ‘compensate’ for those harms, and how to ensure that harms do not continue in the present and future.
Apology is a key part of initiating this discussion in the Report. I have put a moratorium of sorts on apologies to Indigenous people because they are so staggeringly ignorant of the past. However, I enjoyed this part of the Report far more than I thought, especially two aspects. The first is the critical discussion of apologies made by various entities (RCMP, churches, universities) for IRS. The second is the discussion of “anti-colonial” apologies and the work that is required of them:
- Consultation with Those to Whom Apology is Addressed
- Consultation within the Apologizing Constituency
- Naming and Acknowledging of Harm Deliberately or Negligently Inflicted
- Truthful Admission of Individual, Organization, or Collective Responsibility
- Statement of Remorse and Regret Related to the Wrongful Acts or Omissions
- Delivered in a Context Designed to Maximize the Potential of the Apology
- Delivered to Those with the Credibility to Speak for the Organization or Institution
- Delivered with Due Respect, Dignity, and Sensitivity to the Victimized
- Credible Promise of Non-recurrence
- Appropriate Compensation or Reparations
- Non-regression (actions that counter the effect of policy not permitted)[2]
Reparations are not, for example, a list of ‘good works’ done by people such as letting a beading group use campus space or a university’s special initiative to recruit Indigenous faculty. Led by Indigenous people and communities, reparations are part of a longer process that studies, uncovers, and names specific harms done to specific peoples. It is Indigenous people who decide what needs to be apologized for, when, and how as well as what is appropriate if reparations are needed.
Settler Amnesty
The report uses the term “Settler Amnesty” and “Culture of Impunity” to explain Canadian apathy towards the lives and deaths of Indigenous children. Settler Amnesty refers to “an ongoing and unconditional refusal to investigate and prosecute those most responsible for the deaths, disease, and brutality inflicted on children in that system. It is a disguised form of amnesty that is neither formally legislated nor publicly acknowledged. It operates invisibly to preserve settler colonial systems, structures and institutions. The result … is that perpetrators are proactively protected from prosecution and punishment for their crimes. They are shielded from criminal liability and not formally punished. Yet these people are known. … so too are their crimes.” Culture of Impunity “permits individuals and institutions to perpetuate harms knowing they will not be held accountable for their actions.”[3]
Enforced Disappearance (vs. “Missing”)
The report argues that the term “missing” fails to “reflect the federal government’s culpability and responsibility for the fact that children died and went missing not because of the children’s choices or actions, but because of purposeful State violence, action and force.” Missing also does not “reflect the federal government’s subsequent refusal to search for and return the children.” Rather, “enforced disappearance” explicitly “recognizes the State’s responsibility for such disappearances as well as its obligation to ensure a full investigation into the deaths of the children, to notify families of the fate of the children, and to provide remedies to victims, including families and communities.”[4]
Ungrievable and Untraceable Lives
The term “ungrievable life” comes from the work of Judith Butler. She argues that a grievable life is a valuable life, a person “whose humanity is recognized, celebrated and deemed worthy of protection.” An ungrievable life is “one that cannot be mourned because it has never lived, that is, it has never counted as life at all.” The report argues that “[o]nce seen as ungrievable, Indigenous people’s lives and deaths were devalued and commodified; officials were more concerned with keeping burial costs to a minimum than ensuring that the deceased children and their families were treated with human dignity and respect. The lives of the children were not only ungrievable, but they were all too often untraceable” as the denial of grief is followed by disrespect for the dead.[5]
Indigenous Records and Access
The Report’s concepts of “Settler Amnesty,” “Enforced Disappearance” and “Ungrievability” help to name a common sense in Canada that applies a far lower standard of respect and concern for Indigenous deaths. These concepts are helpful when moving from some of the reports more abstract concepts of its more practical, especially in its discussion of access to historical records relating to the deaths of Indigenous people, where we see these concepts at work in Archives across the country today.
The OSI critically identifies and discusses the barriers faced by researchers in accessing records, including those held by government and church entities, of Indigenous children in Indian Residential Schools and related institutions. The Interim Report found barriers including:
- A lack of transparency and information on how to access records;
- Legal and policy requirements to pursue access via formal freedom of information processes, even where records are over 100 years old;
- Long delays before access to archives is granted;
- Limited access and/or institutional selection of what records are “relevant”;
- Production of records that require translation, particularly French language records, and no accompanying funds to pay for the translation;
- Records are in numerous archives across the country, and outside Canada, which requires research teams to attend at multiple sites;
- The need to negotiate several and varying Memoranda of Understanding or Access;
- Agreements with multiple institutions;
- Records are not always accessioned or organized in a manner that is useful; and
- Significant research may be required because the records often do not identify the child by their original birth name, but rather by the number or christian name they were assigned by government or school officials.[6]
The Report discovered shocking evidence of difficulties faced by researchers in accessing records. The OSI states that, “[t]here are privacy and access to information regimes that apply to governments and non-governmental organizations; records holders are often constrained by these or hide behind them in failing to disclose records to those seeking access.”[7] The report outlines two case studies to highlight the difficulties of working with Canadian agencies to access records including long wait times (several years, for instance), poor quality copies that were too difficult to read, and Canada ignoring requests for inventories of records held by Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and Indigenous Services Canada (and the continued blocking of access to the Indian Register).[8]
There are many other insightful revelations in the OSI’s approach and Reports. For example, the OSI did not restrict its research to the schools named in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, as was required by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and so the research is incredibly thorough. In addition, the OSI included in its investigation, deaths of children at institutions to which students were sent from the schools, including hospitals, child welfare institutions, reformatories, and homes for unwed mothers, acknowledging the colonial web of Indigenous child welfare institutions. The reports are currently on the OSI’s website however it is not clear how long that website will continue to operate now that the commission is over. For those who work in the field it would be wise to download the PDFs of the OSI’s various Reports as soon as possible.
Reparations Framework Handout, OSI, 2024 available here.
[1] Murray’s mandate was to identify needed measures and make recommendations for a new federal legal framework to ensure the respectful and culturally appropriate treatment of unmarked graves and burial sites of children at former Indian Residential Schools and associated institutions. This work was to be done in close collaboration with First Nations, Inuit and Métis governments, representative organizations, communities, Survivors and families, the federal, provincial, and territorial governments and other relevant institutions such as church entities and record holders. The Special Interlocutor functioned independently and impartially, in a non-partisan and transparent manner. For a full description of the mandate, see: https://osi-bis.ca/about#mandate
[2] OSI, Upholding Sacred Obligations: Reparations for Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials in Canada Volume 2, 1018-1021.
[3] Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools (Hereafter OSI), Upholding Sacred Obligations: Reparations for Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials in Canada Volume 1, 2024, p. 266.
[4]OSI, Upholding Sacred Obligations: Reparations for Missing and Disappeared Indigenous Children and Unmarked Burials in Canada Volume 1, 82.
[5] OSI, Sites of Truth, Sites of Conscience, Unmarked Burials and Mass Graves of Mising and Disappeared Indigenous Children in Canada 2024, 13.
[6] The Report condemned the destruction of records, urged moratoriums on record destruction, and advocated for the return of Catholic, Anglican and other records located overseas. The Office argued that better notice was needed for those who gave testimonies from the Independent Assessment Process that there is an opt-in to preserve their testimony at the NCTR and advocated for a process for the descendants of Survivors who participated in the IAP who are no longer alive to opt-in as well. The Report called for all individuals, organizations and entities to search for, protect, and disclose records that support search and recovery work, and to waive all research and access fees for Survivors, Indigenous families and communities. OSI, Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Interim Report Findings 2023, 2-3.
[7] Ibid, 56.
[8] In one case study, the Office of the Treaty Commissioner (OTC) sought record of the Prince Albert Church Diocese Saskatchewan, in which four residential schools operated. After headway was made, a new Bishop changed tact and denied that the previous Bishop had agreed to share documents. Then, seeking school records held by the Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan, researchers faced requirements to provide that Bishop’s written permission to view records. The OTC requested the records, met with the bishop, and then learned that the Diocese as drafting a non-disclosure agreement, which the OTC signed. Then Diocese wrote to the Archives to state that no copies of the microfilm could be made by the OTC, but did not also share this information with the OTC. Without the ability to make copies, researchers need to hand transcribe entire files, which effectively makes the research impossible. When the Treaty Commissioner met with the archbishop to express concerns about lack of cooperation, the bishop amended his letter to include “the possibility of making copies or downloading the digital copy of the documents.” All of this created a 14-month delay, captured in a timeline provided in the Interim Report.