Contract to search for graves criticized

Ottawa’s decision to contract work around the search for unmarked graves to a non-Indigenous organization based in the Netherlands risks causing harm and lacks transparency, says a government-appointed adviser dedicated to the issue.

Kimberly Murray, who was tapped last year to serve as an independent special interlocutor on the matter, says she raised concerns directly with Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller on his department’s decision to spend $2 million to hire the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Based in The Hague, the organization specializes in identifying the remains of those who have been killed or gone missing in major conflicts and disasters, including in Canada after the 2013 Lac-Megantic rail catastrophe.

“They have no competency with Indigenous people within Canada,” said Murray, a former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and a member of the Kahnesatake Mohawk Nation in Quebec.

“They don’t understand the constitutional regime that we’re under. They don’t understand Section 35 constitutional protected rights. They don’t know anything about Indigenous laws and protocol.”

Miller’s office said the organization will undertake a “cross-country outreach campaign” with Indigenous communities looking to hear options to help identify or repatriate the possible remains of children who were forced to attend residential schools.

“There’s no transparency,” Murray said. “My concern is that it’s not Indigenous-led. This is Canadaled.”