>AN UNFINISHED PROJECT

Who died? How? Where were they buried? These are some of the difficult questions a special working group of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission delved into.

The Problem

Shortly before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission began in earnest in 2009, a special working group was established to look into missing residential school children and unmarked burials. Goals for the project included identifying how many residential school children died, the causes, where they’re buried, and who has vanished without a trace.

The working group included former students, representatives from churches, the federal government and major national aboriginal groups, including the Assembly of First Nations.

While the residential school system was in operation in Canada from the early 1880s to 1996, no effort was ever made to record the number of students who died. The exact number is not likely to ever be known.

The biggest problem is the incomplete records. According to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report, a 1935 policy from the federal government allowed many of the school records to be destroyed.

Efforts so far

Professor John Milloy, a Canadian expert on the history of Indian residential schools who was part of a working group with the commission, says there were challenges right off the bat. Aside from the missing records, there were difficulties obtaining those that did exist. “The Protestant churches were, by and large, very happy to turn over their documents . . . The Catholic Church wasn’t very co-operative,” he recalls.

But there were also positive efforts and gestures that eased the commission’s work. For example, in 2012 at their annual general meeting, Canada’s chief coroners and medical examiners passed a resolution giving the commission access to their records on residential school deaths.

Next steps

The commission report calls upon the federal government to “work with churches, aboriginal communities and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of the deceased.”

The report also called for a continued search for the missing.

Alvin Fiddler, deputy grand chief of the Nishnawbe Aski Nation, which represents 49 First Nations groups in Northern Ontario, said it’s vital for the work to keep going.

“It’s very important for the families who don’t know where their loved ones are buried for them to know, or have assurances that work will continue to try to find the answers.’’

He pointed to successful efforts to clear a graveyard for students of a residential school near Timmins.

“You couldn’t tell it was a gravesite before. They cleared the ground, took out all the brush, put a gate around the burial ground. Now you can tell it’s a gravesite,” Fiddler says. “There are graves there, at least 40, but many of them have no names.”