The government of Canada and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau are breaking their promise to thousands of dead and missing children. In the name of those children, we urge them to reconsider.
It is ironic that we should begin with a plea in the name of thousands of children, because we don’t actually know all their names. That is part of the problem. An estimated 150,000 Indigenous children, some as young as four, were taken from their homes – many by force –and placed in Canada’s Indian Residential Schools between 1828 to 1996. They were abused and malnourished, with some subject to “nutrition experiments.” They were punished for speaking their Indigenous languages. Many were traumatized. And thousands never made it home. It is hard to decide which is more shocking – that thousands of children died while attending residential schools, or that we have no idea what the real number is. There are estimates of 6,000. Many believe it is more. Nobody knows the truth.
How can a country like Canada live comfortably with an open wound like uncounted thousands of missing children? The answer is that no country should accept something like this, but ours sometimes seems as if it does. We are with The Survivors’ Secretariat, a not-for-profit organization representing the Survivors of The Mohawk Institute, Canada’s longest-running Indian Residential School. One of us is a Survivor, and the other the daughter of a Survivor.
And on behalf of every child who was taken away, those who made it back home and those who did not, on behalf of their families and communities, we are calling on the Canadian government to keep its promise and keep helping us to find the truth.
Today is Canada’s National Day of Truth and Reconciliation. We have been marking this day
since 2021. That was also when the federal government created the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund to support Survivors and Indigenous communities, as they seek to research, locate, and document burial sites associated with former residential schools, and memorialize the deaths of children and return children’s remains home. This was a promise to us that our search for the truth would be honoured and supported. We hoped it would be kept. And for a while it was.
Over the first three years, the fund supported the work of 144 Indigenous communities from
across Canada. That work, accessing obscure records in multiple jurisdictions, finding graves that were never marked, is complex, laborious and painful. But it is underway. Except now the government has dramatically reduced the funding – from $216.6 million over three years to $91 million over two – and without any consultation or advance warning. This places in dire jeopardy the work that is now being done, and makes it impossible for any other communities to even consider getting started.
This, bluntly, is not what the government promised us. Just one year ago, six months before the budget that cut our funding, Prime Minister Trudeau said this:
“As communities continue searching for the children who never came home, the Government of Canada will be there every step of the way to provide them with the resources they need to fully uncover the truth of what happened at residential schools, honour the children who did not return, and support communities as they continue on their healing journeys.”
On this day, the Survivors’ Secretariat is releasing a report capturing the growing anger and frustration of Survivors, indigenous leaders and experts over the government’s sudden decision to break its promise.
Prime Minister, fine words are not enough. And promises only matter when you keep them. So, keep your promise. Do it for our communities. Do it for this country, so it may know real reconciliation. Do it for the Survivors of those terrible schools. Do it for the children who died, whose names we don’t even know.
Roberta Hill is Mohawk from the Six Nations of the Grand River territory and a Survivor of the Mohawk Institute. She is a member of the Board of Directors of the Survivors’ Secretariat.
Laura Arndt is a member of Six Nations of the Grand River and Executive Lead of The Survivors’ Secretariat. Laura’s mother, two aunts and grandmother are Survivors of the Mohawk Institute.
“A Time for Truth: Knowledge is Sacred; Truth is Healing” is a report chronicling three days of discussions and knowledge-sharing this past August in Thunder Bay. The forum gathered Survivors, Indigenous leaders, historians, and archaeologists involved in the investigations of missing children and unmarked burials. The report is available here.