Residential school survivors press Ottawa for more money to find unmarked graves

A group of residential school survivors and their supporters are asking the federal government to reverse what they’re calling a funding cut and come up with more money to help find the unmarked graves of students who went to these institutions.

The request comes the same day Canada marks the fourth annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, established in 2021 to honour the survivors of residential schools, and the children who never came home from them.

The Survivors’ Secretariat, which is parsing through decades-old records and searching the grounds of the former Mohawk Institute near Brantford, Ont., is leading the charge against a series of changes that Ottawa announced earlier this year that it says will reduce the total pool of money available to Indigenous communities to document residential school atrocities and deaths.

Recent budget offers less money: secretariat

The issue first moved to the forefront of the national agenda after the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation said in 2021 that preliminary findings from a radar survey of the grounds of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School indicated over 200 children could be buried on the site in B.C.

In the wake of those stunning claims, the federal government earmarked $209.8 million in Budget 2022 to support Indigenous communities who wanted to carry out their own investigations and “document, locate and memorialize burial sites.” That money has already funded 146 projects, including research and ground searches.

But the Survivors’ Secretariat says the most recent federal budget is offering less money — $91 million over two years — to continue with research they say is critical to getting to the bottom of what happened at these institutions, places where abuse was rampant and death occurred.

The change in funding means “communities are going to be pitted against each other to access a limited pool of funding,” Laura Arndt, the executive lead at the secretariat, told reporters on Parliament Hill.

Arndt said communities will be forced to give up their work if Ottawa doesn’t come through with more money soon.

“We’re trying to uncover a history that’s 150 years old, and with the limited funding we’ve been provided in three years — it’s not doable,” she said.

“There’s hundreds of millions of dollars worth of work that needs to be done, and that’s just a start to try to uncover the truth of what happened in all of these schools.”

She pointed to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s past commitment to “support communities” and “be there every step of the way to honour the children who did not return,” saying the least he can do is come through with steady funding for such searches.

“We say to the prime minister — we’ve had enough. Promises only matter when you keep them, so keep your promise. Do it for the communities, do it for this country, so that they know what real reconciliation looks like.”

Federal government is committed: minister

Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree said the government is still committed to funding this research work, and that eligible communities can get up to $3 million each from his department.

“We will be with each and every community throughout the whole process this year,” he said in an interview with CBC News.

He also said more money could be available: “I’m working with my cabinet colleagues to ensure that we will have the resources in order to meet the demands that are out there.”

Arndt didn’t say how much money she and other organizations like hers needed. She just said she wants “long-term, sustainable resources to ensure the work gets done.”

“We shouldn’t be held over a barrel in the national month of reconciliation, begging for funding for a promise that this prime minister made. Why should we have to beg for money from the very entities that conducted this atrocity?”

Arndt added that if Ottawa doesn’t come through with more funding, it risks fuelling the residential school “denialist movement,” referring to some people who deny or downplay what went on at these schools or question the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s findings about how many children are said to have died while in attendance.

The TRC, which carried out an exhaustive, years-long study of a system that was run at different points by the federal government and some churches, said as many as 6,000 children may have died, most from malnutrition or disease. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation estimates about 4,100 children died at residential schools across the country, based on death records.

‘People need to understand the price we paid as children’

Roberta Hill, a former student at the Mohawk Institute and a member of the Survivors’ Secretariat, said the school was “very horrific, very damaging, harmful and abusive,” and that people like her deserve to know the true extent of the carnage caused by schools like this one.

Research and investigations “are going to take time, and to cut funding now is just absolutely ridiculous, and it just makes me angry and very frustrated.”

“Maybe it’s a waiting game for them,” she said. “They’re waiting for us poor old residential school survivors to die. Well, I’m not going anywhere. Not yet.

“I’ll live as long as I can because I want answers and I want truth. People need to understand the price we paid as children.”

Scott Hamilton is an archaeology professor at Lakehead University who’s been working with the Survivors’ Secretariat and counselling communities on how to carry out ground searches for possible graves.

Hamilton said non-invasive investigations like this are “very complex, very expensive” and “technically demanding.”

“This is not something that can be done hurriedly or you end up with more troubles than you solve,” he said.

With less funding to go around, he’s recommending communities “mothball all ground searches, all geophysics” and devote what resources they have to other research, like collecting information from survivors and going through written archives.

“I essentially told them to fire me.

“I am now superfluous, you’ll need to focus on your core activities,.”

Support is available for anyone affected by their own experience at residential schools or intergenerational trauma.

A national Indian Residential School Crisis Line has been set up to provide support for survivors and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.