Ottawa, Jan. 18 (Prensa Latina) The challenges of locating missing Indigenous children and unmarked graves related to Canada’s notorious boarding schools drew attention at a meeting that ended in Vancouver today.
The Third National Meeting on Unmarked Graves, held January 16-18 in this British Columbia city, was a follow-up to similar events held in Winnipeg and Edmonton last year.
The participants exchanged ideas in workshops and breakout sessions and heard from speakers from different organizations about data sovereignty and shared control over knowledge and information.
The question of who is the rightful owner and who controls access to records, church archives, plans and other relevant documents has been one of the main obstacles faced by Indigenous families and communities in locating the remains of their loved ones. pointed out the local press.
Federal Attorney General David Lametti announced on June 7, 2022, the appointment of a special interlocutor to coordinate the Canadian government’s response to anonymous graves discovered at several former boarding schools for Indigenous children.
Lametti appointed Kimberly Murray, a Mohawk woman originally from Kanehsatake, Quebec, to lead this effort for the next two years.
Hundreds of buried Indigenous children were coerced by federal authorities in the 19th and 20th centuries into an education designed to erase their own languages and cultures into religious and governmental institutions.
In the last federal budget, Ottawa allocated nearly $210 million to invest over five years to help Indigenous communities document, locate, and commemorate burial sites in former boarding schools.
The federal government has also provided funding to cover the costs of programs that provide essential mental health and cultural services that promote intergenerational trauma recovery in communities.
A fourth meeting will be held in Toronto in March, focusing on defending indigenous legislation.
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