Aboriginal Issues

The former Kamloops Indian Residential School (KIRS) is about a 10 minute drive from the courthouse where six water and land defenders — including a survivor — were sentenced this week for resisting Trans Mountain’s construction in Secwepemcúl’ecw.

The evidence indicating the presence of 215 children’s remains at KIRS — uncovered through an investigation led by Tkʼemlúps te Secwépemc in 2021 — is still a raw subject for the many affected families, some of whom were present in court.

But that didn’t stop Shelley Fitzpatrick, the judge who has been presiding over the land defenders’ case for two years, from making her opinion about the findings at KIRS known.

A First Nation on Vancouver Island has released the preliminary results of a scan of the former site of the Alberni Indian Residential School, which it says has revealed 17 potential unmarked graves.

The Tseshaht First Nation also says its historical research found records showing 67 students died over the seven decades the school was open.

The nation made the announcement Tuesday in a community gym that was once part of the residential school complex on Tseshaht land near Port Alberni, B.C.

A First Nation on Vancouver Island will release the results of its preliminary investigation into possible unmarked graves on the grounds of a former residential school near Port Alberni, B.C., on Tuesday.

The Tseshaht First Nation says ground-penetrating radar has been used over the last 18 months to check the area around the former Alberni Indian Residential School site.

Bandwagon.

“… Eugene Arcand, who sits as a member of its survivors circle, says he cannot understand why Ottawa would look to an international group that lacks knowledge of the residential school system and “cultural competency” needed for such sensitive discussions.”

Translation – they gonna catch us lying!

Some Indigenous academics and activists say they’ve become the targets of a growing backlash against reports of hundreds of unmarked graves at former residential school sites — and they want Parliament to do something about it.

They say they’re being flooded with emails, letters and phone calls from people pushing back against the reports of suspected graves and skewing the history of the government-funded, church-run institutions that worked to assimilate more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children for more than a century.

They call it “residential school denialism” and describe it as an attempt to downplay, twist and dismiss the facts to undermine public confidence in the Indigenous reconciliation project.

This ought to go over well.

Ottawa is spending $2 million for an international organization to provide Indigenous communities with options around identifying possible human remains buried near former residential school sites.

The office of Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Marc Miller said in a statement Tuesday it is signing a technical agreement with the International Commission on Missing Persons.

Ontario has claimed that it does not need to pay billions of dollars owed to First Nations over broken treaty obligations, arguing that it has already spent the sum on the historical costs of resource extraction and the infrastructure of “colonization”.

Canada’s federal government and the province have spent the last week in a Sudbury court arguing neither is responsible for compensating Indigenous nations for more than 150 years of lost revenues.

“Despite fundamental differences in how First Nations treat hereditary chiefs, it has not stopped A-list Hollywood movie stars from staking out an absolutist position on this elusive question, which continues to challenge many of Canada’s 1.7 million First Nations people.”

Officials announced Saturday that the federal government and 325 First Nations have agreed to settle a class-action lawsuit, seeking reparations for the loss of language and culture brought on by Indian residential schools, for $2.8 billion.

The agreement still has to be approved by a Federal Court before it can be disbursed to recipients, who filed the claim for collective compensation in 2012 as part of a broader class action known as the Gottfriedson case.

Canada agreed to pay the $2.8 billion of settlement money into a new trust fund that will operate for 20 years, if the court approves the deal. The fund will be run independent of the federal government, according to officials.

The good news is that given the increasing demonization of white folks within our education system future generations will be eligible for sweet payouts like this.

Wauzhushk Onigum Nation says ground-penetrating radar (GPR) has detected more than 170 anomalies during a search for unmarked graves at the site of a former residential school in Kenora, Ont.

The anomalies, referred to as “plausible burials,” were found in cemetery grounds associated with the former St. Mary’s Indian Residential School, Wauzhushk Onigum Nation said in a media release Tuesday.

The search began in May.