Indian envoy warns of 'big red line,' days after charges laid in Nijjar case
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
The head of a First Nations organization in Saskatchewan says ground searches will soon be underway at the 22 residential schools in that province, as calls for a similar effort to take place across the country grow louder.
Chief Bobby Cameron of the Federation of Sovereign Indigenous Nations, which represents 74 First Nations in Saskatchewan, says that conversations with Premier Scott Moe and federal Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller resulted in an agreement to conduct the searches at all residential schools in the province.
"They're committed to working with us and getting this done for our families and survivors," he told CTV News Channel on Tuesday.
"It is going to happen, it's just a matter of when and how soon. We're hoping for [activity to begin] by the end of the week."
There has been nationwide outrage over the deaths of children at residential schools since last week, when Chief Rosanne Casimir of the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation said that ground-penetrating radar showed that the remains of 215 children were buried at the site of a residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
Angela White, executive director of the Indian Residential School Survivors Society, told CTV News Vancouver that information passed down through Indigenous communities over generations gives ample reason to consider more searches like the one in Kamloops.
“We may never get the full story or the full number because documents are missing, documents are destroyed, but at least giving some comfort … is important," she said.
HOW MANY MORE DEATHS?
It is difficult to accurately estimate the total death toll at the 139 residential schools that operated in Canada between the late 19th century and 1996.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) says it knows of 4,100 children who died while attending these schools. The real number is certainly greater; by the commission's calculations, it could be as high as 15,000. Prior to last week, the TRC was aware of 51 deaths at the school in Kamloops – less than one-quarter of the number of bodies detected by radar.
Cameron said that his initial reaction to the discovery was one of "shock, hurt, anger, pain, and anguish," even though he and many other First Nations people had long believed the official death toll from the schools was undercounted.
"We're not surprised because we had believed our ancestors. We had believed the survivors," he said.
"They have not been lying about the things they've seen, the horrors that they have experienced in those residential schools."
Six of the TRC's 94 calls to action, which were issued in 2015 after the commission released its findings on the residential school system, address deaths and burials at residential schools. While the federal government says it has made efforts to address those calls, including by backing the TRC in its creation of the first national register of student deaths at the schools, critics say progress has been too slow.
"The fact of the matter is, if this Canadian government can find [billions of dollars] for a pipeline at the snap of their fingers, they can find whatever money it will take … to support First Nations to be able to locate and bring their children home," Pam Palmater, the chair in Indigenous governance at Ryerson University in Toronto, said Tuesday on CTV's Your Morning.
Some First Nations have suggested that all residential schools immediately be treated as crime scenes. While the TRC found that the residential school system amounted to cultural genocide, and some individual acts within the schools have been treated as crimes, no charges have been laid in connection with the system as a whole, or with any undocumented deaths.
"The perpetrators haven't been brought to justice," Palmater said.
FUNDING DENIED, LATER APPROVED
Searching the grounds of residential schools for undocumented graves, while difficult, is feasible – and it is not a new idea. A request for $1.5 million in funding to assist in a search effort was denied by the federal government in 2009.
In 2019, the feds allocated $33.8 million over three years to help implement the TRC's calls to action around residential schools.
More than 80 per cent of that money will go toward "supporting the important work of communities in locating, memorializing and commemorating those children who died while at Indian Residential Schools," Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada told CTV in a statement.
"The dark legacy of Indian Residential Schools has caused and continues to cause such harm and pain – the Government has made significant investments to provide health and healing supports to Survivors, their families and communities as determined by them to address their needs," the agency said.
For First Nations in Saskatchewan, Cameron said, those needs include both federal assistance in radar searches of the grounds outside residential schools, and ensuring any children found are given proper burials in accordance with their communities' traditions and protocols.
"It's going to be a long process, but it's also part of the healing journey that we do this together, we do this in prayer and solidarity," he said.
--
If you are a former residential school student in distress, or have been affected by the residential school system and need help, you can contact the 24-hour Indian Residential Schools Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419
Additional mental-health support and resources for Indigenous people are available here.
India's envoy to Canada insists relations between the two countries are positive overall, despite what he describes as 'a lot of noise.'
With Donald Trump sitting just feet away, Stormy Daniels testified Tuesday at the former president's hush money trial about a sexual encounter the porn actor says they had in 2006 that resulted in her being paid to keep silent during the presidential race 10 years later.
The U.S. paused a shipment of bombs to Israel last week over concerns that Israel was approaching a decision on launching a full-scale assault on the southern Gaza city of Rafah against the wishes of the U.S.
Footage from dozens of security cameras in the area of Drake’s Bridle Path mansion could be the key to identifying the suspect responsible for shooting and seriously injuring a security guard outside the rapper’s sprawling home early Tuesday morning, a former Toronto homicide detective says.
A chicken farmer near Mattawa made an 'eggstraordinary' find Friday morning when she discovered one of her hens laid an egg close to three times the size of an average large chicken egg.
Susan Buckner, best known for playing peppy Rydell High School cheerleader Patty Simcox in the 1978 classic movie musical 'Grease,' has died. She was 72.
Accused killer Jeremy Skibicki could have a challenging time convincing a judge that he is not criminally responsible for the deaths of four Indigenous women, a legal analyst says.
A Calgary bylaw requiring businesses to charge a minimum bag fee and only provide single-use items when requested has officially been tossed.
Two Nova Scotia men are dead after a boat they were travelling in sank in the Annapolis River in Granville Centre, N.S., on Monday.
An Ontario man says he paid more than $7,700 for a luxury villa he found on a popular travel website -- but the listing was fake.
Whether passionate about Poirot or hungry for Holmes, Winnipeg mystery obsessives have had a local haunt for over 30 years in which to search out their latest page-turners.
Eighty-two-year-old Susan Neufeldt and 90-year-old Ulrich Richter are no spring chickens, but their love blossomed over the weekend with their wedding at Pine View Manor just outside of Rosthern.
Alberta Ballet's double-bill production of 'Der Wolf' and 'The Rite of Spring' marks not only its final show of the season, but the last production for twin sisters Alexandra and Jennifer Gibson.
A mother goose and her goslings caused a bit of a traffic jam on a busy stretch of the Trans-Canada Highway near Vancouver Saturday.
A British Columbia mayor has been censured by city council – stripping him of his travel and lobbying budgets and removing him from city committees – for allegedly distributing a book that questions the history of Indigenous residential schools in Canada.
Three men in Quebec from the same family have fathered more than 600 children.
A group of SaskPower workers recently received special recognition at the legislature – for their efforts in repairing one of Saskatchewan's largest power plants after it was knocked offline for months following a serious flood last summer.
A police officer on Montreal's South Shore anonymously donated a kidney that wound up drastically changing the life of a schoolteacher living on dialysis.