Canada needs to review its legal mechanisms to facilitate searches for unmarked burials linked to residential schools, says the special interlocutor appointed by Ottawa last year, Kimberly Murray. His interim report was tabled Friday in the presence of survivors and federal Justice Minister David Lametti.
The former director general of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Kimberly Murray, observes several legal barriers hampering searches for anonymous graves, particularly in terms of access to documents and places to carry out excavations.
“There is an urgent need for governments and churches to take active steps to return these lands to indigenous communities,” said Ms.me Murray, in English, at a press conference. She was appointed in June 2022 as an “independent special contact” to liaise between the federal government and Indigenous communities who are trying to find unmarked graves, or who have already found them.
” An obligation “
“Currently, there are no clear legal mechanisms to promote access to sites where research and [pour] protect these sites,” reads the report titled Sacred Responsibilities: Searching for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves.
Families, victims or communities wishing to carry out excavations must resort to going to court to obtain an injunction, which exacerbates tensions with the occupants of the land designated as potentially housing an unmarked burial site. Thus, “new procedures are necessary so that the land can be returned more quickly”, indicates the interlocutor. “It’s not just the right thing to do, it’s an obligation set out in the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.”
As for the documents used to guide research, they have sometimes been destroyed or lost over the years. The issue behind access to files, according to the office of the special interlocutor, therefore lies mainly in the funding of research due to the difficulties linked to legal and political requirements or to the processing times for requests.
In Quebec, the families of missing or deceased children have access to the documents and files of the missing. They can also benefit from government assistance, since a law adopted in June 2021. The Government of Quebec announced, moreover, earlier in the morning, that it had obtained orders from the Superior Court to help two Aboriginal families who wanted to exhume the remains of their deceased children to provide them with a dignified burial.
Indigenous justice
Minister David Lametti, for his part, took advantage of the publication of the report to stress the importance of anchoring in Canadian law the recommendations of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
“One of the goals of this work is to ensure that federal laws are consistent with the declaration. This implies an obligation to respect and accommodate Indigenous laws and traditions. The recommendations of M.me Murray are paramount in creating a legislative framework to preserve the respect and dignity of children buried in unmarked graves around residential schools,” he said.
The Minister was questioned twice by stakeholders presenting themselves as victims of residential schools and demanding more decision-making autonomy with regard to the future of their peoples.
The shadow of “negationism”
Qualified in 2015 as “cultural genocide” by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission set up by the federal government in the wake of the revelations on residential schools for Aboriginals, the story of the victims would be targeted by a growing wave of negationism, according to the special interlocutor, who recommends the implementation of legal sanctions.
“We must urgently consider legal mechanisms to combat Holocaust denial, including the implementation of civil and criminal penalties,” said Mr.me Murray. She added that she condemned the increase in “negationist violence” towards the “colonialist genocide” perpetrated against the indigenous peoples of Canada.
The report relies on the education of Canadians, the history and the suffering endured by the victims of these individual and collective traumas to combat the phenomenon.