The memorial at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School grew daily in June, 2021, as visitors paid respects after Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc announced the discovery of unmarked graves at one of Canada’s largest former residential schools.Melissa Tait/The Globe and Mail
On a tour through the Kamloops Indian Residential School on Monday, Jeanette Jules and I stopped by the kitchen. There, a large stainless-steel grill and a deep fryer sat, meticulously clean and in incredible condition, considering the age of the stove.
She told me that was thanks to the school’s students, who were ordered to clean the stove’s backsplash until it gleamed.
Ms. Jules, along with her siblings, is a survivor of this notorious residential school, one of the largest in Canada. A traditional knowledge keeper, her most precious task is taking care of the Le Estcwicwéy̓, the missing – the students buried in the apple orchards.
This is a national historical site, one that Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc has been meticulously preserving. Unlike many other First Nations with Indian Residential Schools on their territory, this community refused to knock theirs down. But outside, security guards patrol 24 hours a day. People have shown up here, demanding proof of children’s graves, looking for bodies. It is sickening.
Before we met up in Kamloops, I’d last seen Ms. Jules at the end of October, in Gatineau, Que., where nearly 400 survivors and witnesses gathered for the release of the final report by Kim Murray, the independent interlocutor on unmarked burials and mass graves. The report lays out “42 obligations that governments, churches, and other institutions must meet,” and among them is the creation of an Indigenous-led, independent commission with a 20-year mandate to keep investigating the undocumented deaths of Indigenous children.
As she walks through the halls with me, Ms. Jules agrees wholeheartedly with this call. It is the least the government could do.
Canada owes it to survivors, particularly under the government’s commitment to implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. But it would also serve Canadians at large – those non-Indigenous folks who find themselves in the mushy middle, who say they are unclear about what to believe, uncertain about what happened to children forcibly torn from their homes, families, languages and culture, and sent to schools like this one. A commission wouldn’t just offer the chance of bringing delayed justice to so many families – it could also bring clarity to the naysayers amid a persistent climate of denialism.
Over the last several years, I have travelled to First Nations communities all over the country. I’ve sat with survivors from Kamloops and Mission in B.C. to Shingwauk in Sault Ste. Marie, Ont., from Fort George in Chisasibi, Que., to Fort Albany and Thunder Bay all the way on the other side of Weeneebayko. I have heard their stories and seen the graves of children, even though a growing chorus of people claim they do not exist, or do not deserve any justice.
I have also seen the politicians and the religious leaders come and go, taking their well-formed words and bright promises with them. The Catholic Church still hangs on to student records, requiring every community to figure out on their own how to get ahold of those records, including forming an agreement with the Church to access information on our own children. The Church has been near-silent on the issue of settler denialism, and this silence only fuels the hate.
Three years after the discovery at Kamloops, we have seen how Indigenous communities can mobilize despite the pain inflicted by 150 years of colonization. But we have also seen how we have to continually prove to Canada that what we speak of is real.
Canada has a moral and ethical obligation to investigate all the deaths. Some may balk at spending money on such a project, but this investment would not be expensive – and what price could you put on a truth-recovery process that could save a country’s conscience?
The Canadian government did not further extend Ms. Murray’s mandate after all the work she did, and this is beyond disappointing. All the knowledge she carries from her years of work now needs to be passed on and enshrined. A permanent office should have been created to administer the 42 obligations. After the horrors of an estimated 6,000 dead Indigenous children – many unknown to us still – this should have been a no-brainer.
Regardless of who wins the next election, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s legacy in this term should be to establish and entrench a commission with a very long lead time – not a program that can be cut or trimmed by any government that might be more concerned with saving money than saving its national soul.
Until then, the Prime Minister and every MP should be mandated to walk with survivors like Ms. Jules through Kamloops Indian Residential School. Better yet, they should have to stay for months without access to their families. They should have to see, firsthand, how clean the stove is, and understand the deep stain that lies beneath it.