Independent special Interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian residential schools Kimberly Murray, centre, delivers remarks on an Indigenous-led reparations framework during a national gathering in Gatineau, Que., on Oct. 29.Spencer Colby/The Canadian Press
The federal government needs to address residential-school denialism by amending the Criminal Code to make it an offence to willfully promote hatred against Indigenous peoples by playing down or justifying the harms the institutions caused, a special interlocutor’s final report says.
Kimberly Murray, the independent special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian residential schools, released her findings Tuesday at a national gathering held in Gatineau. She was appointed to her role for a two-year term in June, 2022, by then-federal justice minister David Lametti. This past June, her term was extended by six months.
The final report lays out the elements of what is called an Indigenous-led reparations framework to support the search and recovery of missing and disappeared children and unmarked graves.
In her findings, Ms. Murray’s report says residential-school denialism must be taken seriously because it puts at risk the work of truth and reconciliation. It should not be dismissed as a “harmless fringe phenomenon,” the report says, adding that residential-school denialism exists across religious and political institutions, the academy and the media.
Survivors say residential school denialism should be criminalized
The residential-school system, which forcibly removed Indigenous children from their homes and communities to attend institutions where they often faced abuse and neglect, operated across the country from 1831 to 1996. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which spent six years documenting the effects of the institutions, said 4,100 children died while attending residential schools. TRC chair Murray Sinclair has said the actual number could top 20,000.
Ms. Murray’s report, which contains 42 “obligations,” calls on the federal government to include provisions in its Online Harms Act to address denialism about residential schools. It also urges Ottawa to create an Indigenous-led commission with a 20-year mandate to investigate Indigenous children who are missing or who have disappeared.
On Tuesday, Justice Minister Arif Virani was in Gatineau to receive copies of the report at the ceremony. Asked by reporters about the calls to amend the Criminal Code, he said he would review the findings.
In an interview, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak lauded Ms. Murray for listening to survivors and urged that findings not be left to collect dust. She said she was pleased to see the report call for land where former residential schools are located to be returned to First Nations.
Ms. Murray’s report said that, despite mechanisms and strategies used by communities and survivors groups to return the land of former schools, including through the federal government’s treaty land claims process, the government has failed “to establish legislation and a rematriation process tailored to the unique circumstances of sites where forensic investigations are active and evidence must be preserved.”
“The federal government must now rematriate these lands, returning them to Indigenous Nations as restitution,” the report says.
Ms. Murray’s mandate included all burials of children who died while attending residential schools, including those who died after being transferred to hospitals, tuberculosis sanatoriums, industrial or training schools, reformatories and mental-health institutions.
In an interim report released in 2023, the interlocutor detailed how “denialists” were attacking communities that announced the possibility of unmarked graves.
The report called the violence prolific and said it takes place by e-mail, telephone, social media, in op-eds and, at times, through in-person confrontations. One of the examples cited involved the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Nation. In 2021, it announced that ground-penetrating radar had identified what the First Nation described as probable unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School.
Denialism comes in many forms, the report adds, from attacks on social media to people showing up in “the middle of the night, carrying shovels.”
Ms. Murray said that summer that denialism would never fully be addressed by one piece of legislation, but changes, such as amending the Criminal Code to make it a crime to incite hatred against residential-school survivors, could help facilitate discussion.
NDP MP Leah Gazan, a member of the Wood Mountain Lakota First Nation in Saskatchewan, tabled in September a private member’s bill designed to make it an offence to willfully promote hatred against Indigenous peoples by condoning, denying, playing down or justifying the Indian residential-school system in Canada through statements made other than in private conversation.
Ms. Gazan noted in an interview that the Criminal Code already outlaws Holocaust denial, adding that residential-school survivors, along with their families and communities, deserve to be safe. She said it has been nearly 10 years since the release of the TRC’s final report, yet in the past two years there has been “an increase in residential-school denialism.”
Survivors’ stories need to be honoured, Ms. Gazan said.
In response to those who say that outlawing residential-school denialism amounts to restrictions on free speech, Ms. Gazan said there is a difference “between hate speech and free speech. Residential-school denialism is hate speech – full stop. Just as Holocaust denial is hate speech – full stop.”
Conservative Crown-Indigenous relations critic Jamie Schmale said in a statement that his party is reviewing the report by Ms. Murray and it will “carefully examine the recommendations.”
He called the residential-school system a dark chapter in Canada’s history and pointed to former prime minister Stephen Harper’s apology acknowledging its horrors.
On Ms. Gazan’s legislation, Mr. Schmale has previously said Conservatives will closely examine the bill and participate in debates.