Indigenous Peoples are forced to search through miles of scattered records across the country, traveling to distant locations to determine what happened to the children and their relatives who went missing while attending the schools, or who went missing from health or social services institutions administered by provincial or territorial governments. Families deserve to know, deserve the truth, deserve justice.
We call on the Government of Canada to implement the 11 recommendations released in the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples’ report called Missing Children, Missing Records. Here are the following recommendations:
Recommendation 1: That the Government of Canada compel Catholic entities to release records to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Recommendation 2: That the Government of Canada support and fund Indigenous-led approaches to coordinate national and regional efforts to locating and retrieving records across multiple jurisdictions.
Recommendation 3: That the Government of Canada, in cooperation and collaboration with its provincial counterparts, provide funding to the Société historique de Saint-Boniface and the Royal BC Museum and Archives for the translation, description and digitization of the Oblate records.
Recommendation 4: That the Government of Canada provide the Residential Schools Documents Advisory Committee with adequate funding in the next two years in order to expedite its work of locating and transferring documents to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation; and That each federal department and agency on the Residential Schools Documents Advisory Committee appoint a sufficient number of employees whose primary purpose is to coordinate the search and transfer the records.
Recommendation 5: That the Government of Canada increase funding to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation so it can properly manage the additional records to be transferred from the Government of Canada; and That the Government of Canada provide further funding to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to hire individuals for the translation, description and digitization of Oblate records.
Recommendation 6: That the Government of Canada in consultation with the Residential School Documents Advisory Committee should provide direction to Access to Information and Privacy offices across federal institutions of the common lexicon for terminology related to Indigenous peoples and residential schools, and the former federal policy of assimilation, once the work is complete. Further, that the Government of Canada, in consultation with the Residential School Documents Advisory Committee, provide direction to departments and federal employees on records that must be provided to the public when requested through Access to Information and Privacy requests.
Recommendation 7: That Indigenous Services Canada fund the establishment of an Elder’s institute in the Fort Albany First Nation’s region to support healing and intergenerational learning.
Recommendation 8: That the Government of Canada adopt a formal policy to proactively disclose information pertaining to Indigenous peoples and residential schools and to prioritize negotiation and mediation to resolve conflicts rather than litigation.
Recommendation 9: That the Treasury Board of Canada, in consultation with Indigenous peoples, amend the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act and produce a specific plan to align both acts to incorporate the rights as articulated in the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; and to provide broader discretionary powers under these Acts to federal institutions to disclose records when warranted by public interest.
Recommendation 10: That the Treasury Board of Canada amend the purpose clauses of the Access to Information Act and the Privacy Act to reflect reconciliation with Indigenous peoples.
Recommendation 11: That Library and Archives Canada review its holdings of death records from before 1967 to identify Indigenous children who may have died while at residential schools or in a federal hostel in the Northwest Territories.
Click here to learn more about these recommendations!
