Ottawa ends funding for national advisory committee on unmarked residential school graves

WARNING: This story contains details of experiences at residential schools.

An expert committee formed to help Indigenous communities find unmarked graves at former residential schools in Canada says the federal government has discontinued its funding.

"It's a betrayal," said founding member Crystal Gail Fraser, who is Gwich'in and grew up in Inuvik, N.W.T. "We are losing sight of our values around truth and reconciliation."

The committee will be forced to cease operations when its current funding agreement expires on March 31, Fraser said.

The decision comes after funding cuts announced in July for unmarked grave searches — later reversed — as well as funding delays for residential school non-profit Survivors' Secretariat.

The committee was formed after 200 potential burial sites were detected in 2021 through ground-penetrating radar at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School site, a finding that made headlines across the country and sparked international condemnation.

'We are still very much in the truth process'

The National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials (NAC) is co-administered by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) and the federal Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs.

In 2022, the year after the potential burial sites were detected at the Kamloops site, there were renewed federal commitments to take responsibility for what happened and support efforts toward healing. In July 2022, Pope Francis came to Canada and apologized for the Catholic Church's involvement in the schools.

It's a "shock" to learn that Ottawa is withdrawing its support just under three years later, Fraser said.

"All of the signals that we've seen from this government has been ongoing engagement with the process of truth and reconciliation," she said.

For Fraser, it's a strange way to mark the 10-year anniversary of the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC).

"When it comes to residential school histories and children who have either died or disappeared as a result of their institutionalization ... we are still very much in the truth process."

In 2015, the TRC determined that at least 3,200 children died while in federal custody at residential schools.

At the time, Murray Sinclair, who chaired the commission, told CBC News that because burial records were often incomplete, he was "absolutely convinced the number is much higher, perhaps as much as five to 10 times as high."

WATCH | Former Kamloops residential school is now a national historic site:

Former Kamloops Indian Residential school now a national historic site

7 days ago

Duration 2:52

The former Kamloops Indian Residential School, where, in 2021, Tk̓emlúps te Secwépemc shared that preliminary findings from a ground-penetrating radar survey had found some 200 potential unmarked graves on the institution's grounds, has been designated as a national historic site. The CBC's Jennifer Norwell got an inside look at the school with the chief of the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc.

'A tremendous loss'

Ten years later, despite important milestones in the ongoing effort to acquire complete records, gaps remain. Negotiations with provinces over the sharing of coroner's records and vital statistics are ongoing.

"There's many, many questions that still are left to be answered," said Raymond Frogner, head of archives and senior director of research at NCTR. "Losing NAC is a tremendous loss for the investigations of these questions."

More than 100 Indigenous communities in Canada are involved in residential school grave searches, and many encounter barriers trying to access information and resources to carry out that work.

The committee was intended to help lift some of these barriers through technical guidance and support with forensics, ground-penetrating radar, geographic work and archival and genealogical research.

"The national advisory committee was a very strong resource base that communities could turn to," Frogner said, "without the onerous weight of private industry charging them exorbitant prices and maybe even losing control of the records they were going to create in their investigations."

Judy Gingell, who chairs the Yukon Residential Schools Missing Children Project, said the national advisory committee has been instrumental in its efforts.

"It's a loss, of good information, of research, of support," she said of the federal government's decision to end funding to the group.

"It's just not right. Cruel, as far as I'm concerned."

Gingell said she knows of elders who last saw their children getting on a truck to go to residential school in the fall, and only learned a child had died when they did not return by truck in the spring.

"Our elders have no idea where the children are that passed."

"It's a critical time because we're at a point where all the technical work has been done, they know how many children are possibly going to be found at the different schools," said Kukdookaa Terri Brown, part of a group of survivors who help guide the committee's efforts. "It's like saying your lives don't matter."

After years of hearing promises from the government and beginning to believe there had been a real shift in its approach, she said it feels that all of a sudden, survivors have been dropped.

In a written statement to CBC News, Pascal Laplante, a spokesperson for the Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations, said responding to the TRC's calls to action is "incredibly important."

Laplante said communities would continue to receive funding through the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund, "as they pursue efforts to identify children who did not return home from residential schools."

But Brown said she isn't convinced.

"It's hurtful, because we are talking about babies who never got to feel the comfort of their mother's love, who probably died alone," she said. "And now in death it's the same. They're not getting the recognition and comfort they need.

"Their spirits need to know ... we know where you are, we've found you, we love you."

A national 24-hour Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available at 1-866-925-4419 for emotional and crisis referral services for survivors and those affected.

Mental health counselling and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.