A memorial sits outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, B.C..DARRYL DYCK/The Canadian Press
When Wally McKay was 12 years old, he was forced to attend Shingwauk Indian Residential School in Sault Ste. Marie, after being transferred there from Pelican Lake Indian Residential School in Sioux Lookout, which he attended from the age of five.
I say “forced” because Wally had no choice once the colonial system got ahold of him. He was removed far from his childhood home, the Anisininew community of Sachigo Lake First Nation, 425 km north of Sioux Lookout in northern Ontario, and sent away to church-run, federally funded schools.
It was Canadian law and policy to make Indigenous children disappear.
Last week, at the Garden River First Nation Survivors gathering, Mr. McKay, a beloved former Grand Chief of Nishnawbe Aski Nation, told me he and his friends used to seek solace along the shores of the St. Mary’s River in the shadow of the looming Shingwauk building that is now Algoma University. He remembered that to get to the water, they used to step around a gravesite that is no longer there.
Mr. McKay was my co-emcee at the three-day gathering. We sat together in a ballroom last Tuesday, along with nearly 100 other survivors, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak and Anishinabek Nation Grand Chief Linda Debassige, and listened as Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree tried to explain why Ottawa has cut funding for community and organization Indian Residential School research and site searches from $3-million annually to $500,000 a year. That cap includes $200,000 for research and $300,000 for fieldwork, according to Ryan Tyndall, a CIR spokesperson. He added these “adjustments” apply to new agreements only, not those previously signed, and that 146 funding agreements have been approved for a total of $216.6-million.
Canada’s own federally appointed Independent Special Interlocutor on unmarked graves, Kimberly Murray, has demanded permanent funding be set aside for this important work. Canada has gone in the opposite direction and it hasn’t waited for her final report.
I give it to Mr. Anandasangaree. He showed up to the Sault Ste. Marie gathering and faced a crowd full of faces that he and his government have betrayed, once again.
“We had limited resources allocated to us as a department. We had to make a difficult decision. I apologize for that,” Mr. Anandasangaree said.
With a federal election looming, the Liberals have swung a near-fatal blow to their relationship with First Nations communities. I don’t know who is advising Prime Minister Justin Trudeau these days, but they clearly don’t value what he once called Canada’s most important relationship.
The Liberals constantly do this – build up trust, lend a hand, then step away. After all this time, they have not figured out that relationships matter to First Nations peoples. Face-to-face agreements and dialogues mean something. So does following the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s calls to action, not abandoning them. Yet every time, the fragile trust between us breaks. Mr. Anandasangaree was the Indian agent, telling a room of survivors what they can and cannot do.
The first Indian Residential Schools opened in the early 19th century and the last one closed in the late 1990s. That is more than 100 years of genocidal Canadian policies aimed at assimilation and making children disappear, leaving generations suffering intergenerational trauma. Since the discovery of the more than 200 potential unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, funding has flowed to help us reclaim the children who never came home.
It is Canada’s obligation under international laws, including the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, to uncover the truth. Canada has worked with our communities for just three years since the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund was established in June 2021. Survivors, communities and political tribal organizations have just gotten started. They’ve mobilized, held numerous meetings, and shared knowledge and news about how to research their histories despite the fact that many records are either hidden, missing or destroyed. Now. many are wondering how to continue.
“It is shameful and dishonourable,” Ms. Debassige told the survivors and Mr. Anandasangaree. “Here is another promise that has been broken to a people who’ve had broken promises time and again … If you say you care, reinstate the funding immediately.”
Mr. McKay told me he will march to Ottawa to get the funding restored – he will block highways and go to jail if he must. “This is us. This is what happened,” he said. “We won’t let go.”
Mr. Anandasangaree and Canada have insulted all survivors and intergenerational survivors. But it’s not too late to fix it. Canada needs to create permanent funding for research and site searches of residential schools now.