NEWS: Million Pledged, Unmarked Graves, Secretariat Investigation

 

Wauzhushk Onigum receives 'long overdue' $3M to search for unmarked burials at former residential schools - read here

(August 14, 2021) The chief of Wauzhushk Onigum says elders in the northwestern Ontario First Nation have been telling stories for decades about unmarked graves and the children who never came home from St. Mary's Indian Residential School.

"It's time to listen to their stories and educate non-Indigenous Canada, educate the world on what happened to our people," Chief Chris Skead told CBC News.

He hopes the $2.9 million in funding announced Thursday by the federal and provincial governments will help the First Nation find "the entire truth."

• Ottawa commits $321M for residential school searches and support services for survivors

• Ontario pledging $10M to identify and commemorate residential school burial sites

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Former TRC director to head 'secretariat' investigation

(August 13, 2021)

Kimberly R. Murray

 

The former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has been hired to help create a “survivors’ secretariat” to oversee a search for graves at the former Mohawk Institute residential school.  Kimberly R. Murray, a Mohawk of Kanehsatake, will act as executive oversight lead. In addition to her work with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray was the first assistant deputy Attorney General of the Indigenous Justice Division at the Ontario of the Attorney General.

Six Nations has put $1 million into the creation of the survivor secretariat.

The Mohawk Institute operated for 142 years from 1828 to 1970. More than 15,000 children, most of them from Six Nations, were forced to attend.

 

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Indigenous art show explores role of kinship in culture while works convey pain, hope, beauty

A description of this painting reads: 'Unmarked depicts the loss of culture, language and of course children through the historical implementation of the Residential School system in Canada. It was created as a reflection of my own feelings of sadness resulting from this loss and has become a timely harbinger of what is currently occurring with the increased discovery of children's Unmarked graves on the grounds of Canadian Residential Schools.' (D. Ahsén:nase Douglas) READ MORE