Seeking justice for missing children and unmarked graves uncovers ‘larger’ concerns

Kimberly
Murray says an impending bill making Indigenous policing an essential
service could make the process of searching burial sites much safer for
Indigenous communities.

Raisa Patel  Oct. 30, 2022

 

OTTAWA—For
Kimberly Murray, many challenges lie behind the difficult work of
crafting a legal framework that would seek justice for children who
faced abuse and lost their lives at Canada’s residential schools.

In June, Murray was appointed the country’s independent special interlocutor for missing children, unmarked graves and burial sites.

For
two years, Murray is taking on the heavy task of liaising with
Indigenous communities to examine how Ottawa, provinces and territories
protect and investigate these sites, with the aim of improving Canadian
laws and making recommendations for a new federal legal framework.

Nearly five months into the job in October, Murray says some of those challenges are more sprawling than she first believed.

“The records are proving (to be) a larger concern than originally I thought,” she told the Star.

While
obtaining and accessing residential school records held by churches and
the federal government have long been considered a barrier to achieving
reconciliation, Murray said the issue extends far beyond those
entities.

She’s encountered cases of
children sent to the schools, apprehended by municipal police for
running away, entered into the court system and sent to reformatories,
before being shuttled back to the institutions they first fled.

“This
systemic interconnection of all these organizations and entities and
institutions is much larger than I thought,” said Murray, of attempts to
lay out a clear paper trail in each of those cases.

The
role of special interlocutor was first announced last summer, after
ground searches confirmed the existence of hundreds of unmarked graves
at the sites of several former residential schools. At the time, the
federal government earmarked $83 million, on top of other investments,
to research and locate burial sites, and to commemorate children who
died at the institutions.

Since then,
Indigenous communities have grappled with how to go about conducting
searches of their own.  As of September, 88 communities have received
federal funding to begin that work, Murray said.

The
former executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission
said the ongoing battle to access records — including those from local
police services, hospitals and universities — is mirrored in the
challenges accessing potential burial sites.

She
referenced the recent example involving Sioux Valley Dakota Nation in
southwestern Manitoba, whose radar survey at a campground in Brandon was
stalled after the site’s owner blocked access to the area.

“There’s
also issues with other sites that aren’t necessarily where the
residential school was located, but was associated with a residential
school, or we know that Indigenous children got sent to these places,”
Murray said.

“Our legislation and our legal framework doesn’t adequately address those concerns.”

These
are issues Murray raised at a meeting with federal, provincial and
territorial ministers of justice two weeks ago, where she was able to
discuss her mandate with government officials for the first time.

Murray
said she hopes to conduct similar meetings with Indigenous relations
ministers across the country as part of a wider effort to improve
co-ordination between hundreds of Indigenous communities.

One
of the topics raised in her discussion with justice ministers was
enshrining Indigenous policing as an essential service — a topic Ottawa
is hoping to address in the form of new legislation this year.

At
present, Indigenous police services are funded through the First
Nations and Inuit Policing Program, which was established in 1991. While
costs are split between provinces, territories, and the federal
government, police services are still regularly underfunded.

Ottawa
had initially hoped to table legislation on the matter as early as this
fall, a deadline that has now been pushed back to this winter. The
legislation is expected to help reform the way Indigenous police
services are funded, which would provide communities with full-time,
culturally-sensitive services.

Murray
said having a safe policing alternative is critical for communities
wrestling with how to bring law enforcement into their searches.

Such
police services could fundamentally change the way investigations are
conducted, Murray said, including allowing families and survivors to
actively take part in the process.

“I
am always offended when I hear a Crown attorney or a police officer
say, ‘Well, we have to protect the integrity of the investigation. To
me, that’s very demeaning and disrespectful to the families and their
communities because nobody wants to interfere with the integrity of the
police investigation,” Murray said.

“That to me is a buzzword, a white people buzzword, for ‘Get out of our way.’”

Having legislation in place as quickly as possible would eradicate some of that mistrust, Murray said.

“(Indigenous
police) weren’t the ones taking the kids when they ran away and
bringing them back. They weren’t the ones that did the failed
investigation when survivors were coming forward about sexual abuse,”
Murray said. “If we have First Nations police services, trained,
properly resourced, with the ability to do this investigation, that
could be the solution.”