Canada _ (Commonwealth Union) _ According to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, a $2 million contract Ottawa inked with an international firm to provide guidance on unmarked graves has several flaws. The Winnipeg-based center expressed “great worry” over Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada’s intention to employ a Dutch group to undertake “an extraordinarily sensitive consultation process” on problems regarding prospective gravesites near old residential schools.
“Since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, there has been a clear understanding that any work related to the harms caused by the residential school system must be led by Indigenous peoples and that survivors must be at the heart of this work,” Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, chair of the center’s governing circle, said in a statement.
The federal government recently stated that it has engaged the International Commission on Missing People to give advice based on an outreach effort with various groups interested in hearing prospective possibilities including DNA and other forensic procedures.
While Ottawa claims that it hired the commission in response to community feedback and that it has a mandate to assist communities in their searches, the center and other advocates argue that work on unmarked graves must be done independently of the federal government because it funded the church-run residential school system in the first place.
Supernant, the director of the University of Alberta’s Institute of Prairie and Indigenous Archeology and a member of the National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, stated on Monday that Ottawa is undermining the trust of Indigenous-led groups and communities.
“The federal government and Indigenous communities do not have a good past. And there is undoubtedly a lot of previous anger surrounding the question of residential schools “She stated. This move “simply reinforces the feeling that the government is going to do whatever it wants, which may not necessarily be what communities genuinely need.”
The commission revealed a copy of the technical agreement it signed with the government in January last week, revealing that the final report will be handed to the federal government by mid-June, with officials permitted to comment on drafts. The agreement also stipulates that Indigenous facilitators will be employed to be present at the conversations and to address participants’ “spiritual and ceremonial” requirements throughout the process.
