WARNING: This article is about abuse of children in residential schools.
Kimberly Murray has opened an uncomfortable but long overdue conversation about justice for the “disappeared” children from Canadian schools, indigenous leaders say.
Murray, the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked graves at residential schools, received a standing ovation Tuesday after releasing her two-part final report in Gatineau, Que.
Although the report runs to more than a thousand pages, Murray’s overarching finding is that children who died and were buried in residential schools are not missing, but have disappeared through the state.
That makes them victims of “enforced disappearance,” a crime against humanity under international law, said Murray, a lawyer and member of Kanehsatà:ke, a Kanien’kehá:ka (Mohawk) community northwest of Montreal.
Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, national chief of the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), says “it’s an uncomfortable truth,” but a necessary truth.
“It took a long time and it was hidden for so long,” she told CBC News.
Instead of recommendations, Murray concludes her report with a list of 42 legal, moral and ethical obligations that it believes governments, churches and other institutions must comply with.
One obligation forces the federal government to appoint a panel of experts to investigate the possible return of residential school properties, which caught the national chief’s attention.
“Returning land to First Nations, and working to return that land to First Nations, is a step forward,” said Woodhouse Nepinak.
Murray’s duties also include referring the enforced disappearance of children to the International Criminal Court in The Hague, Netherlands.
Natan Obed, president of the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, told the meeting Wednesday that he is most interested in this call for Canada to submit to international processes.
“If Canada is to stand firm and strong in an international context, and maintain itself as a nation-state that adheres to the rule of law and cares for its citizens, the country must also understand when it is not adhering to the standards it is accountable,” he said.
Former AFN national chief Ovide Mercredi reiterated the focus on accountability during his own speech to the meeting on Wednesday.
“Let’s go international,” declared Mercredi, a lawyer who led the Assembly of First Nations from 1991 to 1997.
‘Let’s use the vehicles that are there. Even if we are denied access to it, let us go there anyway.”
‘Amnesty for settlers’
In her summary, Murray says that “settler amnesty and a culture of impunity” have shielded perpetrators and shielded the state from liability.
Obed said that “the concept of settler amnesty is a long overdue discussion in this country,” a conversation that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission “had to tiptoe around in many cases, but one that we are facing now, in 2024 can see.”
The federal government appointed Murray in 2022 during the national reckoning that followed the locating of potential unmarked graves at former residential school sites.
Justice Minister Arif Virani personally received the report but said he would not make any promises until thoroughly reviewing it, though he gave his personal response as a parent.
“You can’t hear stories about children,” Virani told reporters, his voice seeming to speak with emotion, “about people being abused, young girls being impregnated and then their babies being taken away and burned, without any response .”
The federal government estimates that about 150,000 children attended residential schools, a publicly funded, church-run assimilation system that operated across the country for more than a century.
Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission concluded in 2015 that the system was a central part of a Canadian policy of cultural genocide. As of 2021, more than 4,100 deaths had been documented in the schools.
‘A great contribution’
The question of whether someone will be prosecuted for enforced disappearance is difficult to answer, says Mark Kersten, assistant professor at the University of the Fraser Valley.
Kersten, who focuses on international criminal law and worked on Murray’s report, says no international tribunal has ever prosecuted the crime against humanity of enforced disappearance, despite the frequency with which it is committed.
“I think this is a watertight case in international human rights law,” Kersten said.
“In international criminal law we need to test these arguments because they have not been tested before.”
The current one18:43Report on unmarked graves at residential schools calls for new laws and reparations
Fannie Lafontaine, Canada Research Chair on International Criminal Justice and Human Rights, told the meeting Wednesday that Murray has made a “tremendous contribution” to the legal vocabulary surrounding residential school abuse.
Lafontaine worked on the controversial legal analysis of genocide produced by the 2019 National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
Referring to that resistance, she said genocide, while usually associated with physical extermination, can include acts aimed at destroying a people as a distinct social unit, such as forced sterilization and the forcible transfer of children from one group to another.
Murray’s report shows how “the violence that exists and continues in Canada qualifies as genocide, as crimes against humanity and as enforced disappearance,” Lafontaine said during a panel discussion.
Murray earlier released a historical reportincluded in her final report, in which she outlines what she calls “evidence of genocide” and urges the public to review it and draw their own conclusions.
A national crisis line for Indian residential schools has been set up to provide support to former students and those affected. People can access emotional and crisis referral services by calling the 24-hour national crisis line: 1-866-925-4419.
Mental health and crisis support is also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or via online chat at www.hopeforwellness.ca.