Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, Kimberly Murray, delivers remarks on an Indigenous-led reparations framework during a national gathering in Gatineau, Que., on Oct. 29, 2024. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Spencer Colby
The Conversation: Canada and churches have moral obligations for the reparations of missing and disappeared Indigenous children: Final Report
As Written in The Conversation by Frank Deer, Professor, Faculty of Education, University of Manitoba.
Independent Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray has released her final report after two years of examining the issue of missing and disappeared Indigenous children and unmarked burials sites at residential schools in Canada.
During the ceremony last week in Gatineau, Que., Murray said governments do not often implement recommendations given on such reports. So she opted to identify 42 “legal, moral and ethical obligations” for governments, churches and other institutions. These are proposals on how to make holistic reparations to Indigenous Peoples.
Murray emphasized that the children were “victims of enforced disappearance.”
Since the 1870s and continuing for more than 150 years, over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were taken from their families and forced to attend church-run, government-funded residential schools. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has documented more than 4,100 deaths of children at the schools.
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Research at the University of Manitoba is partially supported by funding from the Government of Canada Research Support Fund.