Concerted national action overdue for all the children who never came home from residential schools

The discovery of an unmarked mass burial site at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School highlights the urgent need for a concerted national response on behalf of all the children who were stolen from their families and who never returned home.

The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre (IRSHDC) at the University of British Columbia and The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) at the University of Manitoba are calling on the federal government to work in collaboration with residential school survivors and Indigenous governments to establish a national framework for investigation and protection of burial sites, consistent with the rights, laws, jurisdiction and protocols of the affected nations.

“Survivors have always been clear that the road to reconciliation must begin with the truth,” said Lila Bruyere of the NCTR Survivor’s Circle. “Canada’s failure to properly investigate and protect the sites where our sisters and brothers were buried means that we still do not have the whole truth. Too many of these children have never been identified by name and have never been located. This has to change. We owe it to these children to do this important work and to do it in our culture through ceremony in a good way.”

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