Canada must provide reparations to families of children missing at residential schools, says Kimberly Murray

Many Indigenous children who died and were buried at Indian residential schools are not missing but are "victims of enforced disappearance," says Kimberly Murray.

Murray, who is Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, released her final report at a ceremony Tuesday in Gatineau, Que.

It outlines 42 "legal, moral and ethical obligations" of governments, churches, and other institutions in regards to children who did not return from the schools, including that Canada must provide full reparations to families of missing and disappeared children.

"Too often governments do not implement recommendations, so I've opted to identify the legal, moral and ethical obligations that governments, churches and other institutions have," said Murray during the ceremony.

Over 150,000 First Nations, Métis and Inuit children were forced to attend church-run, government-funded residential schools between the 1870s and 1997. As of 2021, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation had documented more than 4,100 deaths of children at the schools. 

Following discoveries of potential unmarked graves at former residential school sites, Murray was appointed to the role of special interlocutor in 2022 for a two-year term to identify measures and recommendations for a new federal legal framework on unmarked graves and burial sites.

Murray, a member of Kanehsatà:ke, a Kanien'kehá:ka (Mohawk) community northwest of Montreal, has held national gatherings in Montreal, Iqaluit, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg, and Edmonton over the past two years.

Residential school survivors, Indigenous leaders and advocates gathered in Gatineau Thursday for a final gathering and the release of the report.

Murray said the obligations in her report derive from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People, Indigenous laws, international human rights law and Canadian constitutional law. 

"The greatest and most important obligation that we all have is to the survivors," said Murray.

Murray is calling on the federal government to establish a national, Indigenous-led commission of investigation into missing and disappeared Indigenous children and unmarked burials, as well as to enact legislation to protect burial sites, support families to obtain records, and address long-term, sufficient and flexible funding.

She also wants the government to refer to the missing children as victims of "enforced disappearance" and to refer the enforced disappearance of children, as a crime against humanity, to the International Criminal Court (ICC).

"Canada has ongoing international legal obligations to determine the truth and hold perpetrators accountable for what happened to the children, their families, and communities and to make reparations," she wrote in her final report.

"Yet Canada, as the perpetrator of atrocity crimes and mass human rights breaches, cannot investigate itself. To do so creates a fundamental conflict that is unacceptable to Indigenous Peoples."