Ontario First Nations to host ceremony before searching residential school site
CBC
WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.
Three northeastern Ontario First Nations will host a ceremony Saturday to ask the children buried at residential schools if it's OK to search for their graves.
Members of the Sagamok Anishnawbek, Mississauga and Serpent River First Nations will gather at the site of the former Spanish Indian Residential Schools, one for boys and one for girls, in the town of Spanish for the ceremony.
Sagamok Anishnawbek Chief Alan Ozawanimke said asking permission is needed before the resting places of the children is disturbed.
"We know that if given the permission that this will take a long time," he said. "And we are seeking that support, up to and including the opportunity to acquire those lands where the children are buried."
Ozawanimke said the communities plan to apply for federal and provincial funding to conduct the searches.
Last month the federal government committed $321 million to help Indigenous communities search burial sites at former residential schools and support survivors and their communities.
2 women who died trying to save turtle on road in Chatham-Kent, Ont., remembered for love of animals
It was a shock to Dorothy Suliga when she learned that her mother, Teresa Suliga, and her aunt, Elizabeth Seremak, had been struck and killed by a vehicle on a rural road in Chatham-Kent.