Former chair of Truth and Reconciliation Commission speaks out

By Kaniehtonkie.

In a released video message, Honorable Murray Sinclair, the former Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission into Canada’s residential schools, says the country is beginning to see evidence of how many children died at the institutions and that more sites will likely come to light.

Sinclair stated, “We need begin to prepare ourselves for that.”

As per the Globe and Mail, his message was aired on Monday, May 31, ‘his first public remarks since the remains of children were discovered at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School last week. He said survivors of the schools need to understand that it is important to make this evidence public so Canadians can see the magnitude of what happened and the extent of responsibility. This includes what he described as the need to force churches that have documents related to residential schools to disclose them.’

Sinclair worked on the TRC from June 2008 to December 2015. The Yellowhead Institute concluded in a 2020 accountability report that only eight of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action have been completed.

Sinclair stated, “I thought I was pretty informed… discovery would be accomplished by listening to survivors…They did share a great deal of information. Canada had a deliberate policy of removing the children and indoctrinate them – they accomplished that.”

They identified Prime Minister John A. McDonald and Egerton Ryerson as architects for assimilation with Ryerson stating, ‘Public school should be for little white children, natives are not smart enough not eligible to become leaders in society. They are uncivilized heathens and savages.’

Sinclair heard horrendous accounts of children who were beaten, committed suicide, died while running away, and witnessed accounts of children who died while at the residential schools.

He recalled how every single one of them spoke of the loneliness and separation from families.

Sinclair said, “One aspect quite shocking - children who died in the schools – deliberately.

Survivors children who went missing, children being buried on mass burials sites,

Infants born to young girls - fathered by priests, with the newborns being taken away and deliberately killed – sometimes being thrown into furnaces.

In the beginning, the TRC had no expectation that this would-be part of the work they were doing. The TRC asked the Canadian government to allow them to conduct and fully explore this, as originally it wasn’t in TRC’s mandate. They submitted a proposal in 2009 and the request was denied.

He said they did what they could but, ‘not anywhere near what we needed to accomplish or needed investigate.”

“Now we are beginning to see evidence of the number of children who died. We know that there are probably lots of sites similar to Kamloops that are going to light in the future. Those who are survivors of residential schools and including intergenerational survivors need to understand this evidence. It is important to make available to Canada. What it is they contributed. To understand the magnitude of their responsibility and to stop hiding the documents, to force the (churches) who have documents to disclose those documents to get to the truth”

Sinclair has been ‘inundated from survivors’ saying, “I told you so. I told you this would happen. Pain. Anger. No one believed them.”

He went on to say, “My heart goes out to survivors, children of survivors and families We must preserve. We must persevere in our continued investigation of what we need to know about these schools. Ensure to work hard to put in place healing programs. Foundations that will help survivors. Veterans from the wars are allowed to gather in their own unique place. We need to provide such places for survivors of residential school as well.”

Sinclair ended his statement with, “I hope that you can find a way to be able to Continue on with your life in a good and healthy way. Despite this revelation, I hope you are able to see that there is something here we can do about this.”

Five of the six calls to action about missing children and documenting and protecting burial sites haven’t been completed, although Ottawa did budget money for a National Residential School Student Death Register. The truth side of the agenda is still full of unfinished business, let alone the reconciliation. In 2015, a National Center for Truth and Reconciliation report estimated that more than 150,000 children attended these schools and more than 6,000 died, never returning home.