Summary:
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has not received death records of Indigenous children in the care of residential schools from most chief coroners and vital statistics agencies.
The Call to Action:
We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
Analysis:
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has not received death records of Indigenous children in the care of residential schools from most chief coroners and vital statistics agencies.
In November 2021, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation reported that only Alberta and British Columbia have provided all the death certificates.
The Ontario government also committed to transfer 1,800 death records of Indigenous children to the NCTR.
Following discoveries of unmarked burial sites near former residential schools in 2021, Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond, director of the Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre at the University of British Columbia, said there are “massive ongoing problems” in accessing historical records, including those “held by certain Catholic entities that they will not release.”
“There may be reasons why they wouldn’t record the deaths properly and that they weren’t treated with dignity and respect because that was the whole purpose of the residential school . . . to take total control of Indian children, to remove their culture, identity and connection to their family,” she told CBC Radio.
In June 2021, the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate, a Catholic religious order that operated residential schools where unmarked burials had been found, made a formal “commitment to transparency” to disclose all historical documents in its possession that are related to the schools.
Background:
In 2018, NCTR Chief Archivist Raymond Frogner told CBC News that while they were in talks with British Columbia and Ontario to receive necessary coroner reports, there were bureaucratic hurdles due to Freedom of Information legislation.
In a January 2016 statement, the Yukon government, in response to the TRC Calls to Action, stated that its vital statistics department provided “all information requested and accessible to the TRC regarding records of deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school.”
It also stated that its government will “continue to respond to requests from the federal government to support identification and documentation of burial sites.”