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The Current Transcript for June 2, 2021

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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What we really need to know is the number of how many children are we talking about. We don't know that we had teams of 30 to 100 children in schools. We know that the number is much larger than that.

MATT GALLOWAY: Murray Sinclair led Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And when the remains of 215 children were discovered at the site of a former residential school in Kamloops, he was shocked and horrified, but not surprised. For years, he has been telling the stories of what happened to indigenous people in this country. And the former judge and senator is here this morning to talk about what needs to happen now. And we'll hear as well about the push for accountability from the Catholic Church. That's coming up in just a moment. Also this morning. She is one of the most exciting tennis players on the planet. And now Naomi Osaka is out of the French Open after a dispute over media interviews and her concern for her mental health. In 40 minutes, a look at what we expect from pro athletes and how that might be changing. Plus.

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The sound that's most recognisable is a call and it's like this all I. But they also make a number of other sounds, including some wonderful, little interesting. [makes clucking bird's sound]

MG: They are a cross between a vulture and a falcon. The caracara is smarter than your average bird and has personality to burn the story of a most remarkable creature in an hour. But we begin with a call to action. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Murray Sinclair calls for inquiry into residential school burial sites, more support for survivors

Guest: Murray Sinclair

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This is good energy for all of you that you showed up here today, it goes to show you that when one stands, we were all strong. When one speaks, we are all free. This is for all of you. hi hi. Thank you.

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MG: That's Curt Young, the musician from the Saulteaux Cree First Nation in Saskatchewan. He was performing at a vigil this week at Calgary City Hall. Across this country, events are being held to remember the children who died at residential schools.

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[Sound: Drums]

MG: In Whitehorse, thousands marched silently, just drums guiding their steps.

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MG: And in Victoria, candles were held high outside the Royal BC Museum at an evening vigil.

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[Vocals and drums]

MG: Those are the sounds of people marking a moment of pain and anger in this country. A preliminary report late last week showed the remains of 215 children buried at the site of the former Kamloops Indian residential school. Even the final reports of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015 was unable to give a precise number of how many children died in residential schools. But it did have much to say on the lives those children lived. Murray Sinclair was chair of that commission. And just a warning that this discussion may be distressing to some listeners. Murray Sinclair. Good morning.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Morning, Matt.

MG: What's been on your mind since hearing about the discovery of the remains of these children at the Kamloops residential school?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, as my report revealed, we were well aware of the fact that the numbers were going to be high and that they're largely unknown, mainly because of the fact that the records were not accessible to us at the TRC what we were doing our work. And though we had asked the federal government to fund their research so that we could do that work, it was denied. And so we had to focus upon those things that were within our mandate. But we did write a complete volume on the on the issue of the burial sites and where we thought they might be located. And so, in a way, I wasn't surprised at the revelation. I was kind of surprised, in fact, that people hadn't picked up on that story right from the beginning, because that was one of the major elements of the stories that are coming out of the residential school experience that's not been very much revealed, that was the number of children who died, where they died and how they were treated after they died.

MG: What do we know about those children who died, not just at that one institution, but at others?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, we had stories from survivors who had witnessed some of the children dying. Some of those stories were horrific. We heard about it infants killed who were born to young girls in the schools who had been fathered by priests. We'd heard about children who were dying as a result of having been injured during beatings and about children who died because of injuries sustained while working in the stables and working in the kitchens and doing the very heavy labour that had been demanded of them. And then on top of that, of course, was the large number of children who just died from disease and illnesses who were not properly documented. And the fact that the parents were often not informed that their children had died. Little effort was made to try to return the children, the bodies of the children who had died, back to their homes, to the home communities, to their families, in order to allow the families to return to the earth and conduct proper ceremonies was always, always a tragic feature of all of this.

MG: What are the questions that you have about what happened to those children?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, right now, the biggest question I have actually is not about that so much as it's about what are we going to do to continue to help the survivors who know about this story and who are now being re-triggered and are in need of help badly. I've spent most of the last three or four days on the phone with survivors who call me because they're so emotionally distraught at that revelation. And it's triggering survivors. They not only recall stories and recall memories of some of their friends and fellow students who were injured and died at the schools and how they were treated, but they also are now beginning to lose even what little hope they held onto that maybe the children they never saw again after a certain period of time we're not dead. That they simply go on to a different life somewhere. And now they're thinking that maybe they're part of the group, those missing children are part of this group of children who died. And so I think what we really need to know is really the number of how many children are we talking about. We don't know that. We would give a rough estimate based upon the research that we did at the TRC, we had names of 3200 children who died in schools. But we know that the number is much larger than that. Could be in 15-25 thousand range and maybe even more, because if you just extrapolate the number of children at this school to the fact that there were a 138 schools listed in the settlement agreement, but on top of that children were sent to 1300 schools altogether across Canada, some of them not managed by the government of Canada, but managed by churches, by the provinces and by other institutions. Those children also died in those schools, some of them, and were not returned home. And parents and families didn't know what happened to them.

MG: Are we any closer to getting the answers to those questions that the working group on the missing children in unmarked burials posed? There are four questions. How many students died? What did students die from? Where are they buried and who went missing? Are we any closer now to getting answers to those questions?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: We are not at this point in time, mainly because there is still resistance from the churches that run most of the schools and from the government of Canada, which has so far declined to participate in any kind of funding of a research project and adequate research project to discover the information. But we have moved the yardsticks a bit because now I think the public recognises the magnitude of this and the importance of this, because you could just imagine for a moment what it would be like to have lost a child at an institution that the child was taken away from you, for no good reason, and placed in and you were never told what happened, where that child is and and whether or not you would have any further information. And so I think the Canadian public, who have largely come to see the importance of this story to our history and the importance of coming to a proper resolution of this story are now beginning to see that maybe there is some merit to the argument that survivors and their communities have said to this point in time that we need to get to the bottom of all of this story.

MG: Let me ask you more about the response from the federal government, because there were several calls to action, as you well know, six specifically around addressing the issues of unaccounted children who died and information around their burial. To your understanding, what is the response from the federal government been to those calls in action?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Been silent. We've heard nothing, and when it's been raised, they offer things like, you know, memorial events or they offer things like a National Day of Remembrance, but they make no effort to actually go out and try to find out where the children are at and what happened to them, to uncovering the records, to taking the records back from the churches that have been placed in the church archives. The Catholic Church archives are, I'm sure, filled with documents that relate to this kind of information, but they've not been revealed. And the one negative aspect of all of this that really concerns me is that the most complete stories of what happened to those children in those schools and what happened to the children who came out of the schools is in the documents of the Independent Assessment Programme, the IAP. And those documents are the full stories of each of the survivors and what happened to them. And now that the churches and some of the survivor groups and the federal government have gone to the Supreme Court of Canada, which has approved their plan to destroy all of those documents in 30 years, and the destruction of those documents means that all memory and all evidence of what happened to those children is going to be lost forever.

MG: What would you want now from the federal government?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: But first of all, want those records kept? I want those documents to be maintained forever, just like we maintain the documents of what happened to the victims of the Holocaust in the various prison camps during the Second World War. We want that memory forever to be with us. And and we can put it under some kind of protective shelter so that it's not widely available to the public, but for proper research. But still, it shouldn't be allowed to be destroyed. But I think as well that we need a proper investigation, proper enquiry into looking at every school to determine which ones had burial sites. And I suspect, quite frankly, that every school had a burial site and what happened to the children in those schools who may have been buried there? Who those children were, and where their bodies are and where the families were.

MG: You mentioned the trauma that the survivors and families of the victims are going through again in the wake of this latest news. What do you think the message is to them when the government is not acting on those recommendations, when the government is not moving on on some of the recommendations from the task force?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, one of the commitments that I've made to them in the course of the conversations I've had over the last four days, and I feel that - probably three or four hundred phone calls from various survivors and their representatives - is that I really think that we still need to look at establishing survivor healing programmes, survivor healing centres so that they have a place to go in order to be able to to together from time to time to get through this experience, just like the veterans from the Second World War and their place where they could go and commune with their colleagues and the legions of this country and other places like that. Survivors need similar places like that where they can go in and talk and become [unintelliglbe] and heal. And we haven't got anything like that yet. The healing funding for survivors has been terminated. And it's not just for those survivors who were actually in school, but it's also for their families and for their children and their grandchildren who want to be able to memorialise their memories as well. And so we really need to work on that. But generally, in those phone calls that I've had, I just sit and listen. I just kind of just sit and listen while they cry and there's many tears.

MG: What helps you get through this personally?

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, I have a strong belief in our ceremonies and I [unintelliglbe] each day, I use each day. The same things that got me through the tears are getting me through this. So. I will continue to do that.

MG: Just finally, does this moment feel different to you? There's been a lot of hurt certainly in the last few days, but there's been a lot of anger as well. And you feel that across the country. And I wonder to you, knowing the story as intimately as you do, whether this feels whether this feels different.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Well, it is different. It's a different time. We're at a different point of maturity as a nation around this story, but we are still seemingly feeling as powerless as we did during this entire episode of exposure, that we need to have some measure of response from our government to show that it cares about those who were left behind, those who did not make it. And and we're not seeing it yet. And we need that because the survivors are the ones that have borne the brunt of all of this and their families, too. And they need to know that there is a way for them to get through this, because, you know, I've said many times that reconciliation is about establishing a relationship of mutual respect, that before we can get there, we have to do everything that we can to ensure that the indigenous people of this country, and in particular those who have gone through this kind of oppression directly, as the survivors, have an opportunity to heal and to find themselves and to feel validated that they did nothing wrong.

MG: Murray Sinclair, as always, I am grateful for the opportunity to speak with you. Thank you very much.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Thank you, Matt.

MG: Take care of yourself.

MURRAY SINCLAIR: Take care.

MG: Murray Sinclair was chair of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. He's also a former senator and judge. At the Truth and Reconciliation hearings. And Dennis Saddelman gave testimony about his time at the Kamloops Indian Residential School. He also shared his poem called Monster. Dennis will be my guest on Friday's programme. Here he is reading that poem at the hearings in 2014. And just a warning, it does deal with his experience at residential school and may be distressing to listen to, for some.

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