Search in Ontario for Indian Residential School burial sites continues

The Ontario government has committed over $65 million to search the grounds of 18 former Indian Residential Schools in the province looking for potential burial sites

The number is an increase from the roughly $10 million Queen’s Park announced in the middle of 2021 to help with the identification, investigation, protection and commemoration of burial sites.

The money was promised after a burial ground in Kamloops, B.C., with the remains of 215 Indigenous children discovered. The tragic discovery sparked a renewed push to uncover where people had been buried and properly mark the land.

“We need to find our children, we need to find our family members,” Ontario’s NDP Indigenous and treaty relations critic, Sol Mamakwa, said. “We need to be able to locate them.”

To do that, Ontario has been funding the search of grounds at 18 Indian Residential Schools. The process — including research and commemoration — is led by the province’s Indigenous communities.

“It varies. In some communities, there may have been obvious burial grounds at, or close to, the site,” Greg Rickford, Ontario’s Minister of Indigenous Affairs, said.

He said more than $65 million had now been put toward the process. The money covers searching as well as healing and commemoration in communities that discover burial sites.

Over 150,000 Indigenous children were forcibly removed from their communities and sent to Indian Residential Schools between 1870 and 1996. The last of Ontario’s schools closed in 1991, according to the government.

“You bring back the untold stories,” Mamakwa said of the discovery of previously unmarked burial sites.

The province is also adding other financial measures associated with Indian Residential Schools. The fees for death certificates, for example, are being removed, as are the costs of name changes.

“It’s the right thing to do, it’s respectful, it removes all barriers,” Rickfod said.

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