A cabinet advisor says she accepts some Canadians are skeptical that thousands of children were buried at Indian Residential Schools. However accusations of deliberate deception are hateful, said Kimberly Murray, Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.“It is one thing to say you don’t believe there are burials,” said Murray.“That’s your opinion and you can have freedom of speech to say that. But when you say there are no burials, that First Nations people or the Indians are lying because they want you to go burn down churches or they want to take away your cottages, that is inciting hate against Indigenous people. That’s the type of speech we need to stop.”“Hate speech is not protected by the Charter and it is getting worse in the country. We need to ensure survivors and communities are safe. We need to send a clear message to Canadians that it is not okay to incite this kind of hate.”Testifying at the Senate Indigenous Peoples Committee, Murray said she was personally convinced there are mass graves at Indian Residential Schools.“Cemeteries were part of the Indian Residential Schools from the very outset,” she said. “The government planned for the deaths of the children.”“When the children died, government and church officials did not return the children home for burial. They were buried in cemeteries at the institutions, often in unmarked and mass graves which were sometimes dug by the other children.”Murray endorsed a private NDP bill introduced September 26 in the Commons to criminalize public commentary critical of “mass graves” accounts. Bill C-413 An Act To Amend The Criminal Code would outlaw public remarks “condoning, denying, downplaying or justifying the Indian Residential School system in Canada or by misrepresenting facts related to it” under threat of two years in jail.“We have lots of death records,” said Murray.“There are lots of death certificates of the kids who died at Indian Residential Schools that say they are buried at the Indian Residential School cemetery. Many of those death records are signed by the Indian agent or the principal who said what the cause of death was.”Public questions followed a premature 2021 announcement by the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc First Nation of Kamloops, BC, that it had discovered 215 children’s graves. The claim was later revised to 200 “potential burials.”No human remains have been recovered to date despite $7.9 million in federal funding for field work at Kamloops.The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated 4,100 children died at Indian Residential Schools. The number has never been verified through coroners’ files. The Senate committee in a July 25 report acknowledged the figures were unsubstantiated.
