The Senate indigenous peoples committee has called on federal archives to release all pertinent records to accurately determine the number of children who died at residential schools. Blacklock's Reporter says this recommendation follows conflicting reports regarding the presence of "unmarked graves."“Indigenous communities need to access historical records to identify missing children who may have died while attending residential schools and whose remains may be located in unmarked graves and burial sites across Canada,” stated the committee's report.The committee specifically recommended that Library and Archives Canada review its pre-1967 holdings of death records to identify Indigenous children who may have died at residential schools.Senators estimate that 150,000 children attended the residential school system from the 19th century until the last institution closed in 1996. The 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission estimated that 4,100 children died during this period. However, the committee acknowledged that coroners' reports contain contradictory figures.For instance, a Northwest Territories analysis of records from 1955 to 1992 identified five children who “died at a Residential School,” while an investigation by the Ontario Coroners’ Office recorded 97 school deaths prior to 1967.“Many children ran away from the schools, disappeared, did not return home, and others died,” said the report. “Generations of indigenous people were not told what happened to their children. The location of potential burials at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School was not a discovery to indigenous peoples. They carried these grim stories with them, passed down for generations.”In 2021, the Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation in Kamloops, B.C. announced the discovery of 215 children's graves at a Residential School site, identified using ground-penetrating radar. The First Nation later revised the number to around 200 and suggested the graves were "potential burials." Despite a $7.9 million federal fund allocated for fieldwork, no remains have been recovered to date.The Department of Crown-Indigenous Relations has refused to release details of the budgeted fieldwork under Access To Information. The First Nation stated on May 8 that it "continues to grieve children that are in our care and are focused on the scientific work that needs to be done" but did not discuss the $7.9 million.Opposition leader Pierre Poilievre on January 22 called for Parliament to fund a full investigation of unmarked graves. “Conservatives will always stand in favour of historical accuracy,” he told reporters. “None of this changes the fact the residential schools were an appalling abuse of power by the state.”
