NDP calls on province to fund search of residential school sites

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This article was published 19/06/2021 (1187 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

THE provincial NDP’s council passed an internal motion Saturday to recognize 215 children who died and were buried in unmarked graves at Kamloops Residential School, also calling for the province to provide cash for Indigenous groups to search former residential school sites.

The province has been reluctant to put cash down for the searches, while Saskatchewan and Ontario governments have committed funding.

“The PC government must follow the lead of Indigenous communities and other provinces by committing to funding the search of all former residential school sites immediately,” NDP leader Wab Kinew said in a statement.

The party sends its condolences to “Tk’emlups te Secwepemc, Sioux Valley Dakota Nation, Long Plains First Nation, Pimicikimak Cree Nation, Sagkeeng First Nation and other communities searching for their children,” the NDP’s motion reads.

The motion was introduced by Manitoba NDP Leader Wab Kinew and passed unanimously.

Hundreds of pegs, each marking the possible site of a child’s remains, were staked out on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops B.C., when Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Rosanne Casimir arrived at the site late last month.

The First Nation used ground penetrating radar over the May long weekend in an effort to determine the fate of children who went missing from the school.

The discovery led to a national reckoning over the residential school system’s harms to Indigenous people.

— staff, with files from the Canadian Press