THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Wednesday, November 1, 2023
The Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples met this day at 6:45 p.m. [ET] to examine the federal government’s constitutional, treaty, political and legal responsibilities to First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples and any other subject concerning Indigenous Peoples, and in camera, for consideration of a draft report.
Senator Brian Francis (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Honourable senators, I’d like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional ancestral and unceded territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation and is now home to many other First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples from across Turtle Island.
I am Mi’kmaw Senator Brian Francis from Epekwitk, also known as Prince Edward Island, and I am the Chair of the Indigenous Peoples Committee.
Before we begin our meeting, I will ask committee members in attendance to introduce themselves by stating their name and province or territory.
Senator Hartling: Nancy Hartling from New Brunswick.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Busson: Welcome. I’m Bev Busson from British Columbia.
Senator Duncan: Good evening, welcome. My name is Pat Duncan. I’m a senator for the Yukon.
Senator D. Patterson: Good evening. Dennis Patterson, senator for Nunavut in Inuit Nunangat.
The Chair: Thank you, senators. Today we are continuing the series of briefings meant to inform and guide the future of this committee. Before I proceed I want to note that the content of this meeting relates to Indian residential schools, which some may find distressing. There is support available for anyone requiring assistance at all times, free of charge, via the National Indian Residential School Crisis Line at 1-866-925-4419 and Hope for Wellness at 1-800-721-0066 or at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
Now I want to give you some background about today. You may recall that last March, the Indigenous Peoples Committee heard from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools regarding their respective work honouring, amplifying and uncovering the truth about the residential school system and its painful and lasting impact.
Based on this testimony, on July 19, the Indigenous Peoples Committee issued an interim report entitled Honouring the Children Who Never Came Home: Truth, Education and Reconciliation.
During tonight’s meeting, we will continue to hear from witnesses on this important topic. I would like to now introduce our first panel of witnesses. From the Cowessess First Nation, Chief Erica Beaudin. Wela’lin, thank you for joining us. We have a member from the Cree Nation of Chisasibi, Chief Gertie Neacappo. Thank you as well for joining us.
Witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes each, followed by a question-and-answer session with senators. I now invite Chief Beaudin to give her opening remarks.
Erica Beaudin, Chief, Cowessess First Nation: Good evening. Mr. Chair, deputy chair and honourable senators, as introduced, I am Erica Beaudin, Chief of the Cowessess First Nation. I thank you for this opportunity to present to the Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples on behalf of Cowessess First Nation on the topic of Indian residential schools.
I will make specific references to the needs of First Nations and our research teams’ experience to access records we need to identify missing children in unmarked graves and burial sites associated with Indian residential schools.
I begin my statement standing in solidarity with the Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites, and with elders, knowledge keepers and survivors across the country in acknowledging the sacred nature of the work involved with recovering the identities and locations of our missing children.
My comments are in relation to the Marieval Indian Residential School, which opened in December 1898 on Cowessess First Nation and operated as a residential school until its closure in 1997. Throughout this 99-year period, students from 26 First Nations in Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Alberta and Ontario attended Marieval. There were also many Métis students who attended.
My own experience is one of being a day-school student with my mother and her siblings attending Marieval and other Indian schools as the Indian agent saw fit to move them, as well as my mosom and kohkom who attended industrial school at Marieval as well. My grandparents, as well as many family members, now walk with our ancestors and the others who are alive continue to live with the effects as well as the intergenerational effects of this institution.
In 2021, a research team was assembled at Cowessess First Nation to conduct research into unmarked graves known to be located in the cemetery adjacent to the former Marieval Indian Residential School. There was a Roman Catholic church that held services for the local First Nations and our neighbouring towns and rural communities. As a parish cemetery, the gravesite is now located at Cowessess First Nation and it includes our community members, our ancestors, former students of the school, members of the Marieval Métis community and individuals from surrounding communities. This is a unique situation, but nevertheless we are honoured to be the keepers of so many people’s loved ones in addition to our own.
In June 2021, Cowessess First Nation announced there were potentially 751 unmarked graves located in and near the cemetery. They were identified utilizing ground-penetrating radar. Since then, research has been ongoing with several interconnected goals, including gathering and documenting all relevant information relating to the cemetery and grave sites; working with former students, survivors, elders, knowledge keepers and community members to identify graves; and doing all we can as a nation to help families find closure and healing.
The gravesite project has used every possible scientific method available to find unmarked graves and to undertake the research needed to put names to those graves, such as ground-penetrating radar, historical church records, cadaver dogs and S4, which is scientific subsurface and soil spectroscopy.
Our research team has built partnerships with the University of Saskatchewan Archaeology Department and Saskatchewan Polytechnic who have the expertise with ground-penetrating radar. Research is under way with records held by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, Library and Archives Canada and the oblate records held at St. Boniface. We have a partnership with the University of Regina French language department who work with us translating and analyzing the oblate records.
This initiative places decision-making authority with Cowessess First Nation and ensures that we determine the course of action. Although this process uses every scientific and research tool available, the scientific process is managed with the utmost respect for the survivors of the Indian residential school system.
The project team works with all stakeholders to identify and hold in highest confidence the stories, truths and the information provided by survivors. Our ultimate goal is to identify all unmarked graves and put names on as many as possible, thereby honouring the children and other individuals who have been laid to rest in our community.
In doing this work, we have been facing many challenges, including data and information dated to the late 1890s, with most institutions that hold our information located out of province. The records held by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation are reliable and helpful, but their database is difficult to navigate and access agreements and processes must acknowledge and respect the OCAP principles of ownership, control, access and possession that apply to First Nations. Library and Archives Canada has sent many — but not all — relevant documents to the NCTR and the main challenge with the remaining records is that many are redacted. A process for accessing the full records must be facilitated with full cooperation from Libraries and Archives Canada.
A related challenge is gaps in staffing for archives. Research teams cannot do their work if archival documents are not catalogued or made available.
I mentioned the oblate records, which are very reliable, relevant and valuable sources of information, but many documents are in French, which presents a barrier for those First Nations that do not speak French.
Furthermore, for the most part, the oblate records are not catalogued. These barriers result in time-consuming and costly research. Our research teams need time and resources over the long term to be able to search uncatalogued documents, which in our circumstance are located out of province. We believe there are more birth, baptismal, medical, death and burial records in other churches and for other institutions, such as hospitals and sanitariums.
Residential schools were not closed systems. Children were sent to many different kinds of institutions and health care facilities, so finding those records is crucial to enable us to achieve our goal of identifying all unmarked graves and honouring the children and all other individuals who have been laid to rest in our community.
Many of these institutions housed our information about the children, but these institutions were closed at different points, so finding the information is going to be difficult. We believe it will take many years to secure the information needed to put the names to the graves.
Honourable senators, these are the challenges we face at the community level. We know that Canada has done much in the past 10 to 15 years to study and take action to understand and to right the wrongs of past governmental legislation in the genocide of Indigenous people. We know that we can move from truth to reparations to reconciliation as a nation of original peoples, settlers and allies.
For us, we have been born into the reality of personal or intergenerational impacts on our daily lives, and we ourselves must know and document our truth from our world view and to move on to a resurgence or renaissance, if you will. This is what we need to move from survival to abundance. We do this as a responsibility of those whose lives were stolen or taken too soon, our ancestors, the survivors and those yet unborn who deserve to live without this negative legacy.
I thank you for allowing me to share our experiences with you today. I also close by thanking you for undertaking this study and by wholeheartedly supporting the recommendations made in your interim report and your efforts to identify ways to help us in our work.
Together we will share the true history of the lands we now share, and I believe our nation and people will be stronger for it. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Chief Beaudin.
Gertie Neacappo, Member, Cree Nation of Chisasibi: Thank you. I didn’t really prepare anything for today because I was surprised when I was invited to this meeting.
In our area in northern Quebec, we just started the search this summer. We had a ground-penetrating radar, or GPR, team. We invited them and we also had a dog team. We just recently had seen the reports of the dog team, and now we’re waiting for the GPR team to provide us a report on their findings. That’s where we are at right now.
We are hoping to continue because now we have the cold weather back home. We are continuing the search next summer. That’s all I wanted to say.
The Chair: Thank you for that, Ms. Neacappo. Now we’ll open the floor to questions from senators.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you both for being here. I was interested, Ms. Neacappo, on the information about the search you just talked about with the GPR and the search dogs.
I’m just trying to read this information I had. Somehow the GPR got interrupted. Was the information able to come together? Road closures from fires prevented a ground-penetrating radar team coming in at the same time as the search dogs. Has the GPR been able to come back and do their work? Did that cause any financial burden for the nation, having to bring the team back?
Ms. Neacappo: No, it was okay. We were hoping to have them together. The GPR team couldn’t fly their equipment on the plane. They couldn’t put it on the plane.
Senator Sorensen: Right. It is just an unusual story.
Chief Beaudin, have the churches contributed in any way to the search for the unmarked graves? I was informed about the story that was told on CBC about the headstones being intentionally bulldozed back in the 1960s in some strange retaliation move. A horrific story, and one of many. It’s interesting to hear about the people who are helping with the unmarked graves.
First, do the churches help? I asked this question in another session with witnesses. Are the staff that were potentially working at the residential schools and are still alive providing any information? They were there.
Ms. Beaudin: The Marieval Indian Residential School sat on Cowessess First Nation. Marieval had the residential school as well as the church, the rectory and the gravesite. This is Roman Catholic. We had not only the children and youth from the residential schools who attended the church, but also the settler nations from all around Marieval, so several towns. It was different throughout the generations as well.
The story of my grandparents is different than the story of my parents, which is also different than the story of myself. I was an altar girl in the church as well and was the altar girl for many of the services, including funeral services. If anyone is Roman Catholic, they also understand that, back in those days, if you died unbaptized, then you couldn’t be buried on consecrated ground. If you completed suicide, you could not be buried on consecrated ground. There are areas outside of the consecrated grounds on which people were buried. There’s that aspect.
Both the church and the rectory are gone now, as well as the residential school. The community members, members of Cowessess First Nation and Indigenous people who worked for the residential school are the ones who would be alive when there was Indian control of Indian education, as they called it. The church had already left and, actually, it was a huge loss to our community. The one lady who looked after the records as well as the church — she was from our community — passed on about four months ago. We lost a lot of knowledge when she passed away.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. It is very interesting.
The Chair: Chief Beaudin, I have a question for you. In your experience, should there be a coordinated regional or national response to finding records and locating missing children and potential burial sites, especially where multiple jurisdictions are involved?
Ms. Beaudin: Absolutely. Yes.
The Chair: Second, what priorities are most pressing for your communities in terms of further support, resources or funding?
Ms. Beaudin: Could you repeat that? I am sorry.
The Chair: What priorities are most pressing for your communities in terms of further support, resources or funding?
Ms. Beaudin: First of all, our elders, our knowledge keepers tell us that there are several processes going on at the same time when you are embarking on a project such as this. There are spiritual processes that we cannot see. There are community processes that we do within our nation in order to support each other, in order to find truth and to move beyond.
Then there’s also the area of documenting our history. On Cowessess, we have what I consider it a very interesting truth, in that our graveyard is not a residential school graveyard; it is a parish graveyard. Therefore, we have many settlers within our graveyard.
That being the case, the story of Marieval that was Cowessess, which became Marieval and that is now Cowessess again has an interesting tale of Indigenous, church and state, as well as the farmers, the rural people who all lived around the area. There was absolutely institutional racism. There was absolutely genocide, if you will. Like I said, it changed from generation to generation as you moved up the chain, up until my day, where it was day school.
That being the case — I’m giving you the long answer to what could be a short answer — there has to be financial resources in order for us to tell the story of each community. I just shared a little bit about Cowessess to Marieval to Cowessess again, but every residential school, every nation that has gone through this has their own story. It is not only important, but it is imperative for identity, for wellness and for abundance that we tell the truth of each community and each nation so that we honour the truth of our legacy to point, but also so that we understand as Indigenous people ourselves, and then widen the net to Canadians in general, for us to be able to birth our children and have grandchildren and great-grandchildren that are not born into those intergenerational effects of residential school.
Continued funding in order to find out the truth and support communities will allow for that decolonization and allow for us to move beyond what we were born into so that our future children will not have that legacy.
The Chair: Thank you for that.
Ms. Neacappo, do you have anything you would like to add?
Ms. Neacappo: I’m just learning. They’re advanced compared to us. We’re just starting, so I’m just learning.
In my community, they don’t really know about the residential school. We’re just starting. We’re going to have a gathering in November, next week.
We lack funding when we have these kinds of gatherings. My sister is a teacher, and she wants to teach kids in school about residential schools, how it affects us. My late dad and late mom were survivors. We have the intergenerational effects as a family. I also found out that my uncle’s children — two sons — didn’t come home. They were about my dad’s age. That’s one thing I want to find out; I want to find out where they were buried. I want to also know when they died and how they died.
That’s where we need to do more searches like that. I know we have similar stories like that back home.
The Chair: Thank you for that. I hope you find the answers you’re looking for.
Ms. Beaudin: Could I add a supplement?
The Chair: Absolutely.
Ms. Beaudin: We’re talking about unmarked graves. But when we’re talking about support and resources, if we only talk about or discuss the unmarked graves, we are missing a huge part of what we know as our oral history as Indigenous people — the births of children who are later either incinerated or drowned. That is our oral history that also comes from my family. We grew up knowing this truth that, yes, we have loved ones in unmarked graves and that there might be potential for looking at certain areas within our community. Not only within our residential school, in other residential schools around us. As I said in my comments, it was very rare for a child or a youth to stay in one residential school. Often, children and siblings were split apart and they went to different residential schools.
When you talk to survivors, it’s not uncommon to hear that they went to two or three residential schools. That wasn’t at their parents’ request. That was with the Indian agent who chose to put them in different residential schools, especially to split up the families, the siblings.
For example, I was born into the stories, growing up hearing about the rapes, the sexual abuse, those horrible stories about the pregnancies from that, even within our own family and community. Within that, I also heard the stories of the boys who would take the children and incinerate them; they were told that they were cats, or they drowned.
So when we talk about resources, it must also acknowledge what our truths are that we could never prove, even if we find the unmarked graves. Our reality is that there were many children who will always be nameless and faceless.
Thank goodness, from our world view, they went immediately to the Creator without the baptism.
The Chair: Thank you for that, Chief Beaudin.
Senator Martin: Thank you very much for your testimonies and for being here this evening. The more I listen, the more complex and almost indescribable your stories and history become to me.
Given what you just said, Chief Beaudin, on the emotional and psychological impact of this whole process on survivors and families, would you speak to how mental health support is being provided, how you are dealing with reopening some of the wounds and how the more you hear about and share these stories, how traumatic it becomes? Would you speak to the impact on the mental health and what sort of supports you have for your nation?
Ms. Beaudin: I’ll speak very generally, but I will go to when we started the actual project.
The average Canadian will wonder why Indigenous people, why there’s the stereotype of the dirty, lazy Indian, if you will. The stereotype comes from the intergenerational impacts. If you’re born into that type of colonial violence — for example, we are the only people who are born with numbers attached to us by the government, still to this day, as status Indians.
Then you look back. As I stated, this violence is often very normalized in our communities. I grew up hearing these stories of siblings, my mom and aunt not even knowing their brothers because they were not allowed to talk to them. It was a sin. They were taken to different residential schools. The breakdown of the family. The breakdown of the grandparents. My grandfather, my deceased mosom, which is Cree for grandfather, was a World War II veteran who served overseas for seven years and fought for every Canadian’s freedom and then came back to a system where he was not allowed to leave the reserve without the Indian agent approving it.
He also had no control over his children staying home. It was between the priest and the Indian agent who came and hauled away the children every school term.
Now, going back to what you’re saying, when you’re born into that and intergenerational, that violence is normalized until you realize that your life is unmanageable and that you don’t have success with addictions, mental health, whatever the case is. That’s the resurgence and the renaissance that I’m talking about in decolonization or going back to the ways where we — as individuals and communities — can decide for ourselves how to get to that place of abundance that we believe the Creator had always meant for us.
It’s a combination. It’s very personal, but it’s also communal. It’s a mix of both our traditional ways and our traditional laws, as well as with Western knowledge of what was given to us and what many of our people now have, such as psychologists and therapists, to use both ways in order to assist.
Moving forward into talking about when our community, when our nation started the project of the unmarked graves, it was very difficult for individuals and, once again, community and our nation to grasp.
At that time, there were also Kamloops and several mitigating factors that compounded the trauma on top of the trauma. That brought about a need for communities to respond. Many of our communities, including our own, were not prepared for the influx of the result, both from our community as well as what other nations were going through. Add onto that the pandemic, our first pandemic, and then there’s the isolation that goes with that.
As we said today, as well as our council, our knowledge keepers, our ketayak, our mental health therapists and psychologists, we respect and support every person’s journey. However, once again, the resources must be there and they must allow the eligibility and the criteria must allow for us, as nations, to determine how we get better. As opposed to the government or governmental policy or governmental programs to decide when a person should be well enough that they’d no longer need the traditional supports or mental health supports. Right now, under the policies and programs, there is a definite time when that help stops. Unless you go through another process to get one or two more sessions. There needs to be lifelong supports that are available.
It took many generations for us to get to this point, and it’s going to take many generations for us to move beyond this legacy.
Senator Hartling: Thank you very much for being here. Thank you for your leadership, Chief Beaudin. You certainly gave us a sense of what’s going on and what needs to happen. I want to say that I’m truly sorry for all the intergenerational pain and suffering your people have experienced. We’re here to support and hopefully help move things forward.
It seems to me like your stories have been erased and you’re finding your truth. That takes a lot of courage, but with all the barriers you face, it makes it much harder. Can you identify any reparations, perhaps from the Catholic entities or from the government, that would help in your healing and help your community move forward?
Ms. Beaudin: That is very interesting, because I actually grew up Roman Catholic. As I said, I was an altar girl. I was actually one of two people who were chosen to go to the Vatican to be part of the Indigenous delegation for the papal apology, and when he came to Canada, I received a personal papal blessing as well.
It’s not one or the other for some people. I’m not taking away from other people who have turned their back on the church. As I said, everybody’s journey is personal and it is theirs, and it must be respected as such. As I said that, I just realized that I forgot the last part of your question. My apologies.
Senator Hartling: I was just asking if there are any reparations that can come from either the churches, the Catholic entities or from the government. Are there things that can happen for people that will help them in their healing?
Ms. Beaudin: As I said, we were Roman Catholic. Not all residential schools were Roman Catholic. For us, in Marieval and Cowessess, it was Roman Catholic. It was very meaningful for some survivors to hear the papal apology, and for others it didn’t mean anything.
For us down in Cowessess, we very much have a reciprocal relationship with the archbishop, who resides in Regina. He has been very accommodating. He believes in truth, reparations and reconciliation and has assisted our nation as much as he possibly can. However, he is only one person in a very formal religious institution. He has made that commitment himself. If he left that post, we are unsure if the next person would be as dedicated to our nation as he is.
So yes, there have been reparations in a sense of relationship building, I do believe. However, there have not been any financial reparations from the Roman Catholic Church to my knowledge.
Senator Hartling: That would be helpful to have, especially after talking about the documents that need to be translated and all of that. That’s a lot of things that are missing.
Ms. Beaudin: Absolutely. Once again, it is access to those records. Archbishop Bolen has been very accommodating and helpful in his authority, where he has assisted Cowessess to access those records as they are. Interestingly enough, I remember those records when I was a little girl because, I don’t know, I must have been a little nerd or something, because I would go and sit with the nuns in the rectory and they would show me the ledgers that they kept. They were very meticulous in every type of record that they kept. They also had the best cookies as well, I have to say.
Senator Busson: Thank you very much, like my colleagues said, to the both of you. For you to come and share your truth is absolutely compelling for us, and to come to grips with hearing and really listening to what you’re saying in a good way — it’s horrific to hear your truth and be a part of the colonizers that created all of this horrendous damage to your nations. I really want to say how much I appreciate that.
Both of you have a big job ahead of you to start on this journey of finding your loved ones. I was struck with the fact that, as you said, Chief Beaudin, you’re dealing with 751 unmarked graves so far. You talked about how you not only just want to locate them, but you want to identify the people who are buried there.
This committee made a report and recommended that the funding for missing residential school children, the community support fund, be extended to 2033. I don’t know if you’re aware, but it’s now expected to wind down in 2025. I just think it’s incredibly unrealistic to have that fund run out before the work is done, as far as I’m concerned.
I have a confession. I used to be an RCMP officer. I can’t imagine the amount of work ahead of you to start to not just locate but also identify these graves. You have lots of great partners, like the University of Saskatchewan, et cetera. In looking at what I envision to be a huge job, are you thinking about DNA identification availability as time goes by? Are you looking at doing that kind of work to identify each and every person?
Ms. Beaudin: Once again, our gravesite is not a residential school gravesite. It is a community or parish gravesite. We have been told by our knowledge keepers and our elders that it is something that they don’t believe our community should do. That’s not to say other nations and communities, with their knowledge keepers, shouldn’t do that. As I said, it’s very individual and community specific as to how we all address and respond.
I would never want to say for us, with our knowledge keepers, we’re told that’s not a road we would go down, or that, in fact, another community or nation should not. That’s not information that I would like to provide.
Also, once again, I want to acknowledge the fact that there were fairly good records kept. Even though the gravestones are gone, we have a general idea of how people were buried, the rows and everything else, and a fairly good idea of who is there. Those would not just be Indigenous people; they would be from the settlers around the area as well. Anything we would embark upon that would include DNA, if we decided to go down that road, would have to include the cooperation of the towns and the hamlets around what was Marieval Roman Catholic church at the time.
Senator Busson: All this to say that it’s an incredibly complicated way forward for both of you, no matter what you choose to do. It is complicated by lots of things. I really think that people are very shortsighted to start talking about terminating funding. There should be enough funding to get you to your truth. I just want to get that on the record.
Ms. Beaudin: Absolutely. As was mentioned by Gertie, their nation is just starting. Our nation has been doing it for several years now — I think three years — and there are other nations that haven’t even started. That deadline is very scary to me. I believe this is Canada’s truth, not only our Indigenous truth. This is Canada’s truth, Canada’s history. The only way for all of us to move forward together in strength is for us to acknowledge everything — the good, the bad and the ugly — and move through that together so that we are the strongest nation that we have ever been. If funding stops on that date, we will never get to the truth, nationwide, of what we need to.
The Chair: I have a question for both of you. Could you comment on how the violence of denialism has impacted your respective communities? When people deny that it actually happened or they minimize it, how has that impacted your communities?
Ms. Neacappo: I should say that it’s difficult for us to do the job. We don’t hear many stories. I know there are stories out there, but people don’t share them. It’s difficult for them to share.
My community has a lot of drugs and alcohol from generations back. My dad was a heavy drinker. Since I can remember, I saw him drunk all the time, passing out. He never talked about his story to anyone. It wasn’t until they made the claims available to people. At first, he didn’t want to make his claim. We had to tell him to do it. He didn’t want to do it. That’s how I knew it impacted him. He never talked about it.
The Chair: Thank you.
Ms. Beaudin: As I said, for us, in my experience, I actually don’t know another Indigenous person who has not been impacted by residential schools. From my knowledge, the denialism that people may be going through as Indigenous people, for us, is the impact from what occurred to them has had on their life, not that it never happened at all.
We live in what is now Saskatchewan, a very conservative province. When we talk about external denialism, we know our truth. We were born with our truth. It is harmful, I believe — maybe less so for us because we stand in our truth and we are becoming stronger in our truth as Indigenous people. However, in the changing landscape of who is Canadian now, where we have many new Canadians, refugees and different types of people who are coming to Canada, we have a narrative in the media. We have a narrative that is in print, on paper, of very right-wing views of the denialism. That is what is harmful to us because it’s not telling the truth of our nation.
Canada is an amazing nation. We all must have travelled globally. We know how incredibly lucky we are. Look what’s happening in Israel right now.
We know that even with the horrific things that have happened here in Canada, we have many blessings here in what is now Canada as well. The denialism that comes about, which says, “You’re exaggerating this,” or “This didn’t happen,” or “How could this have happened?” — and it is in print — effects, I would think, the people who are the newest to Canada, who take on those attitudes and those words that they read and hear as truth because they are coming from what would be considered authorities. That perpetuates the lies, and that is what’s harmful. That denialism is harmful. It’s less harmful for us, as Indigenous people, in terms of who we are and our healing journey, but it will continue to impact us in terms of policies and other types of institutional racism if we do not have the truth come out of what is now Canada.
Once again, going back to the issue of funding and giving every nation that has experienced this the time that they need to go through it, it will be incredibly harmful and impactful in 10 or 20 years if the people who make government public policy and legislation do not know the truth.
The Chair: Thank you both for that.
Senator D. Patterson: Thank you both very much for being here.
What a story. The school was in operation for 99 years. That’s amazing. I understand that the community cemetery is even older, since 1885, I think.
You mentioned that there were meticulous, detailed records kept — you even saw them as a little girl — but that they are hard to deal with because there’s a language barrier, and I imagine there are a lot of documents. We have heard from other witnesses what a big task that is.
Maybe I can direct this to Chief Beaudin. Are you hoping that the records of students from the residential schools will tell you which graves belong to your people? Is that what you’re hoping to get from the records if you have the support to analyze those records?
Ms. Beaudin: Absolutely. Our task is to actually re-establish the gravesite markers and to have them as permanent, whether they are Indigenous or non-Indigenous people in that gravesite, as well as those who are buried on unconsecrated ground.
Through the school records, we would also like to show that there were children and youth who passed away not necessarily from instantaneous murder or violence but through malnutrition, scientific experiment, tuberculosis — those types of sicknesses or preventable types of deaths that could have happened.
There were young teenagers who passed away from the effects of rape, whereas in the medical books it states something different. It states in the record books, as well as from the doctor, that those deaths were caused in another way. For us to be able to interpret both what was written by the church as well as by the school, by the Indian agent — once again church and state — is somewhat also of an investigation, if you will, into finding out what the true cause of the death was for the young ones who attended the residential school.
Senator D. Patterson: Do you think that the records will show the names of the deceased corresponding to a gravesite that your radar has identified? Does it look like you’ll be able to find that if you get the support to do the painstaking research?
Ms. Beaudin: There should be. It should be, and that would be because — especially for the Indigenous people and the ones who died from residential school, as well as the ones who are buried there — we are born with numbers. We are born with, first of all, our parents’ numbers, and then we receive our own numbers after that.
Those are very closely tied with the records from government, as well as from the church so, once again, that takes time. That takes research. That takes a language barrier, everything that I have talked about, and that is well over 100 years old in terms of having to identify all of that.
From our research team’s experience, sometimes it takes up to a year in order to confirm that it is actually the person in that corresponding grave.
Senator D. Patterson: You talked about the need for more resources. Could you give us a little better idea of what funds have been made available to you, for what time period and what you’re looking for going forward? Now or through the clerk, if you don’t have it handy.
Ms. Beaudin: I would probably have to give it through the clerk in order to be more specific. Otherwise, I would probably shortchange the answer for you.
I don’t know for yourself and your community.
Ms. Neacappo: I didn’t quite get the question.
Senator D. Patterson: We are doing a study so that we can make a report and make recommendations to the government. That’s why I asked the question about the money that has been given to you so far to do your work, what the time frame is and what more you might need.
I realize that’s a detailed question, so if you would prefer to give the information to the clerk, we can get it that way, if you don’t have it handy.
Ms. Beaudin: For our purposes, I would prefer to give it to the clerk.
Senator D. Patterson: Sure. Thank you.
If I may, I’m just curious about what happened to the residential school building. I saw a picture of it in 1923, and I understand that it was closed as a residential school but it remained as a student residence or a community education centre.
Can you tell us a little story of the history of that building? I didn’t quite understand if it is gone now or if it has been reused.
Ms. Beaudin: No. We have a new school, and then we have the old school that we are renovating. That school is considered the new school from people who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, and then we had the residential school.
After the church left, the residential school continued on with the band being the administrators of the residential school, and then the residential school was closed down and it remained empty. It was torn down, and the church and the rectory were burnt and taken down as well.
Senator D. Patterson: Can you tell us a bit about the new school? Who runs that?
Ms. Beaudin: That is under the jurisdiction of the Cowessess First Nation now, and it’s K-12, as well as preschool, nursery, Head Start, with a daycare.
Senator D. Patterson: How are things going with your school?
Ms. Beaudin: As part of renovating our old school, we are building a new wing where, for the first time ever, our 3- and 4-year-olds will have a brand new space to play and learn in, to receive the traditional and the cultural knowledge for identity. We have Grade 12 graduates every year, and we continue on with the legacy.
It’s a good education system. However, every year we always attempt to have more and more graduates. Once again, though, as we both talked about, with those intergenerational impacts — whether it’s addictions, mental health, parents, whatever the situation is at home — we could have many more, and that’s the importance of what we’re doing here today. We envision and we have hope for that day where every child that’s born will be able to go through an education system without the legacy and those issues that many of us have grown up with and continue to grow up with, and they are able to graduate from Grade 12 in their home community, with their family, with their kin that are there to watch them and to be so proud of them.
Senator D. Patterson: Thank you very much. I’m sure we’re all glad to hear, as we draw to a close, a hopeful note, so thank you for that.
The Chair: Thank you very much to both of you for your very powerful testimony here this evening. We really appreciate it. Thank you again.
If you have any subsequent submissions — chief, you mentioned you might submit something to our clerk — if you could do that within seven days, that would be very helpful to our clerk, Andrea.
(The committee continued in camera.)