THE STANDING SENATE COMMITTEE ON INDIGENOUS PEOPLES
EVIDENCE
OTTAWA, Tuesday, April 30, 2024
The Standing Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples met with videoconference this day at 9:02 a.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.
[Editor’s note: Please note that this transcript may contain strong language and addresses sensitive matters that may be difficult to read or watch.]
Senator Brian Francis (Chair) in the chair.
[English]
The Chair: Before we begin, I would like to remind all senators and other meeting participants of the following important preventative measures. To prevent disruptive and potentially harmful audio feedback incidents during our meeting that could cause injuries, we remind all in-person participants to keep their earpieces away from all microphones at all times. As indicated in the communiqué from the Speaker to all senators on Monday, April 29, the following measures have been taken to help prevent audio feedback incidents.
All earpieces have been replaced by a model that greatly reduces the probability of audio feedback. The new earpieces are black in colour whereas the former earpieces were grey. Please only use an approved black earpiece. By default, all unused earpieces will be unplugged at the start of a meeting.
When you are not using your earpiece, please place it face down on the middle of the round sticker that you see in front of you on the table where indicated. Please consult the card on the table for guidelines to prevent audio feedback incidents.
Please ensure that you are seated in a manner that increases the distance between microphones. Participants must only plug in their earpieces to the microphone console located directly in front of them.
These measures are in place so that we can conduct our business without interruption, and to protect the health and safety of all participants, including the interpreters. Thank you all for your cooperation.
With that, I would like to begin by acknowledging that the land on which we gather is the traditional, ancestral and unceded territory of the Anishinaabeg Algonquin Nation and is now home to many other First Nations, Métis and Inuit peoples from across Turtle Island.
I am Mi’kmaq Senator Brian Francis from Epekwitk, also known as Prince Edward Island, and I am the chair of the Committee on Indigenous Peoples. I will now ask committee members in attendance to introduce themselves by stating their name and province or territory. We’ll start with the deputy chair.
Senator Arnot: David Arnot. I’m from Saskatchewan, Treaty 6 territory.
Senator McNair: John McNair, New Brunswick, Mi’kmaq territory.
Senator Hartling: Good morning. Nancy Hartling from New Brunswick, the Mi’kmaq unceded territory.
Senator Sorensen: Karen Sorensen, Alberta, Banff National Park, Treaty 7 territory.
Senator Coyle: Mary Coyle, Antigonish, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki, the land of my neighbour.
Senator Prosper: Senator P. J. Prosper, Nova Scotia, Mi’kma’ki.
The Chair: Thank you, senators.
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 1-855-242-3310 or at www.hopeforwellness.ca.
I want to give you some background about our meeting today. You may recall that, last March, this committee heard from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, or NCTR, 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 upon that testimony, on July 19, the committee issued an interim report entitled Honouring the Children Who Never Came Home: Truth, Education and Reconciliation. One of the recommendations made in that interim report included a commitment to hold a public hearing with governments, church entities and others who continue to withhold records about residential schools and associated sites.
During today’s meeting, we will continue to hear from these witnesses. I would now like to introduce our first witness. From the Government of Manitoba, we welcome Dr. John K. Younes, Chief Medical Examiner. Wela’lin for joining us today. Dr. Younes will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with senators.
I will now invite Dr. Younes to give his opening remarks.
Dr. John K. Younes, Chief Medical Examiner, Government of Manitoba: Good morning, everyone. I have been asked to provide a brief summary of this province’s activities regarding discovering and retrieving records related to any child deaths in the residential schools in this province during their operations.
I will give a brief history of the residential school system in Manitoba. There were a total of 16 schools, the first of which opened in 1874 and the last of which closed its doors in 1989. All but five of the schools had ceased operations by 1970.
That’s an important date because the death investigation systems in this province underwent a fundamental change in 1970. Up to 1970, death investigations were handled by a coroner’s system. In 1970, the death investigation system was converted to a medical examiner system and new legislation was adopted to govern the operations of the medical examiner’s office. That is called the Fatality Inquiries Act.
Unfortunately, during the coroner’s era up until 1970, the only deaths that were reported to them for investigation were violent deaths and unexplained deaths. In 1970, with the adoption of the Fatality Inquiries Act, all child deaths became reportable to the Office of the Chief Medical Examiner and were investigated.
So we have 90 years where the death investigation system was run by coroners during the time of the residential schools. Beyond 1970, it was a medical examiner system.
I have gone to our archives and had the archivists pull up every record or reference to records they could locate regarding coroner reports as well as medical examiner reports until 1989. What I can report is a bit disappointing: There were orders in council passed in 1958 and 1968 in the province that authorized the destruction of all coroner reports that were 20 or more years old.
So when the coroners did investigate a case, they prepared a small report summary card. With each card, there was a corresponding investigative file. All the investigative files have been destroyed from the coroner era. We do have four boxes of the report summary cards spanning from 1946 to 1970. Unfortunately, even amongst those, there are eight years that were destroyed at one point by a flood and mould damage. We have about 17 years’ worth of the summary report cards.
I’ve gone through a number of them. The amount of information they contain is variable. The place of death is not regularly recorded, but some circumstances of death are provided as well as a cause of death and, of course, the decedent’s name and age. To go through these would be basically a card-by-card search with the hope of identifying child deaths that might have occurred in residential schools.
Things are better at the transition to the medical examiner’s office. My office contains, again, report summary cards for every reportable death from 1970 forward. Each of those cards will have a corresponding investigative file in the archives which can be retrieved. There are literally hundreds of cubic feet of medical examiner reports in the archives for the 20 years that are relevant. We basically will have to go through those file by file and identify child deaths, typically between the ages of 5 and 18 years, which might be relevant and hope to find identifying information to allow us to conclude which deaths occurred in a residential school or to identify a child who was at a residential school.
That will be a challenging task. Not having the names of the children who are suspected to have died in the residential schools, we can’t focus our search to identify these particular files quickly. It will basically entail a paper-by-paper search through a huge volume of information trying to find investigative files that relate to child deaths and go from there.
At the end of the process, I will say I have no restrictions or no qualms about releasing to next of kin or the NCTR the information we do find about any deaths in children in residential schools. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you for that, Dr. Younes. We will now open the floor to questions from senators. First from our deputy chair, Senator Arnot.
Senator Arnot: Dr. Younes, thank you for coming today. I’m sure you understand the problems of withholding historical medical records on families of residential school survivors. My questions to you would be more forward-looking. What steps would you take to improve transparency and trust between medical examiner offices and Indigenous communities, individuals and families, particularly in regard to historical records? For what policy changes would you advocate to ensure that the needs of residential school survivors and their families are better met? What best practices would you advocate for?
Dr. Younes: Preservation of records obviously would have been helpful. In modern times, it is much easier with digital storage than in the 20th century when everything was on paper and had to be stored in boxes which were subject to all kinds of risks.
In terms of communicating with the Indigenous community and transparency, my office actually is in the process of hiring an Indigenous liaison who will be situated within the office and will act to facilitate sharing of information, explanation of our processes, why we do things the way we do and why that’s important.
I would just like to reiterate that, at least in Manitoba, this is not an issue of withholding information. It’s a matter of being able to discover what information we have and being able to retrieve it. Again, I have no philosophical objection to releasing any of this information that we discover.
Senator Arnot: What you are saying is that, in the coroner system that was in place for 90 years or so, the records would be an abject failure. They were not recording the names and places of death — basics that you as a medical examiner would look into. Even for the coroner, it was a failing of the responsibility of the coroner and they wouldn’t be in compliance with the act for those hundred years or so, I would guess?
Dr. Younes: It’s hard to know what was in the actual investigative files of the coroners because they are all gone. All we have left are these little summary cards which are a reference to the investigative files that were produced. I would imagine the investigating files did have a lot more information, including place of death and place of birth, for instance. The little summary cards just basically have the cause of death, the name and maybe a few circumstances.
Senator Sorensen: I have two questions. Understanding the information is an extensive pre-1970, do you have any insight into the process used in Manitoba when a residential school student died either or both pre-1970 and post-1970? Under what circumstances would any of those students have received autopsies? Would the process have been different for child deaths in the general population?
Dr. Younes: Again, my understanding of the criteria for reporting a death to the coroners was that the death had to be either the result of violence or unnatural means or be completely unexplained.
Senator Sorensen: I would think that would have been the case at a number of residential schools, but —
Dr. Younes: Yes. Clearly, a number of deaths in the residential schools would have met those criteria and would have been investigated, assuming they were reported to the coroner. I would imagine, though I don’t have hard data for this, that a significant majority of the deaths in residential schools were the result of natural diseases, such as smallpox, tuberculosis and other common diseases of the day. Those deaths would not have been reported to the coroners for investigation.
Senator Sorensen: In your comments, the tense you’re using seems to be present-day or in the future. “We are going to have to” or “we are in the process of hiring.” I’m curious; it sounds like this is your starting point. This has been an issue on the table for many years with many horrific discoveries in the last few years. Can you articulate maybe what’s been done to date? All these efforts that you are planning to make, are they all starting now and forward, if you understand my question?
You have been very clear that you have no concerns around releasing information. I just want to ask, at the end of that, are there any legislative provisions that may prevent your office from releasing records of Indigenous children who may have died?
Dr. Younes: There’s no provincial legislation which would restrict my release of information to the next of kin of the children whom we identified as having died in the schools. There is no issue on that end.
Senator Sorensen: Okay.
Dr. Younes: To be honest, this request to retrieve these records was only brought to my attention personally in the very recent past, in essence in preparation for this meeting. The process is starting going forward. My office director and I will basically be the ones tasked with going through all the boxes, trying to find relevant records and then retrieving the corresponding files from the archives. This will be a process that will take some time.
Senator Sorensen: Again, this is no reflection on you, sir, but I am just surprised the Government of Manitoba hasn’t started something previous to this, but we look forward to your work.
Dr. Younes: With respect to the physical process of examining residential schools, Manitoba undertook a limited excavation of the Pine Creek First Nation site, particularly the basement of a church on the site because there were some ground-penetrating radar anomalies there — 10, to be specific. I put together a plan with the anthropology team as to how we would handle any found remains.
In this case, no remains were found, but it is my understanding that at least one more community in the province will proceed with excavation this summer. The Office of the Chief Medical Examiner will again be part of the process and act accordingly if any remains are discovered.
Senator Sorensen: Thank you. That was helpful.
Senator Coyle: Thank you, Dr. Younes. I’m trying to understand what it’s going to take to go through what you have. You have clearly articulated what the challenge is, the task before you with incomplete records for only certain years. I believe you mentioned that part of the difficulty is that you don’t have anything to check those records against. Is that fair to say? Let me start there.
Dr. Younes: Yes. We could certainly accelerate discovery of relevant files if we had a name of a child to look for and a year of death, but we don’t have any information like that. We are essentially going through everything we have, looking for deaths that might be relevant.
Senator Coyle: I have two questions about that. Maybe I have it wrong, but I thought the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation had a memorial register — and I’m sure it’s not complete or perfect — of children who may have died while attending residential schools. Is that memorial register useful in the cross-referencing work that you and your staff would be doing?
The second question is this: With or without that, what do you anticipate the timeline to be between now, as you are starting, to completion? I’m sure you have done an estimation of what this will take in terms of time and effort. Thank you.
Dr. Younes: Thank you for the questions. The NCTR website does have a list of children’s names who are thought to have gone missing while attending residential schools, but from what I have seen, there is not enough information there to help us focus the search in terms of the time of death. We will have to go through what we have left to go through, which is the boxes of coroners’ reports and summary cards as well as the medical examiner reports from 1970 onwards.
My anticipation is that we will be able to get through the boxes by the end of summer and have the relevant reports recovered from archives such that I can go through them and determine whether or not the deaths occurred in a residential school and the circumstances and cause of death in those cases.
Senator Coyle: Thank you.
Senator Hartling: Dr. Younes, thank you very much for your ongoing work. I especially liked hearing that a liaison person will be hired because that will build relationships. This is so important to reconciliation.
Would you mind telling us what led you on the path to this position? Have there been any obstacles or have you had any pushback on the job so far? Just a bit about you and how you got involved in doing this work.
Dr. Younes: To be specific, you would like my career arc story?
Senator Hartling: No, just a bit about you. This is difficult work and not everybody would step up to do it. What led you to take the position? I know you are well qualified, but what was your driving force to do this work?
Dr. Younes: I started working in Manitoba as a medical examiner and forensic pathologist in 2000. I’ve been here for almost 25 years now. The previous chief medical examiner had been here for a long time. At the time he stepped down, I was the next most senior person here. Prior to his departure, he had already selected me to be his deputy chief. When he moved on in 2015, I became the chief.
Since then, I have been trying to keep the ship afloat through various crises, including COVID and the drug-related death epidemic, and taking on the tasks as they arise. Obviously, this is an important task as well, and I hope to have gone through what we can get through by the end of summer.
Senator Hartling: Thank you very much.
The Chair: The time for this panel is complete. I wish to again thank our witness Dr. Younes for joining us this morning. If you wish to make any subsequent submissions, please submit them by email to the clerk.
I would now like to introduce our next panel of witnesses. We have Edmund Metatawabin, Coordinator, Peetabeck Keway Keykaywin Association; Evelyn Korkmaz, St. Anne’s Residential School survivor and advocate; Mike Metatawabin, St. Anne’s Residential School survivor and Project Lead, Nee Kee Wa Nan; Anna Betty Achneepineskum, Deputy Grand Chief, Nishnawbe Aski Nation; and Fay Brunning, Legal Counsel for St. Anne’s Indian Residential School survivors.
Wela’lin. Thank you all for joining us this morning. The witnesses will provide opening remarks of approximately five minutes, which will be followed by a question-and-answer session with the senators. I now invite Mr. Metatawabin to give his opening remarks.
Edmund Metatawabin, Coordinator, Peetabeck Keway Keykaywin Association, as an individual: It’s good to be here.
I am a survivor. I entered when I was six years old, and I was there for eight years. It is good to talk to you. My name is Mattawabogimow. I am registered as Edmund Metatawabin.
Residential schools fall under the academic description of “total institutions.” These institutions, like a hospital, prison, mental institution and the Canadian Indian reserve system, are within the five categories of total institutions identified by writers like Erving Goffman. Writing about the Holocaust, Viktor Frankl, in his book, Man’s Search for Meaning, describes the social processes that evolve among the inmates while incarcerated inside the camps, the relationship understood between the caretakers and prisoners and the ultimate design of the program to break the target group. As a residential school survivor, it is not difficult to see the similarities inside all these compounds.
The registered personnel — or inmates — in residential schools are those individuals that are deemed to need character adjustment or healing and to be confined, like the above, until their behaviour and eventually their belief system meet the Canadian criteria of the acceptable citizen norm.
Reconciliation does not attempt to change that relationship between Canada and First Nations. It only tries to express sorrow for the historical treatment but continues to deny the existence of the reserve system, where the captured Indigenous population in Canada are placed. It is there that they are confined, defined to be refined.
Contribution arrangement papers continue to be annually prepared without proper consultation of the First Nations. Seldom in the history of this land do we, the Indigenous population, have the option to influence long-ranging decisions for this country.
It is in recognition of the above that the Canadian Psychological Association writes:
. . . Psychological tools that are inappropriate have been used to support discriminatory policies that pathologize Indigenous Peoples, as well as practices that are neither just nor beneficial to Indigenous communities in Canada. . . .
Genocide is not always necessarily a one-time event; it is, in the case of Indians of Canada, an attrition process happening over an extended time.
The residential school in Fort Albany opened in 1903 with 12 registered students. Prior to that, a Jesuit named Laverlochere started the first Roman Catholic mission there, making his first baptisms in 1851. The first abuse was to separate the child from extended kin. There began a mission where the goal of residential schools was clearly stated by Bishop Grandin when he said:
We instill in them a pronounced distaste for the Native life so that they will be humiliated when reminded of their origin. When they graduate from our institutions, the children have lost everything Native except their blood.
As we now know, it was Duncan Campbell Scott who designed and took over funding the residential school system. Working with the church, the arrangement began in earnest to erase native culture and language. Lost support systems, negative reinforcement and abuse became a way of life.
Because of the above experiences, many First Nation students of residential schools, upon leaving the institution, continued on to self-abuse. Many denied their background and many more ran away to urban centres. Many died from the self-abuse. By the 1960s, control of the community by the religious personnel was complete, at least in Fort Albany.
Ironically, it was the Government of Canada that forced a rebirth of Canadian native people. The 1969 White Paper was to take away the status of First Nation people and turn them into citizens of Canada via legislation. There would be no more “Indians.”
There was an immediate response from the Western chiefs. The Brown Paper fought hard against this erasure. The Indigenous youth woke up, dusted themselves off and flocked to universities. I was one of them. For the people of western James Bay, the renewal would last for the next 20 years until it was time to examine First Nations’ relationship with Canada. This does not mean that everyone was cured.
There was a conference and reunion in 1992. The survivors attended the first St. Anne’s Residential School conference and reunion in 1992. Fort Albany was the site of the school. It hosted the gathering. As the original inmates of that total institution, attendees arrived from the communities of western James Bay and from urban centres.
Included as part of the agenda was a panel of six professionals who listened and recorded testimonies from 30 survivors in one day and part of the next day. Even though there were more who wanted to speak to the panel, that was all the time we had; an agenda had to be followed.
The panel’s findings delivered to the conference participants came to be known as the panel report.
In the immediate Fort Albany First Nation council meeting, Councillor Joseph Wheesk moved:
that the Panel Report, containing survivor testimonials of criminal behaviour by the staff of St. Anne’s Residential School between 1903 to 1973, be delivered to the police for their follow-up.
Elder James Carpenter stated after his testimony:
I told my story. The police came to hear my story. I was happy to provide this testimony. Now the Prime Minister knows what happened at St. Anne’s Residential School.
That was in 1992.
It was, and still is, the expectation of St. Anne’s Residential School survivors that the police, being the servants of the government, would ensure that our testimonial words will be heard by the government. It was then surprising when the government lawyers stated in court that they did not know where the police investigation files were held. To this, Judge Perell responded, “I will not call it criminal behaviour but, rather I will call it incompetence.”
Charges of abuse were laid to the staff of St. Anne’s Residential School — five lay staff and two Native nuns. The Crown prosecutor did not touch the religious staff. Later, Father Lavoie was proven to be a serial pedophile, targeting boys and girls. Sister Francoise Seguin has recently been charged with sexual abuse on boys.
Peetabeck Keway Keykaywin Association, or PKKA, registered in 1993, has followed the evolving residential school issue. The organization has reported and received resolution support from the Mushkegowuk Council, Chiefs of Ontario, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and the Assembly of First Nations. The Peetabeck Keway Keykaywin Association was there to negotiate with the government and church representatives during the alternative dispute resolution negotiations. That was followed by the Common Experience Payment Program from which the Independent Assessment Process, or IAP, began. This is where an “incomplete narrative” was attached for the IAP adjudicators to use in their judgment. The incomplete narrative, which stated that “no sexual abuse was committed at St. Anne’s Residential School,” misrepresented and denied the serious nature of the abuse suffered by the children.
PKKA was involved from 2001 to 2004 in the development of the IAP program. The board of PKKA was instructed by the elders to seek a non-confrontational reclamation process for cultural and language loss. Government representatives, the four churches — Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian and United — and regional survivor representatives met periodically as a combined IWC and AWC to seek a beneficial and justified resolution.
As part of the Independent Assessment Process, criteria are given to the adjudicators to guide them in determining the extent of abuse. PKKA continues to question the narrative presented by the government. Peetabeck Keway Keykaywin insists that it is an incomplete narrative.
To feed the voting public that there was “no sexual abuse committed on children in St. Anne’s Residential School” denies the pain of Margaret, who was impregnated by the bishop when she was a young girl. We don’t know what happened to the fetus. She was about seven to eight months’ pregnant and was starting to show. We knew that she was pregnant.
She was not the only one. The police investigation said so. There was excessive and continuous sexual abuse.
Department of Justice lawyers accuse us of bringing a frivolous and self-indulgent legal process that would not serve the wider public. The issue of standing is being used against PKKA to deny the traditional collective approach, common in native societies, by bringing forth “a principle of contract law that screens out busybody litigants.”
Further, these same lawyers claim that being forced to “ingest your own vomit is not harmful because it is your own bodily fluid.” We just wonder how they know that.
As a 7-year-old at St. Anne’s Residential School, one morning, I woke up with a fever. While attempting to eat, everything came out and into my porridge. Due to the fever, I stayed in bed for the next three days. On the fourth day, feeling much better, I joined everyone for breakfast. But I was not given a bowl. Instead, Sister Marie Immaculata, our supervisor, brought my four-day-old porridge — the one holding my vomit — and I was made to eat it. My friends could not look at me. As I finished my bowl, I did not remember anything else for the next six months. Such is the way your own mind can protect you.
I was not the only one who was forced to endure similar humiliation. In the eight years that I was registered at St. Anne’s Residential School, I witnessed my friends being made to do the same thing. It is not a frivolous experience.
I also witnessed the whip — 20 millimetres long by 7 millimetres wide by 2 millimetres thick — to which six small ropes were attached; and at the end of each rope, a metal nut was tied. Lying on a bed 60 millimetres high, the strap was applied 20 times by a six-foot tall adult on the bare bum of a screaming child.
All of us were made to sit on the electric chair designed by Brother Goulet. As we sat on the chair, an electric current passed through our body, forcing us to wiggle — much to the amusement of the staff and visitors.
After the sun had set, the nocturnal visits of the child sexual abusers invaded the dormitories where the children tried to be invisible underneath their blankets — Brother Michaud, Brother Goulet, Bishop Beleau, Bishop Leguerrier, Brother Jutras, Father Lavoie, Sister Superior Seguin, Sister Gorretti, to name only a few. The Ontario Provincial Police investigative report contains further details on these horrors committed on children.
We have been consistent and honest in presenting the St. Anne’s Residential School survivor narrative. Our elders — survivors themselves — sat with us on the panel report to hear tearful testimonies from their peers. They participated in the conference, providing support and encouragement. They gave their own testimony. We knew that in this later stage of their life, nearing the next life, they could only speak the truth.
It is this sacred example of speaking the truth that guides us during this hard time. Many do not believe that what we experienced is true. If anyone is curious about what the bottom of the barrel looks like, we have seen it; we can tell you.
Language is an important component to proper socialization into one’s society. If you can communicate with the senior members of your clan, then you possess rules and guidelines that help you to understand your culture. If you hear about your history and your heroes, mythical or real, and if you can name the creeks, river and lakes in your traditional area in their original form, you have found your home.
We only have one proposal. Our idea has been a difficult goal to achieve so far. The elder is the bridge who will bring you from the past to the future with full confidence.
Those of us who are recovering from our difficult experiences have followed a common recovery program. We look to our traditions. We listen to our language. Personally, I was mesmerized by the stories of James Wesley; Miken Patrick; James Carpenter; Willie Stephen; my grandfather Simeon Metatawabin, a World War I veteran; Charlotte Sutherland; Pauline Hunter; Theresa Wabano and many more.
I envy medicinal people like Philip Goodwin, Jules Tapas, Kane Ferries, Randy Sewap, Albert and Rose Damen, Albert Lightning and others who give me a goal to aim for.
We need an elders’ teaching house, a university, a way to reach our young people using contemporary tools and resources. Today, they are the inmates of the internet. We have to bring them home. An elders’ teaching house can be a cooperative effort by all of us. Reconciliation means just that — working together. Anyone can access knowledge from the teaching house. The teachings will be available to all who seek that kind of knowledge. The First Nation philosophy, “For those who are not yet born,” is inclusive.
Thank you for listening.
The Chair: Thank you, Dr. Metatawabin. I will now invite Ms. Korkmaz to give her opening remarks.
Evelyn Korkmaz, St. Anne’s Residential School Survivor and Advocate, as an individual: This land is the traditional territory of the Algonquin Nation, and I thank them for allowing us to gather here in peace.
I am honoured to speak to the panel of St. Anne’s survivors. Thank you to all attendees and Deputy Grand Chief Anna Betty Achneepineskum for her leadership. It is a privilege to share my insights with this esteemed audience.
I am Evelyn Korkmaz, a Cree advocate and survivor of St. Anne’s Residential School. I am part of the Nikanigawbowin Advisory Committee of Nishnawbe Aski Nation and a founding member of Ending Clergy Abuse and Advocates for Clergy Trauma Survivors in Canada, also known as ACTS Canada.
This presentation is important to all residential school survivors of the NAN territory. The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, or IRSSA, signed in 2006 mandated the Canadian government, churches and Indigenous peoples to provide all residential school documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, or TRC. Every document with child abuse allegations had to be produced for each confidential child abuse hearing.
St. Anne’s survivors seek fair hearings for child abuse suffered. Government lawyers have used legal tactics and misrepresentations for 12 years, causing the reconciliation process to fail.
The Canadian government concealed evidence of child abuse, leading to unequal representation in the justice system by breaching and withholding important documents including criminal transcripts, pleadings and investigation reports. Despite winning a court order in 2014, proving a breach of the settlement agreement, the government failed to remedy hundreds of child abuse claims already breached, including mine. Failure to follow court orders leaves us to believe Canada’s justice system is still systemically biased against Indigenous people.
Next, the unmarked and undocumented graves were found starting in 2021, which confirmed more unspeakable truths. This committee is aware of those details.
Marc Miller, former Minister of Crown-Indigenous Relations, finally revealed in 2021 that the Canadian government had been honouring a side agreement with the Catholic Church to withhold residential school documents without the consent or knowledge of the Indigenous people. This admission means the government and church officials have violated the rights of Indigenous people owed under the settlement agreements and court orders.
The government has released the church from $25 million owed to Indigenous people for healing without the involvement of Indigenous people. Non-disclosure agreements about child abuse are fundamentally wrong and must be investigated by this Senate committee.
These non-disclosure agreements must be produced to the public. Pope Francis acknowledged genocide in Canada. The Catholic Church removed residential school documents from Canada and took them to Rome. They did not share them with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The church should be held accountable and the documents returned to Canada promptly.
We demand accountability, equality and legal obligations from the democratic institutions for Indigenous people. Ignoring court orders defies the rule of law in Canada. The Assembly of First Nations passed a resolution for an international review as a last resort. Meegwetch. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you very much, Ms. Korkmaz. I now open the floor to questions.
Senator Arnot: I have three questions I hope to get in.
Mr. Metatawabin, what do you think are the next steps necessary for Canada, for Canadians, to have a true reconciliation with Indigenous people?
For Ms. Korkmaz, I have a question as well. What are your perspectives on the ongoing legal challenges and the role of the Canadian judiciary in dealing with the legacy of residential schools? More particularly, what are the next steps in your advocacy work? How do you plan to continue bringing international attention to the plight of residential school survivors?
I would also like to ask Ms. Brunning a question: What are the key lessons that you’ve learned from the St. Anne’s cases that you believe should be applied to future legal challenges involving Indigenous rights and historical injustices? Based on your experiences, what legal reforms do you believe are necessary to ensure that historical injustices are properly, effectively and transparently addressed in the future?
Those are my three questions. If there’s not time, maybe a written answer would suffice. Thank you.
Mr. E. Metatawabin: Thank you very much. I keep thinking of the younger generation. What would be the best step for them for us to pursue? Second, no amount of legal victories will encourage them to design a ribbon skirt for themselves or plan for the next ceremony, the next powwow or anything to do with encouraging confidence among the First Nations population. So it’s not a program-oriented or policy-oriented pursuit that will help the young people. Rather, it would be knowing their history, listening to [Indigenous language spoken], our legends they brought us from the upper world.
The origin story, starting from the beginning, for them to understand about [Indigenous language spoken]. We stayed there for 6,000 years. It was [Indigenous language spoken] for the last 4,000 years until we began to disperse. For the past 2,000 years, we have been in the Fort Albany area.
For them also to hear their language, [Indigenous language spoken] — so they understand the words of the elders when they tell them about their family, family tree and family relationship. Their own family history and [Indigenous language spoken] — these are place names on the land. When their grandfather talks about [Indigenous language spoken], they have no idea where that is. That’s why we try to bring them on a 300-mile rafting trip on a raft measuring 60 feet long by 16 feet wide, with bunk beds for them, an eating area and boats to take them fishing or exploring.
It is their own system that needs to be encouraged, not a policy change or law. Let the people develop the grassroots movement, and let the government look at that and consider how they can cooperate in that fashion. Nothing good comes from the top. It has to grow from the bottom, from the community people.
I see these young people. I look at them, and I feel sorry for them. But I’m also very proud of what the young people are accomplishing in the arts, academics and economics. There are many positive steps. If we can encourage those, identify them and give them more support, I think they have a better chance than spending, which the government has done — they have spent $6 million fighting us, which is $6 million that could have gone somewhere else more positive. If they spent $6 million to fight us, what is it they were hiding? What it is they are afraid of? That money could have gone so far to establishing good relationships. Instead, they are fighting us.
We are fighting the government because we want that truth to come out. They don’t believe us; today, they don’t believe us. They fight us. They had three lawyers fighting us before that. Now, they have six lawyers fighting us.
So they are setting up the barricade where no truth will come out. We have two pro bono lawyers. They continue to receive lawsuits because they speak for us. The legal system is not supposed to represent us. It doesn’t represent us. It is very scared of us.
Thank you for the question. My thought is that it has to come from the bottom. Let us suggest something. I speak about the elders’ institute. It is an elders’ university. They are the professors and teachers for their students and for other students. Thank you.
The Chair: Thank you, Mr. Metatawabin.
Ms. Korkmaz: I forgot the question.
Senator Arnot: I will repeat it: You have been fighting these battles for a long time, but I wanted to know what your perspectives are on the ongoing legal challenges and the role of the Canadian judiciary in addressing the legacy of the residential schools. In particular, what are the next steps in your advocacy work, and how do you plan to continue to bring international attention to the plight of residential school survivors?
Ms. Korkmaz: Being the founding member of Ending Clergy Abuse, I have brought this issue to international platforms. I have spoken at the United Nations in Geneva for several years now. I had a personal audience with Pope Francis as well.
Because this issue has affected my life — I can’t let it go — I demand to be treated as an equal in Canada’s justice system. I have my rights, just like everybody else, and so do the St. Anne’s survivors. We were mistreated and misled, and now we want justice.
It is disgraceful on Canada’s part that they have spent $6 million fighting us, hiding documents and sending them to Rome. These documents belong here in Canada. This is our history — our true history. These documents prove to the public and the world that we did not lie.
We want these documents to be revealed to the TRC so we can finally, after 50 years, move on with our lives and believe in the Canada that we were taught in schools — that it is just for everybody across the board.
The Chair: Thank you, Ms. Korkmaz.
Fay K. Brunning, Legal Counsel for St. Anne’s Indian Residential School Survivors, as an individual: In answering Senator Arnot’s questions about key lessons learned from the St. Anne’s litigation, working with the St. Anne’s survivors has fundamentally changed my life. I have been a litigation lawyer for 35 years now in Ottawa. Seeing the justice system through the eyes of Indigenous people has profoundly changed me because I thought that, again, using my skills as a litigation lawyer, I could give access to justice to people who truly need to believe that the systems can work for them.
It started in 2012. I met Edmund Metatawabin. He was helping me communicate. He interpreted for me to be able to speak to some of the elders in his community. He asked me, “Why don’t you know about the criminal trials?” I said, “What criminal trials? There is no disclosure about that.” He questioned me, asking whom I worked for. I replied that I work for a law firm. He asked me if I worked for the government or the church. I told him that I did not. He told me about this, and I said, “I promise you that I will look into this.”
I started to investigate, and through Google, I found 1997 charges against seven former supervisors. Then I met people who testified in some of these criminal trials. I wrote to the chief adjudicator and said, “Full stop here. This narrative says there has been no sexual abuse at St. Anne’s — no student‑on-student sexual abuse. There is nothing about criminal convictions of some of these supervisors.” The chief adjudicator said, “We don’t know anything about this police investigation. You should talk to such and such in the Government of Canada.” I thought I can’t do that because they have lawyers.
So I wrote to the Department of Justice. They feigned that they didn’t know about it. They said, “To the degree you advised there were criminal trials, that evidence would be inadmissible in the child abuse hearings.” I thought to myself, “What law school did you go to?” It just got worse from there.
But what had happened and what I was able to prove in the finding in 2014 is that the Department of Justice lawyers and the Catholic Church lawyers had criminal trial transcripts. They had pleadings from close to 160 individual survivors. The police had collected 700 signed witness statements from survivors, and the police had got court-issued search warrants, gone to the church offices in Montreal, Ottawa, Moosonee and Fort Albany and seized documents under search warrants. None of it had come into any of the IAP hearings. And we proved that how it was done is the Department of Justice lawyers hid all these documents in their vault in Toronto. And they did it only on paper; it was never translated into electronic form. And they never gave it to their own clients in Aboriginal Affairs. Yet their clients in Aboriginal Affairs were the ones who were doing the reports and making disclosure.
It is very important because if one of my clients goes in and they said, “I was abused by Father Lavoie,” for instance, the report about Father Lavoie was two pages long. It had gaps in the time that he was there, and absolutely nothing about allegations against him. And the same thing with almost all the supervisors because none of this had come through.
So we all went to court in 2014 and we won. Out came from the Department of Justice 12,300 documents comprising 47,000 pages of evidence about child abuse. They had said that they thought it was covered by the deemed undertaking. But it was all generated — I mean, we got Superior Court pleadings, criminal trial transcripts and the police investigation — what I was also able to establish under cross-examination is that they had obtained all the police investigation records themselves before the settlement agreement was signed.
It has been a horrific ongoing test of the resolve of the St. Anne’s survivors to keep going on this. They are resilient, dignified and honourable people. I cannot thank them enough for what they have done for themselves, for the youth in their communities and for the general public — for all of us who hope that honesty and truth will win out in the end and that these promises of truth and reconciliation have substance.
But it has been very difficult putting a mirror up in front of the justice system. You walk into the room and your opposing counsel is Department of Justice — one strike against you already. I know under the Department of Justice Act they are supposed to uphold the laws of Canada. That’s their job. But I had already proven they were the ones who breached the settlement agreement. They withheld these documents. Now, in 2021, we are hearing that there were third-party obligations to the Catholic Church well beyond St. Anne’s to hold back residential school documents.
What needs to happen is a proper inquiry and bring in the people who made these decisions, have them testify and be tested under oath. Because that’s reconciliation in my view: when the internal processes, what happens behind the curtains, you draw back the curtains and let’s see what is happening. What are the side deals? Where are they and who made them? Those people have to be held accountable. Right here in Ottawa, we have criminal trials going on right now for people who disobeyed court orders during the “Freedom Convoy.” What happens if it’s a Department of Justice lawyer who disobeys a court order? Nothing.
They are appalled by the fact that St. Anne’s survivors have the strength and the audacity to stand up for their rights. Because don’t forget, under the Indian Act, it’s the Department of Justice that is giving the legal opinions to Aboriginal Affairs. They are the ones telling them how to enforce this. They were the ones doing it way back even during residential schools. There’s a mindset there.
Cindy Blackstock, how many mandatory orders did she get from the Canadian Human Rights Commission before they finally started to obey? Cindy Blackstock has said we need a public inquiry into the Department of Justice. I think we do because if we want reconciliation, we have to make sure that the legal opinions being given by the Department of Justice to the Government of Canada are in accordance with the law. Because otherwise our democracy is in trouble.
Indigenous people still suffer systemic racism. Just to take you right into one of these hearings, the person sitting there, the only person being tested is the Indigenous person who claims that they have been abused. And they have to be tested because, of course, they might lie for money. But nobody tested the defendants. Nobody tested the church. Nobody tested the government for whether or not their reports were truthful, whether they gave all the documentation they were supposed to. And our justice system actually is based upon that. It is based upon testing the people in authority.
We have a hearing coming up in November, and the Government of Canada is trying to strike the legal case of Mr. Metatawabin and a number of other St. Anne’s survivors who are still trying to enforce that 2014 order. The government is trying to strike our pleading by saying Mr. Metatawabin has no standing, he shouldn’t be allowed to do any of this or represent his people, that previous decisions — they have already decided this. But in 2019, the Supreme Court of Canada came out with a whole new decision that overrode the previous decisions.
There is also new evidence, and that is the Government of Canada has finally admitted that when we got that order in 2014, they never went back and remedied the cases that had already been heard. So more than 215 St. Anne’s survivors’ claims were breached and never remedied. Can you imagine? You have a finding that there is a breach of contract of something so sacred as the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement passed into law by the courts, and the government lawyers breach it. Then they don’t remedy it, they don’t seek further directions, and they just fight us with preliminary objections for years. That’s where we have been at. And it’s tiring. The St. Anne’s survivors should not have to carry this load on their own. We are a democracy.
That’s why I’m very hopeful that this committee, as part of the main pillar of our democratic system, that you can inquire more. You can take the time that you need to make sure that these processes actually get revealed, there’s transparency and there’s accountability.
Let me share with you. One of the fellows I helped, and I managed to get him a re-hearing. And it took me three years of fighting to get this fellow — originally had his claim denied. His claim was heard. Even after we had won St. Anne’s, number one, the government still didn’t produce all the new documents. He had a different lawyer. He came and retained me because he was in the hospital, suicidal about not being believed. I fought all the way through and we got him — it’s the worst case of sexual abuse I have ever met. You could never imagine it. But he has made his transcript public, taking his name out because he said, “That’s not my fault; I was a child and that priest did it to me.”
When I had lunch with him a couple of weeks ago, he told me, “I just want to let you know that I want to thank you because I now have food in my fridge.” Because the other thing I convinced him to do is I said, “When you get this money, please get yourself an annuity. Set yourself up a pension.” Because the federal government refuses to do a structured settlement. So he got an annuity. In the middle of every month, he gets an extra payment. He just said, “I have food in my fridge now.”
He is empowered because somebody was fighting for him, we believed him and we knew what he said was right. I have to say I think that St. Anne’s survivors have become empowered because they are fighting for themselves, standing up and doing incredible things.
So that’s part of the reconciliation here is that the rest of us need to get used to the fact that we need to pay attention, listen and learn from the Indigenous people of this country. We have a lot to learn. As they grow stronger and as they reclaim their cultures, our entire country is going to be stronger in my view.
Sorry, I overspoke myself.
Senator Coyle: Thank you to all of our witnesses, those who have spoken, and we haven’t heard from the deputy grand chief yet.
This is a very important day for us here, those of us in this room and those watching these proceedings. I’m actually having a hard time getting back to the questions that I wanted to ask, but I want to commend you for your incredible strength and effort. I know that doesn’t mean anything unless we do something.
I just want to know; we are hearing you and, as a group, we can’t let it stop in the transcript of this meeting. When we get the transcript, I want to read every word, and I want to watch the recording again so I can hear how the words were transmitted to us. It is very important, what each one of you have said today and, even more so, what you have done to get to this point today. I thought I knew something but I’m shocked. I’m even shocked more than I thought I would be with what I’m hearing here today.
I would like to ask three questions to the three people we have heard from. If the chief wants to also come in, please do. I’ll try to be brief. Sorry about the preamble. I’m just in a bit of a state.
You said, Ms. Korkmaz, “We were mistreated, we were misled and now we want justice.” You’ve talked about the side agreements with the Canadian government and the Catholic Church. You’ve talked about how the non-disclosure agreements need to be brought to light. When say, “Now we want justice,” could you very specifically say what that justice is for you?
For Mr. Metatawabin, thank you also for your leadership and your wise words. You focused beautifully on this next generation. It’s really inspiring to hear you. If I’m correct — and I want to make sure I am — I would like you to go further. You are interested in support for that next generation so that they can immerse themselves in the healthy well-being of the language, the culture, the ways. Could you describe a little bit more what you mean? What would that look like?
Ms. Brunning, you spoke about needing an inquiry into how terrible the internal processes have been and about the abuses people have suffered as a result of those processes which are internal to our government institutions. Could you speak a little bit further on that inquiry? Can you help us frame what that would be?
Sorry, I have big questions for each of you. So, Ms. Korkmaz, justice?
Ms. Korkmaz: What justice looks like to me is to stop the litigation and settle with us, St. Anne’s survivors, so we can move on and start believing that we are recognized as equals in the Canadian justice system. The Canadian government has fought us for 12 years now; I think that’s enough. We have proved that they have hidden documents, sent them to Rome and made backroom deals.
I bumped into Marc Miller one day on Parliament Hill when they were unveiling the residential school survivors monument. I cornered him because that’s the type of person I am, and I asked him what’s going on here. I said, “What is in those documents that they are hiding from us?” He just said, “The devil is in the details,” and then he just walked away. I stood there, scratching my head wondering what does that mean. Him being a lawyer, it could mean a lot of things.
We just want everything out in the open. We don’t have anything to hide. Our stories are out there in the public. They are not very nice stories. They are not stories we are proud of, but they are out there. Now we want the government to put their cards on the table and give us a fair hearing, and for us to move on, for our children to look up to us and be proud that we did not give up.
I do this for my grandchildren because I want them to stand up proudly, hold their heads up and say, “I am an Indigenous person from Canada. This is my country, and my country is treating me right, as an equal, across the board.”
I don’t want them to walk around with the shame I carried for many years. I don’t carry it anymore because I’m very proud of who I am. I had to relearn my history. Thanks to Mr. Metatawabin. He has taught me a lot. He is my mentor and someone whom I admire. I try to follow in his footsteps as best I can, but he’s more mild than I am. I’m more direct, and I can’t help that. That’s it.
Mr. E. Metatawabin: Thank you. I think it is part of the way I compare how, as survivors, we neglected our families. We weren’t really there because we were so preoccupied with what I mention as self-abuse. My mind wasn’t there. My elders didn’t sit down and tell me, “Smarten up. Here’s what we do.”
It was a long time before I entered a sweat lodge. I was already almost 40 — that late. What can I do at 40 to be there for the development stage of my kids? That was and still is the regret, that I wasn’t able to do that, but it’s not too late. I have my grandchildren — Maitreya, Divya — to think about. There are others. When I start naming names, I will forget, but you get the point.
I’m there now and this is what I try to do. I give them information. I give them the history. Sometimes I talk too much at the dining room table, talking about the past stories, but my mother did that. My mother talked about Abe, my dad. He was a trapper; he talked about the animals, a lot about [Indigenous language spoken], all the characters of our texts, I guess, our textbooks, [Indigenous language spoken] . . . the Memekwesiw, Wesakechak and many more. We have Chahkabesh and Ayas. We have our own odyssey stories, and they are very long.
Now, at this age, I begin to understand what my elders were saying when they talked to me. I could take two days to tell you their stories. For me, that was good because I remembered those stories. I was willing to sit there, listen and try to catch all those things. I’m missing some, and I am trying to piece it together, but there are parts missing. I keep searching for them. I am still doing that. I am still trying to piece all the stories together.
But I can talk to you for a week about what I have learned from my elders. When I say “elders’ university,” that has to start now. I learned from Louis Bird. I learned from others in our community who speak in our language. I listened to them.
I lost my uncle recently. He was my dictionary. “How do you say this?” He would tell me what the word is. I’ve lost that, so now I am beginning to feel that I better do something. I had better really help the young people understand and read these books. I call the elders “the walking books” because they have their own focus on different parts of their lives.
I think that’s important. If you can do something about the elders’ institute and the development of that, I would love a second meeting.
Senator White: Sorry, chair, but I need to share that Mr. Metatawabin’s granddaughter is actually presenting about him and residential schools at P.E.I. provincials today. So you’ve laid a foundation. I just wanted to thank you for that, and I thought this was an opportune time. Wela’lin.
The Chair: Thank you for that, Senator White. Thank you.
Ms. Brunning: In terms of a government inquiry into the government processes, this Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement is a very important legal structure. The parties signed the agreement, but it was passed into law by nine superior courts, with the tenth coming later with Newfoundland. But the courts passed it into law because the main defendant is the Government of Canada.
So there are already identical court orders in all the courts that passed this into law.
Even closer to the end of the IAP, the Assembly of First Nations asked for an audit to be done as to whether the processes were actually followed. In Schedule D for the IAP process for the child abuse hearings, every document that contained any allegations of child abuse had to be produced for the hearing, for the narratives and then for individual perpetrators, let’s say it was Father Lavoie — all those documents had to be produced just for him in each case in which he is named as a perpetrator.
Also, Schedule N is the wider one; that’s for the one for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The churches and the government were to have already passed over all of their residential school documents to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. When we won the other court case in 2014, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the Assembly of First Nations filed supporting legal processes called requests for directions, and they also said they didn’t get those documents.
The question becomes this: How is it that the Department of Justice felt, for instance, that criminal trial scripts were not relevant in child abuse hearings?
After we won St. Anne’s number one, one concession they ended up doing is that they ended up — for all the residential schools across Canada — they then produced — because they had tons of trial transcripts and guilty pleas in respect of many of these perpetrators. How could they hold that back? Where is the legal opinion upon which they relied to withhold those documents?
It’s a test under the Department of Justice Act. The Attorney General of Canada — and this was a debate you might remember that Jody Wilson-Raybould talked about, which was separating the Minister of Justice from the Attorney General of Canada. She talked about the fact that, with the Attorney General of Canada, you have a statutory, common law and every legal responsibility to uphold the laws of Canada. Your Department of Justice has to do that too, and their legal opinions have to be front and centre. You have to have 51% in favour of that.
Also, Jody Wilson-Raybould, just before she left in January 2019, passed a directive on Indigenous matters — the Department of Justice, if the argument being made by Indigenous people was a reasonable one, they couldn’t fight it in litigation. She was trying to shut down the amount of litigation. How much money of Indigenous people goes into the hands of lawyers?
As Mr. Metatawabin said, Michael Swinwood and I have been doing this on an entirely pro bono basis. We’re grateful that we’re sometimes able to get some funding, but the reality is that, under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, even if there were legal issues, the courts forgot to grant funding to the Indigenous people to take forward issues. On top of that, the government would threaten costs against us. They actually got costs against me personally at one point for $25,000. It actually got thrown out, but they went after me personally because when you’re a whistle-blower, that’s what happens: They go after you, they go after your reputation and they go after your financial situation. That’s my biased view.
The reality is that we have to create more equality within the courts. There are Department of Justice lawyers who are on full salary, with pensions and benefits. They don’t pay rent. They’ve got staff and whatever resources they need. How can you come up against that as one lawyer on pro bono? It’s pretty tough.
So how do I see this? Go back to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, go to the court orders and bring in the Department of Justice lawyers. When we got this finding — I put the decisions into the materials that I provided to your clerk — at the time, Justice Perell — I was trying, in 2014, to dig up how this happened and who made the decisions — said, “I don’t need to determine whether or not there was bad faith. I would rather presume they mistakenly misconstrued the agreement.” So he left it. He didn’t want me to get into how that happened, but I think you should; you should get into that because, even now, it’s been the St. Anne’s people. On the issue before you about the lack of documentation, we’ve been fighting about that for 12 years.
Even for you, I’m not sure that they could claim solicitor-client privilege over some of this stuff that they would probably have to produce in terms of third-party obligations to the Catholic Church to not disclose documents. What is that? The Catholic Church signed the agreement, and they’re equally liable. Under Schedule O-3 — I can tell you — it says right in there that the government lawyers have to follow the settlement agreement. They can’t represent the Catholic Church, and the Catholic Church lawyers have to follow the settlement agreement and abide by the law.
It’s very important that in our justice system, justice starts with the person having the courage to go and talk to a lawyer. That’s a hard thing for many Indigenous people, especially when their trust has been so significantly breached by people in authority. Some people would come in to see me and whisper their stories to me because they’ve been told that if they ever spoke badly about holy people, they and their family would go to hell. Many of them. Truly, that’s exactly what they were taught. So it took a lot of courage to come and speak with lawyers.
I presumed when I first got involved in this that the Department of Justice is in charge of all the disclosure, so this should be fine. We should be able to go in and trust this, but it didn’t happen. They have fought me ever since.
We, as a country, need to settle whether the Department of Justice is following the law. That’s pretty fundamental. If not, then maybe a little shake up in there would probably help a lot. That will also, I think, cause reconciliation because if people inside the Department of Justice feel they’re going to be held accountable at some point in time for not following the law, then they might stand up to their supervisors. They might stand up and say, “I’m sorry, I have a completely different legal opinion here. We have to go seek directions from the court.” In the settlement agreement, they don’t get to decide; they were supposed to go to the court and seek directions if they had some theory about why these documents would be withheld. They haven’t done it.
I’m not sure how that would shape out. I would recommend you talk to Cindy Blackstock about that, too. Mr. Metatawabin and all my St. Anne’s clients told me that I had already won that court order. And I know that, but the people whose claims were breached never got their remedial or notice that there was new evidence. They never got new hearings. When I’d say, “I’m now representing X. I want their new evidence,” the lawyers would say, “You have to bring a legal proceeding.” I would say, “No, I already won in 2014. I want the evidence. Then I can give an opinion to my client about whether they should try to reopen.” They wouldn’t give it to us. Hundreds of people have not had justice.
Senator Prosper: Thank you to each and every one of you for being here and representing your communities and your people. There are many people, I’m sure, who are looking to this to gain some assessment and hopefully some kind of resolution to these many issues that you have shared. I’m sure there are many generations in the past and in the future that want to recognize you in terms of the pursuit you’re undertaking, which has taken many years.
I just wanted to recognize that. It is an inspiration, as hard as it is for us to take in this testimony and to make sense out of something that is unthinkable from all facets within the Canadian government — front and centre, the Department of Justice. There has to be a mechanism to align or check the conduct of government officials in the form of an inquiry. That is a major matter.
I’ve taken a lot from your testimony, stories and from the ways you have looked upon your traditions, culture and communities to chart a path forward.
Mr. Metatawabin, you spoke of elders creating a bridge from the past to the future and about the teachings that are contained within your culture, the learning house and the need to rely upon that for both future and present generations.
As we move forward and as this long history unfolds, when you go back to your communities and talk to your elders and listen to the youth, you all possess a profound vision in terms of how this can turn out — hopefully, through this long history, how things can turn out in a good way.
Ms. Korkmaz, you spoke about justice in response to a question by Senator Coyle. I’m seeking any further information you would like to share in terms of further considerations on the vision you see with respect to an outcome that can be representative of true justice in the fullest sense of the word, for you and your people. Wela’lin. Thank you.
Mr. E. Metatawabin: I keep going back to what the older people can do for the young people because that’s what helped me survive the turmoil that is still happening in our lives. I name Louis Bird from Peawanuck. He never stops talking about who we are, who we were and what we can be. He tells stories all the time about what we did, where we were, what happened 12,000 years ago and our survival. When he speaks, he uses a lot of positive words. If you’re feeling down, you’re up again after talking to him.
It is about the value of understanding the words of your elderly and hearing it from their point of view. At the same time, I think they need contact with young people to make them last longer rather than slowly going down. It works both ways.
In thinking about the forward movement, we have a proposal on the elders’ institute. It’s a big document — too big for this, I guess, but we do have one. We would be happy to leave it for you to look at and begin the process of developing a form of the beginnings of it. We’re not talking about the building so much but about helping those people who are telling their stories right now and trying to work on their own.
We have Lawrence Mark’s Cultural Camp at Fort Albany, and we have a youth site and detox site. We’re still trying to organize this, but the funding rises up and falls down again. We need something that is continuous. It would be nice to have something to develop.
Senator Hartling: We have a witness online. I’d like to hear from him if he’s willing to talk about some of the things we’ve heard this morning.
Thank you very much for your testimony. It’s meaningful and, at the same time, very difficult. I certainly hear what you’re saying.
The Chair: Mr. Metatawabin, do you have any comments?
Mike Metatawabin, St. Anne’s Residential School Survivor and Project Lead, Nee Kee Wa Nan, as an individual: Good morning. Thank you to the senator who recognized my patience in waiting.
I thank the whole committee for taking the time to listen and hear the story. I thank my colleagues, my brother Mr. Edmund Metatawabin, our colleague Ms. Korkmaz and our legal counsel, Ms. Brunning.
As I sit here and listen, a lot comes to mind in terms of what other things could be further explored, looked at and considered. I think about what my brother talks about in terms of what needs to be done for our young people.
I am 61 years old. I have two younger brothers. They were the last ones to leave the school when it closed down in 1976 at Fort Albany. Since that time, as the last group of survivors left, it was like releasing the prisoners out into the community. That experience itself is something else that needs to be explored.
When we talk about what we need for the future of our young people, it’s the ability to continue telling our story in a good way, to talk about this dark chapter that we’re talking about today and to have it included in our story. We have a long story that we can tell of our people, a story that started long before the arrival of the settlers, a story that has been shared by our elders who talk about the legends and what life was like long ago. Whereas, in our lifetime, our experience has been very extreme, very sad and very traumatizing. To this day, we still live with that trauma.
For myself, that trauma continues to unfold. There is not a day that goes by where I can’t be triggered. I can be triggered by anything, by an event or simply by the fact that when I look after my grandchildren, when they’re yearning for their parents, that triggers me because I was once that child who was in residential school yearning for the embrace and the loving care of my parents, which never took place in the years that we were there.
I was reminded by the comment made by the Minister of Indigenous Affairs — the devil is in the details. That too was a trigger for me, and I have to tell you why. During my first year in residential school, at around five years old, I had a dream about a devil at an altar. Can you imagine at five years old having such a dream? You begin to ask yourself, what did I do? What sin did I commit? And you live with that. You live with that fear and that trauma, and only until now, in most recent times, when we began to deal with residential school starting back in the 1990s, only then did I begin to understand and realize what that dream was about. I was dreaming about the people who were supposed to be looking after us and caring for us. I wanted to share that.
In closing, I want to say that when we talk about legislation, the legislation that we are governed under is about assimilation. It’s about disempowerment, displacement and loss of the lands our people lived on for untold millennia, long before the arrival of the settlers. That’s the legislation we live under. And when Ms. Brunning talks about Justice Canada, we have no legal representation when it comes to legislation. We have no one who can speak for us — other than people like Ms. Brunning — who have the courage, the dignity and the will to stand up and speak for us. I know there are many others like her, but at this time it’s Ms. Brunning who comes to mind. She spoke earlier.
I just want to say thank you. As I sat here, I was reminded of waiting. My father once left me behind when we were out trapping. He told me there is an otter that is going to come out, so you stay here and wait. He didn’t say how long. So I waited. Over four hours later, that otter popped up, and I took it home and my father was really proud. That’s the training or the experience I have in being patient. I appreciate the senator for asking me to provide some closing comments. Thank you very much.
The Chair: Thank you for that, Mr. Metatawabin. That brings us to the end of our panel.
I want to take a minute to thank you all for your tremendous strength and courage. You have shared a lot of information with us today, and it is shameful that after so many years, the federal government continues to fight the release of records. You have the right to know what happened. I want to assure you that we hear you, we see you and we are with you. Thank you.
(The committee adjourned.)