Open Letter to the Honourable Arif Virani and Honourable Gary Anandasangaree: Regarding Kimberly Murray’s Final Report Presentation
OCT 30, 2024
This letter can also be found at https://michellestirlingg.substack.com/p/open-letter-to-the-honourable-arif?r=f96qu&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&triedRedirect=true
Honourable Ministers,
Yesterday, Oct. 29, 2024, Kimberly Murray, Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools, presented her final report. With well over 1,000 pages of documents, it will take some time to review the reports in detail, but one thing is clear:
“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.”
– Dr. John K. Younes, Chief Medical Examiner, Province of Manitoba
The above quotation comes from the Senate report “Missing Records, Missing Children.” And it contains the crux of the whole matter.
No List of Names of the Alleged Missing
There is no list of names of children alleged to be missing. There are no missing persons reports filed over the course of the 113 year-history of Indian Residential Schools where the outcome is unknown. The fate is however known for all children who ran away or met with fatal accidents in the wilderness near their schools, children who might have been regarded as ‘missing’ in that time frame.
Yet Ms Murray has built a case for creating a new legal framework to investigate a crime of genocide with no named victims. She advocates for criminalizing the historical investigations conducted by people like me because I am asking these uncomfortable questions. There is nothing hateful in my desire to excavate the truth. Any criminal allegations against Canadians are serious and yet these are being tried in the court of public opinion and in the media, not in a court of law. This is a serious breach of our fundamental rights.
Escalation of Criminal Accusations without Evidence or Names
Ms Murray has has taken the claim of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that ‘cultural genocide’ had occurred in Indian Residential Schools and magnified it into a claim that there was a physical genocide of children who suffered ‘enforced disappearance.’ She bases this allegation on the International Convention for the Protection of All Persons from Enforced Disappearance which was entered into force in 2010. The last Indian Residential School closed in 1998, at which time several schools had been under First Nations band administration for decades. She is thus claiming that Indigenous people committed genocide against their own people.
A Blood Libel Against Canada, the Associated Church Operations, Clergy and Staff, Indigenous Administrators and Staff at Schools
In her public presentation and the short video clip associated with the presentation, accusations of heinous crimes like infanticide, murder and genocide were freely tossed about, constituting libel against Canada, the nation, and the many people who worked in Indian Residential Schools, staff who would have included hundreds of Indigenous men and women as well as dozens of Indigenous clergy.
Violation of UN Charter of Human Rights, Articles 10 and 11
Clearly Ms Murray’s presentation and accusations are contrary to fundamental principles of Canadian law and against the UN Charter of Human Rights.
Expansion of Mandate without Formal Authorization
Ms Murray has expanded her own mandate to the point where it extends far outside the realm of Indian Residential Schools and now extends into all manner of public institutions and facilities — institutions and facilities serving people suffering from anything from Tuberculosis to general hospital ailments, to mental or developmental conditions in asylums and other care facilities. This was never part of her mandate and is a significant overreach.
Errant Judgement due to “Presentism” which Overrides Historical Context
Ms Murray’s report also suffers from a serious case of what is often called ‘presentism’. She seems to lack an understanding of the historical context of Canadian society into the 1960s and 70s, much like that of the entire Western World. Before that time, social services at the community level did not exist. If families had loved ones who were developmentally handicapped, mentally ill or so physically handicapped as to be unable to care for themselves, those children were often made a ‘ward of the state’ and placed in an appropriate care facility of the time. The family, Indigenous or not, gave up legal custody of their loved one, and the facility provided care and treatment as it saw fit, with little or no consultation with the family.
While this sounds harsh and uncaring in the context of today, one must remember that communications tools such as personal cellphones, computers and Internet connections simply did not exist. Communication was largely done by mail and trying to gain consent by mail would have been unreasonable if a prompt medical intervention was necessary. Moreover, many such care facilities were centralized and thus may have been far from the family. Many families lived in distant rural regions and only rarely could communicate.
Displaying a lack of understanding of historical context, Ms Murray then uses the framework of the 2010 legislation on ‘enforced disappearance’ to make criminal accusations against Canada and Canadians. It is hateful and hurtful to have such accusations thrown at Canadians when there is not even a list of persons alleged to be missing.
Tainted Testimonies
Looking carefully at the attached image of a kiosk that was prominently displayed at a Truth and Reconciliation Commission National Gathering, one can see that this is clearly not an objective statement. This is the biased and often misleading message of the kind that greeted all who came to Truth and Reconciliation hearings.
We are told repeatedly that we must accept ‘survivor’ testimonies as truth, when it is well-known that eye-witness testimony is convincing, but not reliable.
As I have written in previous articles:
“As American psychologist, David Raskin, testified in the Martensville, Saskatchewan Satanic Panic trials of the 1990s, with some prompting and leading questions from a person with confirmation bias about an event, people are able to remember all kinds of things that never happened.”
Canadians should know that the employee of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission charged with recording recollections from former residential school staff, workers or their families (people who would have provided adult insights) was told that her budget would be cut from $100,000 to $10,000 and that her records would not be transcribed.
This means the stories we have heard are recollections of people who were children at the time and likely did not understand the reasons why they ended up at Indian Residential Schools. Since parents had to apply to have their child enrolled, it may be that the children only knew that they had been sent off to an Indian Residential School and believed this was done against the will of their parents, when in most cases it was done with the parents’ full consent.
Here is a sample of an application for the admission of Michel Redcrow to the Blue Quills Indian Residential School. Note that the family’s religion is identified as Roman Catholic.
Here is the Certificate of Health that was to accompany the application.
And here is the letter rejecting Michel Redcrow’s application for admission due to an unsatisfactory medical condition (enlarged glands).
Orphans and Epidemics
A great many children who were enrolled in Indian Residential Schools were orphans – many of them recently orphaned. It makes sense that many children would have been imprinted with images and fears of death, graves, missing people – this is known as ambiguous loss – a form of complicated grief that lingers and is difficult to resolve.
Excerpt of admission form. Note that the minimum age for admission was seven, unless children were orphaned, destitute or neglected.
We know of examples that explain why people would believe that children ‘disappeared’ at Indian Residential Schools. In one such example from Fort Albany, to be found in Eric Bays’ 2010 book “Indian Residential Schools: Another Picture”, a trapper came to the Hudson Bay Company (HBC) trading post in distress. He said his wife was sick and there was no food in their tent. When the HBC sent out two men with grub, they found that the man and his wife had both died, and the tent held a 2-month-old baby, three small children and a 16-year-old. The 2-month-old was given over to a relative, the 16-year-old went off on a hunt with relatives, and the three small children went to an Indian Residential School as orphans. Some time later, one of the small children died of influenza at the school.
So in the space of a few days, an entire family ‘disappeared’ from that community; three small children ‘disappeared’ forever from the community. Enrolled in a residential school, those children would not have been sent home for the summer because there was no family to receive them and care for them.
It is a curious coincidence that these happenings took place in the same community/region as that described by Tanya Talaga in her telling of her great-great-grandmother’s story. Indeed, that community would have had a ‘knowing’ that children “disappeared” to an Indian Residential School and did not come back, but would not remember that their enrolment was not for nefarious reasons but for benevolent ones.
Tuberculosis took many family members. All of the family of Stephen Kakfwi’s mother died of TB, and off and on for six of the first twelve years of his life, she was flown away for hospital/sanatorium care. Sometimes tuberculosis care – which tended to be months or even years in length – meant that the child who was healed had entered school as a 7-year-old, was then sent on to a sanatorium if diagnosed with TB, but returned home from the sanatorium at age 13 – a total stranger to his or her family. Thus, the original child had ‘disappeared’ – but not in the way Kimberly Murray is framing ‘enforced disappearance.’
Oct. 30, 2024, Gathering – Tanya Talaga Asks, “What Can we Do to Convince Canadians that we are Guilty of Genocide?”
“Genocide” is not a crime decided in the media – it is decided in the courts and based upon evidence, not the childhood recollections of now elderly people. It is not a crime about which people must be ‘convinced’ but rather one for which there must be actual evidence.
At yesterday’s presentation with Kimberly Murray, beside the prominently displayed empty chair, there was a drum with the number “215” drawn on it. This number was displayed despite the fact that the Kamloops First Nation has walked back from that figure, having first made a claim of finding 215 children’s buried bodies, but then having recognized that 15 of the anomalies were due to prior excavations by archeologists from Simon Fraser University. Furthermore, the Kamloops First Nation has now issued a statement reflecting on the discovery of ‘anomalies’ – not ‘mass graves’ nor ‘human remains.’ So why are official bodies like that of Kimberly Murray’s office exploiting the original false claim of “215” when it is well-known that the number has no credible meaning?
And even if bodies are exhumed one day, this does not mean those individuals died and were buried in nefarious circumstances.
Death is Part of Life
As Indigenous Catholic priest, Father Cristino Bouvette explains death is part of life. Schools and communities had graveyards because people lived and died. Having sacred, consecrated grounds where people could be buried with full Catholic or other Christian rites, according to their family’s chosen denomination, was both a matter of sacred duty, human dignity, public sanitation and community wellbeing. In most cases, if children passed away at an Indian Residential School, their bodies were sent home for burial on their Reserve, but if this was not possible, due to distance, contagious disease, delayed contact (if, for example, the family was out on a trapline), the child would be buried near the school, in sanctified ground, with appropriate final rites of the Christian denomination of their families.
As Robert Carney, father of Mark Carney, UN Climate Envoy and former Bank of Canada Governor, explained in his papers and commentaries on the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP), the Indian Residential Schools back in the earlier days served as the local social and medical services hubs. Consequently, there are likely various local residents, transients or workers who may be buried in such graves, people who have no connection whatsoever to Indian Residential Schools.
Oct. 30, 2024, Gathering – Sean Carleton claims the Denialism is Dehumanizing and that Canadians must Abandon the Myths of Benevolence
It is deeply disturbing that an academic whose salary is paid by public taxes engages in an unsubstantiated smear campaign against Canadian taxpayers, millions of whom are Roman Catholics or Christians of other denominations. For the most part, the clergy and staff at Indian Residential Schools dedicated a good part of their lives for a pittance, to offer to the children in their care education, sustenance, care, practical skills, and social activities that included sports, dance and music. What is not acknowledged today is that residential schools were often the only safe harbour for victims of dysfunctional families and the only home available to Indigenous orphans. To learn more about this, consult Indian Residential Schools — The Untold Story of A Lifeboat for the Least of Society. This is benevolence. Not a genocide.
In CBC’s 1991 Fifth Estate program, one finds a rare statement from Lena Paul, a former residential school student at St. Joseph’s IRS, in which she says the school was a lifesaver.
CBC voice over: “Lena Paul is one former student with fond memories of Saint Joseph’s school. To her, residential school meant salvation.”
Lena Paul: “I had a really good experience when I was at the residential school because with… with the chaos and the violence that was going on in my home when I came to the to the residential school it was some place it was clean, it was some place that was sober and I always knew what was going to be happening next because it was very structured and orderly there and for me it was a place that I felt safe.”
But Lena Paul’s statement is so very rare now because “Tainted Testimonies” have taken over the public narrative.
Dr. Sean Carleton has written a report with fellow academic Reid Gerbrandt regarding media coverage of the original ‘215’ claim. I dispute his findings in my report “Confronting Indian Residential School Confabulation and Media Irresponsibility.”
UNDRIP was Passed Quickly After the False Claims of Mass Graves and Human Remains at Kamloops Indian Residential School
While a great many people are still focusing on the claims of missing children at Indian Residential Schools, I am more concerned about the fact that UNDRIP was rushed through the House of Commons less than a month after the Kamloops First Nation’s claims. Six provinces and several First Nations had been opposed to UNDRIP as written; they were requesting clarification on a number of points. That opposition ended abruptly when the announcement of the “215” was made. In light of the admission this year by the Kamloops First Nation that only ‘anomalies’ were found, it is clear that UNDRIP was passed under duress and false pretext, and it should be repealed.
Nothing Hateful about Searching History for Evidence and the Truth
Dr. Hugh Dempsey, Potai’na, was my mentor when I was working on historical documentaries. He was the former curator of the Glenbow Museum in Calgary and married to Pauline Gladstone, daughter of the first Indigenous Senator James Gladstone. He always encouraged me to search for every nugget of history.
I will close by repeating one of my opening statements.
Ms. Murray has built a case for creating a new legal framework to investigate a crime of genocide that has no named victims. She advocates criminalizing the historical assessments of people like me because I am asking these uncomfortable questions. There is nothing hateful in my desire to excavate the truth. The criminal allegations against Canadians are serious and yet they are being tried in the court of public opinion and in the media, not in a court of law. This is a serious breach of our fundamental rights.
External Threats and Foreign Interference
Furthermore, China and several dictatorial states accused Canada of genocide at the UN the day after UNDRIP passed, and they cited as evidence the Kamloops claim of ‘mass graves’ of 215 children. It is all too clear that the Kimberly Murray reports will be used against Canada on the world stage, and now she advocates for a body like the International Criminal Court to adjudicate Canada’s crime when we, at home, have never been given a list of names of the children alleged to be missing or murdered.
Consequently, I firmly believe that the Murray reports should be withdrawn from circulation.
Thank you,
Michelle Stirling
