On recovery work at the Mohawk Institute Residential School

I’ll leave it to the current Survivors Secretariat to update the public on where things are at with their search of Mohawk Institute Residential School. But [when I worked at the secretariat], the survivors started a ground-penetrating radar search. They purchased three machines. There’s over 600 acres of land to search. They have multiple teams that have been trained, and that’s quite unique that Six Nations has been training their own people to operate these machines. They’re not relying on outside companies to come in. So it’s really community-led and involved, and those searches continue to happen. What I’m learning very quickly in my new role, and what I learned working at the Mohawk Institute, is that there is a massive backlog right now in analyzing data from radar. There’s just so few people that have the expertise. When you have to process that data, it has to be reviewed, line by line, by experts that know how to look for burials. There are a lot of companies out there that are used to finding, for example, pipes and cement blocks underground. However, in many cases, they simply do not have the expertise to identify a grave shaft. And so there is a real need to expand our expertise in that because there’s already a backlog of people in the queue waiting to get their data analyzed.

On getting church records

Will the pope’s visit get us access to more records? I don’t know. We had the same issue with the Anglican Church when the Archbishop of Canterbury visited Canada. The Anglican Church in Canada said that they provided all their records to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which we have since learned wasn’t accurate. There were records that were not provided. We know that there’s records in the New England Company in London, and we know that the Church of England holds records, as well. There was a call on the Primate of the Anglican Church and the Archbishop to get those records back to Canada for survivors doing recovery work in the Anglican schools. And so we wait. We wait. That’s part of my job and our office: to make those inquiries and to stand with the leadership in Canada to make sure that those records are delivered to the right hands. Indigenous data sovereignty is a really important conversation that we’re having as a community right now. We’re looking at what does it look like and who gets to hold these records and provide access to these records? We have all these institutions, churches and governments writing about our people and then hiding the records from us and not allowing us to see them, collect them, or correct them when they’re not accurate.

On the recent papal visit

I’ve heard from survivors who said it was very meaningful to them, that they really appreciated it. And then I’ve heard from survivors who said, “I don’t need any more words of regret; I need action.” There has to be some action attached to an apology.

On moving forward

We’re hoping to hold a number of gatherings over the next two years. We’ll be holding one in Vancouver in January 2023 on access to privacy, access to records, and privacy legislation and the issue of Indigenous data sovereignty. Communities can’t get records, and those records are vitally important to identifying every child that went to a residential school. We’re also hoping to hold a gathering to bring Elders and knowledge keepers together to talk about Indigenous laws in relation to burials and commemorating and preserving grounds. Every nation has its own laws and protocols around burial rights. What’s most painful to communities is that these little ones were buried without the proper ceremonies for their spirits. Elders have been saying that their spirits are still there. People can feel them. There are things that the children are doing to get noticed. Many have said that what happened in Tk’emlúps was the children speaking up — that we need to do more.