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By Angela Brown

Region's leaders grieve

Battlefords Regional Community Coalition mourns loss of 215 children

Jun 3, 2021 | 2:50 PM

The Battlefords Regional Community Coalition (BRCC) leaders are mourning for the 215 children found buried at the site of the former Kamloops residential school recently.

Chief Wayne Semaganis, of Little Pine Cree Nation, told battlefordsNOW Indigenous people continue to endure a great deal of suffering from the residential school experience.

“I see the Elders cry. I see the old women, the mothers, fathers. There has been a lot of grief in First Nations communities,” he said.

The BRCC is comprised of leaders from the City of North Battleford and the Town of Battleford, as well as five area Indigenous communities —Moosomin, Sweetgrass, Saulteaux, Little Pine First Nation, and Lucky Man Cree Nation.

In response to the Kamloops finding, the BRCC leaders said in a statement, they honour the memory of the stolen children and support calls to fully investigate, document and commemorate the violence of all residential school sites.

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“The atrocities uncovered at Kamloops Indian Residential School are by no means exceptional,” the BRCC said. “The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has described the operations of Canada’s residential school system as cultural genocide.”

The BRCC leaders are alarmed at the wide disparity between the numbers, as official records show only 51 child deaths at Kamloops Indian Residential School compared to the over 200 found.

“Responsibility to heal these wounds must rest with those who authorized them,” the BRCC stated. “We call upon Canada to provide resources for all calls to action in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report. We call upon Canada and the province of Saskatchewan to advance system change in policy and legislation, and to address systemic barriers in all of our institutions. We call upon Canada and our province to rebuild a relationship with Indigenous peoples that does not rest upon presumptions of their inferiority.”

The BRCC leaders said the history of the country’s system of forced assimilation has impacted Indigenous people across generations, and still resonates today.

“Despite making up less than eight per cent of Canada’s child population, more than half of children in foster care today are Indigenous,” the BRCC stated. “Suicide rates of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people are three times higher than among non-Indigenous people. An estimated 70 per cent of Canada’s Indigenous languages are in danger of disappearing, and with them, irretrievable parts of our culture and identity.”

Semaganis told battlefordsNOW the greatest impact from the Kamloops burial discovery will be felt by Indigenous people across Canada who attended residential schools themselves, as they experience flashbacks of the abuse they endured.

“I cannot say that I understand how they feel and how they hurt because I don’t,” he said. “But those are the people I worry about, those people who have been suffering all their lives with this burden, with this truth that they have had to live with that everybody else denied.”

Semaganis said there needs to be accountability for what happened in all residential schools, including the Kamloops finding.

“A lot of parents were never even given the respect and acknowledgment as humans to know where their children are buried or what happened to them,” he said. “Somebody had to know, because you cannot bury 215 children and not have people know. There was a great cover-up here. For Canada as a country with First Nations as sovereign nations, there is a lot of hurt that is being felt here all over, and there is a lot of guilt by Canada.”

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Angela.Brown@pattisonmedia.com

On Twitter: @battlefordsnow