WARNING: This article contains potentially distressing subjects such as residential schools and resulting deaths. Those seeking emotional support and crisis referral services can call the 24-hour National Indian Residential School Crisis Line: 1-866-925-4419.
About 500 people marched from Parliament Hill to the Department of Justice on Saturday to demand Attorney General David Lametti appoint a special prosecutor for a criminal probe into the residential school system.
The demonstration was organized by two NDP MPs, Mumilaaq Qaqqaq of Nunavut and Charlie Angus of Timmins-James Bay, in collaboration with local Elders.
“We are here so our children will not be sitting here as Elders asking for their basic human rights,” Qaqqaq said. “We need to stop being so selfish. This is not about us, this is about our children.”
Speakers at the march included residential school survivors such as Piita Irniq, an Inuk seal hunter and former commissioner of Nunavut.
Irniq said he lived in an igloo for the first 11 years of his life until he was kidnapped in the summer of 1958 and sent to a residential school. He added that he spoke no English at the time, and within a month of attending the school, a nun hit him for speaking Inuktitut.
“[The nun] said, ‘Don’t you ever let me hear that language in this classroom again.’ She hit me so hard, it is a pain I still feel to this day,” Irniq said.
Despite the punishments, Irniq said he and other children remembered their Inuktitut in order to speak with their parents during the summer break.
Evelyn Korkmaz, a Cree woman and another speaker at the event, is a survivor of St. Anne’s Indian Residential School in Fort Albany, Ont. and a founding member of the Ending Clergy Abuse global justice project. Korkmaz told the crowd how she testified at two UN committees about her experiences with sexual abuse and torture while attending St. Anne’s.
Korkmaz said the federal government is refusing to release unredacted documents from an Ontario Provincial Police investigation in the 1990s about claims of abuse at the school, despite being ordered by the Ontario Supreme Court to release them. She said this is a breach of disclosure under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
“We the survivors were tested under oath. Nobody tested the government officials or church officials to ensure full disclosure. This is a typical example of the racism we as Indigenous people deal with,” Korkmaz said.
Qaqqaq spoke about dealing with today’s consequences of the residential school system and the colonization of Nunavut. She said Inuit are tired of losing relatives and friends to suicide and that her community is struggling with basic needs because of government-enforced barriers to self-sufficiency.
“Non-Indigenous people, we need you … If you think you cracked some code as a non-Indigenous person by showing up today, then you have a lot of learning to do,” Qaqqaq said. “This is not ancient injustice. It is living, breathing, thriving injustice, which is resulting in Inuit taking their own lives.”
When protestors arrived outside the Department of Justice building, Angus said to attendees he was “impressed” that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Catholic Church to hand over residential school documents. However, he added that he was also confused because “the documents are in this building.”
Angus then used a pen to cross out an image of Father Johannes Rivoire, an Oblate priest who is accused of sexually abusing children during his time in Naujaat and Rankin Inlet in Nunavut in the 1960s. Facing community backlash, Rivoire returned to France in 1993, and in 1998, the RCMP put out a warrant for his arrest. However, Rivoire was never extradited to face trial, which the federal government has said is because France does not extradite its citizens.
“The documents about Johannes Rivoire are in this building,” Angus said. “This Department of Justice protected him.”
During this, Irniq stood by Angus’ side. Back at Parliament Hill, Irniq also called for legal action.
“We are going to fight as hard as we can to make sure you come back to Canada to stand trial,” Irniq said. “No justice, no peace for you.”
An emailed statement to the Charlatan from the attorney general’s office said that police, not prosecutors, make decisions on what to investigate. It also said that the Department of Justice would not make the call to prosecute following an investigation. That responsibility would be for prosecutors working for the Public Prosecution Service of Canada.
“The Government is fully supportive of the need for independence in the police and prosecutors involved in any investigations and criminal trials related to Indian Residential Schools,” the email reads.
Although asked, the department did not specify if it was considering alternative procedures to support such an investigation.
Kyrstin Dumont, a member of the Anishinaabe nation, attended the march. She hopes that marches like this one will be a call to action for the government to release all documentation related to residential schools.
“In this day and age, if someone hurts a child they go to prison. Yet the people involved in the residential school system get to live their lives like nothing has happened,” Dumont said. “Unfortunately that is just an open wound that Indigenous people will never be able to close until those involved are brought to justice.”
Featured photo by Spencer Colby.
