Description
Canada's Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials, Volume 4 addresses three interrelated questions that were added to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's mandate: how many children died at the schools, what were the conditions that led to their deaths, and where were they buried? This volume 4 of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) report demonstrates that Aboriginal residential school students died at rates higher than non-Aboriginal students. It also demonstrates that the government failure to provide adequate funding, medical treatment, nutrition, housing, sanitation, and clothing contributed to this elevated death rate. In addition, the report makes it clear that the government had been advised of the implications of its policies and presented with options - which it chose to ignore - that would have reduced the school death rates. This title is the first systematic effort to record and analyze deaths at the schools, and the presence and condition of student cemeteries, within the regulatory context in which the schools were intended to operate. As part of its work the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada established a National Residential School Student Death Register. Due to gaps in the available data, the register is far from complete. Although the actual number of deaths is believed to be far higher, 3,200 residential school victims have been identified. The analysis also demonstrates that residential school death rates were significantly higher than those for the general Canadian school-aged population. The failure to establish and enforce adequate standards of care, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools. Senior government and church officials were well aware of the schools’ ongoing failure to provide adequate levels of custodial care. Children who died at the schools were rarely sent back to their home community. They were usually buried in school or nearby mission cemeteries. As the schools and missions closed, these cemeteries were abandoned. While in a number of instances Aboriginal communities, churches, and former staff have taken steps to rehabilitate cemeteries and commemorate the individuals buried there, most of these cemeteries are now disused and vulnerable to accidental disturbance. In the face of this abandonment, the TRC is proposing the development of a national strategy for the documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries. Appendices include: schools destroyed by fire; outbuildings destroyed by fire; additional reported fires 1867 to 1997; and school fires suspected or deliberate 1867 to 1997.