OTTAWA — Canada must establish an independent commission to probe the deaths and disappearances of indigenous children from residential schools, said a report released Tuesday, after hundreds of suspected burial sites were found in 2021.
The discoveries of the unmarked graves near the former boarding schools, which were set up more than a century ago to forcibly assimilate Indigenous peoples, shocked Canadians and led to an outpouring of grief and sympathy.
An estimated 150,000 children were sent to the schools between 1831 and 1996. Many of them did not return.
After the graves were discovered, Ottawa swiftly appointed a special interlocutor, Kimberly Murray, herself a member of the Mohawk community of Kanehsata:ke, to look into the devastating revelations.
In her report Tuesday, Murray called for an Indigenous-led independent commission with a 20-year mandate to further investigate.
She told AFP that Canada has an “obligation” to support such a commission because it is the “perpetrator.”
Murray listed 42 obligations, like forced disappearances of Indigenous children be referred to the International Criminal Court.
