After a two-year-long investigation, the Office of the Independent Special Interlocutor (OISI) released its final report on residential schools and their victims. The report’s message is clear: Canada’s work toward reconciliation has only just begun.

In the report, Independent Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray, a member of the Kanehsatà:ke Mohawk Nation, calls on the Canadian governments, churches, and other institutions to adopt the 42 “legal, moral, and ethical obligations” outlined in the report. These obligations are informed by frameworks such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Indigenous laws, international human rights law, and Canadian constitutional law. The obligations include the legal protection of residential school records and acknowledging the enforced disappearance of Indigenous children as a crime against humanity

The report also calls on Canada to make residential school denialism illegal through amending the Online Harms Act and the Criminal Code and making it a legal offence.

As of writing, the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has confirmed the deaths of 4,118 Indigenous children who attended residential schools over its 160-year operation. However, according to Murray, many more related deaths remain uncounted, including those in tuberculosis sanatoriums, “Indian hospitals,” and homes for pregnant girls.

For Indigenous communities seeking justice, the search for unmarked burials remains an ongoing and bureaucratically difficult endeavour. The executive summary of the final report outlines the policy and research barriers hindering these searches and asserts that Canada must confront its legal responsibilities to survivors. 

Murray’s report calls on the government to create an Indigenous-led national commission that will operate for over 20 years to investigate missing and disappeared Indigenous children. She argues that this action will help fulfill the “highly personal yet universal human need — to know what happened to their deceased loved ones and to mourn, bury, and memorialize them according to the laws, spiritual beliefs, and practices of one’s own culture.”

When the Toronto Star asked Minister of Justice and Attorney General Arif Virani about the federal government’s response to the report, he confirmed that a response is forthcoming, though it may be delayed due to the report’s “voluminous” nature. 

Concerning the amendment of the criminal code to include residential school denialism, Virani said that he intends to “do right by the work that’s been committed over these past two-plus years, by Ms. Murray and by those elders and those survivors, and review this material thoroughly,” before issuing an official statement. 

This report from the OISI follows the findings of the progress update report from November 2022 and the interim report from June 2023

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