Two First Nations in northern Ontario have joined the growing opposition to the Trudeau government’s decision to slash funding available to communities pursuing searches for unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools.
Last month, it was announced funding available to communities for these searches would be reduced from $3 million to $500,000 for this fiscal year and next.
“As a result, we have had to reduce our team and reduce our costs and it’s just going to make it less effective,” Grassy Narrows First Nation Chief Rudy Turtle said. “It’s just not a good situation.”
According to the federal government’s website, $200,000 per community is for research and $300,000 is for “field work.”
Grassy Narrows is located about 80 km north of Kenora and the community was set to begin a search for unmarked graves of former students of the McIntosh Residential School this summer.
Turtle said the reduced funding has scuttled these plans and the future of the search remains in question.
The Lac Seul First Nation, which is located about 38 km northwest of Sioux Lookout, was also about to embark on a search for missing children at the former Pelican Lake Indian Residential School, the Sioux Lookout hospital and local and municipal cemeteries.
The planned search would take in 33 communities in the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority.
The First Nation said the reduced funding will make it impossible to do this work as directed by residential school survivors.
“It sets us back,” band Councillor Derek Maud said. “Especially with the operations of this thing because it’s a lot of work they’re doing and we’re not even breaking ground yet to search.”
Members of Lac Seul have also started an online petition on change.org calling on the government to reverse its decision and on Friday it had more than 2,300 signatures.
The NDP has also taken issue with the federal cuts and recently sent a letter to Crown-Indigenous Relations Minister Gary Anandasangaree demanding answers.
“Liberals actually campaigned, made it part of their campaign commitment (in 2021) to invest in reconciliation and answers for communities coming out of the discoveries at Kamloops (former residential school) and here we are three years later – we’ve seen an 85 per cent cut in the funding to communities,” northern Manitoba MP Niki Ashton, who co-signed the letter along with Nunavut MP Lori Idlout, said.
Both Turtle and Maud say they are hopeful the Liberals will revisit the decision and provide the necessary amount of funding so communities can conduct proper and thorough searches.
“This is not the time to be doing funding cuts,” Turtle said. “Especially with residential school searches and you know if the federal government is serious about reconciliation, this is not the way to go about it.”
Maud added the government needs to reverse course, if only for the sake of what it means to residential school survivors.
“They (survivors) really want closure but if the federal government is slashing funding drastically like that – you know it puts a halt on this vehicle that we’re driving and it’s really disheartening to be honest,” he said.
In an emailed statement, a spokesperson for Crown-Indigenous Relations said the government increased funding to the Residential Schools Missing Children Community Support Fund by $91 million in this year’s budget and changes are in order to take a more sustainable approach and to provide funding to as many community-led applications as possible.
