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Breaking News ... May 12, 2007
Native People Occupy Government Office in Vancouver, Win Concessions
On Friday, May 11, 2007, thirty five native men and women, including residential school survivors, peacefully occupied the Vancouver offices of the federal government's “Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada” (IRSRC), and demanded from IRSRC officials a full disclosure about the fate and buried location of more than 50,000 children who died in residential schools across Canada.
“Your department claims there are no death records for these children, but we have copies with us, right here” stated Rob Morgan, a second generation residential school survivor from the Nishga-Gitksan Nation, and a spokesperson for the occupiers.
Morgan held up records from a 1909 report by Dr. Peter Bryce, showing that over half the children in Alberta residential schools had died in one year, saying,
“If the government and the churches don't start telling the truth about what happened to these children, and bring home their bodies, we will escalate this action and occupy churches and government offices across the country.”
Eyewitnesses to the burial of children at residential schools also spoke during the two hour long occupation, which was organized by The Friends of the Disappeared, a community group in Vancouver's downtown east side.
“I helped bury a little Inuit boy when I was at the Edmonton residential school, in 1961” declared Sylvester Green. “There's a big burial site right next to the site of the old school. Why hasn't the government ever cared about those kids who never came home?”
As speaker after speaker described such incidents, and their own struggle to survive, IRSRC officials stood impassively against the wall, and attempted to steer the conversation away from the matter of deaths in residential schools towards the unrelated issue of the so-called “compensation” package of $10,000 for survivors presently being offered by the Harper government. In response, several occupiers angrily confronted the IRSRC officials.
“This is bullshit” said William Combes, a survivor of the Catholic school in Kamloops, BC who witnessed a child being buried in that school's orchard one night. “We sit here and you wave these papers at us and say we're only worth a few thousand dollars when no money can ever heal what you've done to us.”
“I'll tell you what we want” continued Sylvester Green, “We want our land back. That's what should be in the compensation package: not money, but a return of our land that you stole.”
As tensions rose, the five IRSRC officials present, including the western regional director, Mary Kapelus, began to issue promises that the government would respond to the occupiers' demand that the full evidence of residential school deaths be unearthed.
“I've just been on the phone to top officials in Ottawa, who have received your statement. They are willing to meet with you and consider the death records and other evidence you have, as part of the investigations of the working group the (Indian Affairs) Minister has set up with all the major stakeholders, like the RCMP and our church partners” said Mary Kapelus to the occupiers.
One of the occupiers, Kevin Annett, pressed Kapelus on her statement.
“Are you saying that the government is willing to look at evidence that might implicate itself in murder? In genocide?” asked Annett.
Non-commitedly, Kapelus replied,
“The issue of where children may be buried, for example, is something we can certainly put to the T and R (Truth and Reconcilation) Commission to explore. It is planning on compiling all the evidence that can be found.”
“And then what?” said Annett. “What kind of action will be taken, once all the research is done? How can anything be done since the groups that did these crimes, your government and the churches, are the ones doing the investigation?”
At this point, another IRSRC official named David diverted this question with the remark,
“The government doesn't want to tell the T and R Commission what to do ... Our records aren't that good, and we haven't been focused on the issue of deaths because we've been working on verifying the claims of the survivors.”
Significantly, this last comment by the IRSRC official was a word for word repetition of the statement made by United Church official James Scott in the Globe and Mail on April 24, indicating once again how closely the government and churches are collaborating in their strategy and public statements on this latest “hot potato” of dead residential school children.
As if to confirm this, IRSRC manager Mary Kapelus said near the end of the occupation that the statement issued by the occupiers had been sent not to the “top officials” she had originally alluded to, but to the Public Relations Director for IRSRC in Ottawa, Mark Sanderson. No cabinet minister or deputy minister, in short, had been notified.
The occupiers' press statement declared that further such protest actions would commence within one week if the government of Canada had not responded by then to their call for full disclosure about residential school deaths. Under this pressure, Mary Kapelus hurriedly promised that an “official” of IRSRC or Indian Affairs would meet with the occupiers one week from then; but she did not specify who that official would be, leading many of the protestors to believe that “some spin doctor from Ottawa” would arrive to “dish out more crap like we got today”, to quote one of the occupiers.
Nevertheless, most of the occupiers agreed that “at least we made them listen, and come down to our turf”, referring to their demand that any future meetings be held not in the plush IRSRC boardroom but in Vancouver's downtown east side where many residential school survivors struggle with poverty and premature death.
“Let's hope other survivors do occupations like this one” said Rob Morgan after the action. “It's the only way these people are going to listen to us.”
12 May, 2007
Unceded Coast Salish Territory (“Vancouver, Canada”)
See attachments of the Occupiers' Press Statements
Public Statement Why are we occupying this office? |
