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An Open Letter to Jim Prentice, Minister of Indian Affairs
The Government of Canada
Ottawa, Ontario
 
27 April, 2007
 
Dear Mr. Prentice,
 
    
This past week, you publicly announced that you have ordered members of your Department to commence an investigation into the deaths and disappearances of aboriginal children in Indian Residential Schools across Canada. As part of this investigation, you stated that a “working group”
has been established to search for “documentation” concerning these deaths, in order to determine how many children died in the residential schools.
(The Ottawa Sun, April 20, 2007)
 
    
After calling for such a course of action for nearly ten years now, our Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada is very encouraged that a Canadian government minister has finally made the first step in uncovering the full story of the fate of residential school children who never made it home.
 
    
However, our encouragement is tempered by a long experience of evasion, cover-up and denial by the government and churches of Canada when it comes to their involvement in the very deaths and disappearances you now claim to be investigating. In this sense, we are disturbed by the fact that, barely two weeks ago, officials of your Department made the public statement that “There are no death records” concerning residential school children in Canada; a statement which would seem to be at odds with yours. (The Epoch Times, April 12, 2007)
 
    
Be that as it may, we are writing to you to assist this effort at uncovering the documentary and other evidence concerning the disappeared residential school children - how many of them died, who and what caused their deaths, and where they are buried – so that the remains of these children may
finally be repatriated without conditions to their homes.
 
    
Despite the recent statements of members of your Department, and of the United Church of Canada, that there are no residential school death records, I wish to inform you that I actually located and published such death records as early as the spring of 1997, and again in March of 2001 in the first edition of my book Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust. These records were located by me in the Government Microfilms Section of the Koerner Library at the University of British Columbia (RG 10 series, Vol. 7733), and include:
 
a) an official Indian Affairs report by Dr. Peter Bryce, written in 1907, that contained annotated death records for western Indian Residential Schools indicating an average mortality rate in these schools of between 40% and 70% (as quoted on the front page of The Ottawa Citizen on November 15, 1907);
 
 
b) a follow-up report by Dr. Bryce and a Dr. Lafferty in 1909 containing more death records from Alberta residential schools that confirmed the average 50% death rate;
 
c) seventy three separate records of the deaths of individual students at British Columbia Indian Residential Schools between the years 1923 and 1952;
 
d) scores of personal accounts of the deaths of residential school students written by Indian Agents, school staff, clergy, local residents, and aboriginal parents, including in the form of formal petitions of protest sent to your Department and other government officials, and
 
e) coroners' reports and court records related to the death by violence or exposure of students who escaped from Indian residential schools in British Columbia.
 
    
I have attached copies of some of these documents for your perusal.
 
   
Copies of all of this material were sent by me to the head officers of the United Church of Canada, the Anglican Church, and the Roman Catholic Church, to the RCMP, and to your Department and to the Prime Minister's Office, as early as April, 1997, when I first discovered this material. Not one officer or person from these organizations ever replied to my correspondence on this matter.
 
    
In June of 1998, after helping to convene an international, United Nations sponsored Tribunal into Canadian Indian Residential Schools in Vancouver, I once again submitted these death records, along with many corroborating oral testimonies of residential school survivors, to all of the aforementioned church and governmental bodies in Canada. Once again, no-one replied to me.
 
    
Nevertheless, with the publication of my book Hidden from History: The Canadian Holocaust in the spring of 2001, I once more mailed to these bodies copies of this evidence, with the same non-response. On several other occasions since then, I have sent individual church officers copies of this evidence, with no reply.
 
    
Finally, since November of last year, much of this documentary evidence, along with the oral accounts of eyewitnesses to murders and other crimes in residential schools, has been publicly available in our award-winning documentary film entitled UNREPENTANT, which has been in circulation across Canada and the world. (see www.hiddenfromhistory.org)
 
    
The deafening silence of the government and churches of Canada in response to this documentary  evidence of deaths in Indian Residential Schools is perhaps not as perplexing as the present statements by officers of these same organizations which claim that no such death records exist! Ignoring the evidence of one's complicity in mass murder is one thing, but pretending that the evidence is not there when it has already been published and given to you is at best an act of incredible duplicity.
 
    
As my adopted father, Anishinabe elder Louis Daniels, recently told The Ottawa Sun concerning the missing residential school children, what is needed now is not more talk, but action. If only ten children died in every residential school in Canada, every year, for a century, then well over 50,000 children never came home. Such a mortality level is entirely consistent with Dr. Bryce's accounts, and is continually indicated by the stories of the hundreds of residential school survivors we have recorded.
The families of these children have waited for justice for far too long, as have the wandering spirits of the children who died.
 
    
What would real, effective action by your Department and Government look like regarding these disappeared children? We would like to suggest the following steps:
 
1.  The creation of an all-party National Commission of Inquiry that
would be mandated to document all of the evidence concerning the deaths and disappearances of children in Indian Residential Schools and their associated hospitals, including through holding public forums and investigations, to present their findings in a public report, and to recommend judicial action to prosecute those responsible for the deaths of these children.
 
           
2.  The extending of an invitation to international human rights     
           
observers and indigenous organizations, and to indigenous nations 
           
across Canada and residential school survivors' groups, to oversee
           
and advise such a Commission of Inquiry.
 
           
3.  The issuing of subpoenas to the churches responsible for the
           
Indian residential schools – the Catholic, Presbyterian, Anglican and
           
United Churches – ordering them to surrender all evidence in their
            
knowledge or possession related to the deaths of children in their
            
residential schools and associated hospitals, including all evidence
            
regarding the sites of the buried remains of these children.
 
4.  The exhuming of these burial sites and the undertaking of forensic analysis of their remains under the direction and supervision of aboriginal elders and experts authorized by the families of the deceased children; and the immediate repatriation of these remains without conditions to their respective families and aboriginal nations, at the expense of your government and the aforementioned churches.
 
5.  The creation of Public Memorial Sites and Museums at the location of these burial sites and former Indian Residential Schools containing the names of the children who died there, their ages and causes of death, along with artifacts, stories and other evidence of the planned genocide of native people in Canada.
 
6.  The declaration of a National Aboriginal Holocaust Memorial Day as a statutory holiday across Canada, when the evidence of the full story of the residential schools, the accounts of eyewitnesses and the chronology of genocide in Canada is presented to all Canadians.
 
           
7.  The cooperation of your Department and Government, and the aforementioned all-party  Commission of Inquiry, with an International War Crimes Tribunal that will investigate the full evidence of genocide by church and state in Canada, and with any recommendations by this Tribunal for the prosecution of those persons and  organizations responsible for such genocide.
 
     
We believe that such firm measures will do much to bring about actual reconciliation between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people in Canada, on the basis of the full disclosure of these deaths and crimes, a genuine redress on the terms of the residential school survivors themselves, and the active prosecution of the perpetrators.
 
    
We look forward to your reply, and to some sign that your government is taking seriously the evidence of the deaths of these children, and the measures that are needed to bring these children home and bring their murderers to justice.
 
Sincerely,
 
 
Rev. Kevin D. Annett / Eagle Strong Voice
Secretary, The Truth Commission into Genocide in Canada
c/o 260 Kennedy St.
Nanaimo, BC V9R 2H8   (ph: 250-753-3345)
 
cc: world media, Prime Minister Steven Harper, Gary Merasty MP, Members of Parliament, residential school survivors
 
Emailed to J. Prentice, Indian Affairs, 27 April, 2007
Hard copy mailed separately