interprovocateur

Today (June 21) is National Indigenous Day.

Roughly a year ago, the Department of Justice Canada appointed Kimberly Murray as Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools. She has now presented her interim report titled Sacred Responsibility: Searching for the Missing Children and Unmarked Burials.

Murray is a Mohawk lawyer with extensive experience as legal counsel on indigenous issues, as Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and as Ontario Assistant Deputy Attorney General for Indigenous Justice. She obviously has the background for the job. What she doesn’t have is objectivity.

She explains her role: The Mandate states that I am to function independently and impartially, in a nonpartisan and transparent manner as I work to achieve the stated objectives.

However, the impartial/nonpartisan part has been cast aside: I want to emphasize this point: my role is to give voice to the children. It is not to be neutral or objective – it is to be a fierce and fearless advocate to ensure that the bodies and Spirits of the missing children are treated with the care, respect, and dignity that they deserve.

As part of a sometimes seething 179 page report, Murray states that genocide deniers came to the Kamloops (Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc) residential school grounds with the intent to dig them up:

Denialists entered the site without permission. Some came in the middle of the night, carrying shovels; they said they wanted to “see for themselves” if children are buried there.

She doesn’t say who brought forward this information and whether the police were involved. While providing no support for her allegation, Murray has sparked further indigenous backlash against non-indigenous Canada.

Of course Global BC seized the opportunity to inflame the public with their story 'Continued genocide': First Nations leaders disturbed by effort to dig up unmarked graves in B.C.. Vigilante gravedigging is appalling if that story is accurate, but is it driven by bigoted denial of the obvious facts or is it due to frustration over the political/cultural inertia that won’t get to the full truth of the matter?

During the last 2 years Canada’s former reputation as a tolerant multi-culture has been decimated. Recently, 60 Minutes portrayed us to the world as genocidal racists.

Instead of fomenting more hatred towards the “colonists”, the Special Interlocutor should be telling government that quick action is required to achieve excavation of the search sites to help bring about closure for both sides. She sets out this need from an indigenous perspective:

One aspect relating to the reality of unmarked burials of the missing children that is particularly painful to communities is that these little ones were buried without proper ceremonies.

And in the penultimate statement of the report, Murray adds:

Elders having been saying that the Spirits of the children are still here. People can feel them. There are things the children are doing to get noticed. Many have said that in Tk’emlúps te Secwépemc, and at other sites where unmarked burials exist, the children are speaking. They are telling those who are willing to listen that they need to be found and that ceremonies and proper protocols need to be conducted to help their Spirits journey home to rest with their ancestors.

Yet the next step for the Special Interlocutor is her investigation and recommendations for reparations. If excavations take place before her final report and don’t find what she assumes to exist, it would throw a pretty big wrench into the Unmarked Burials machine. So, this matter will likely be drawn out for at least another year unless the government steps in with unconditional compensation.

According to vocabulary.com: An interlocutor is someone who participates in a discussion or conversation, sometimes as a go-between. If you and your friend are in an argument and aren't speaking, a third friend could act as an interlocutor, delivering messages back and forth.

Kimberly Murray does not appear to be a friend of non-indigenous Canada. Without regard to Justice Canada’s mandate, she audaciously declares what side she is on and delivers messages only from that side of the story.

In this particular matter there can be no real truth without excavation of the alleged burial sites. Without that full truth any suggestion that the Special Interlocutor process represents a credible step towards reconciliation, is a lie.