National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation revealed the names of 2,800 children who died in residential schools in a ceremony in Gatineau, Quebec. A 50-metre long blood red cloth bearing the names of each child and the schools they attended was unfurled and carried through a crowd of Indigenous children, elders and chiefs, residential school survivors and others. Ry Moran NCTR Director, says an additional 1,600 also died but remain unnamed. There were also many hundred who simply vanished, undocumented in any records so far uncovered. (Toronto Star). In total, 4,037 Indigenous children are listed in the Memorial Register:
| Records of Deaths | Description |
|---|---|
| 1,953 | Positively identified |
| 365 | Additional names added to the memorial register after additional investigation |
| 477 | Under Investigation |
| 1,242 | known to have passed away but whose names are not yet known |
Indian Residential School (IRS ) deaths per province and territory, 1867-2000
| Province/Territory | # of IRS | Named Register | Named and Unnamed Registers Combined |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alberta | 25 | 557 | 821 |
| British Columbia | 18 | 352 | 580 |
| Manitoba | 14 | 164 | 338 |
| Northwest Territories | 14 | 190 | 252 |
| Nova Scotia | 1 | 15 | 15 |
| Nunavut | 14 | 12 | 15 |
| Ontario | 17 | 264 | 426 |
| Québec | 12 | 17 | 38 |
| Saskatchewan | 18 | 375 | 566 |
| Yukon | 6 | 29 | 74 |
| Total | 139 | 1,975 | 3,125 |
Final Report of the TRC Commission Volume 4: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials
The TRC’s “Missing Children and Unmarked Burials Project” supports the following conclusions:
- The Commission has identified 3,200 deaths on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Register of Confirmed Deaths of Named Residential School Students and the Register of Confirmed Deaths of Unnamed Residential School Students.
- For just under one-third of these deaths(32%),the government and the schools did not record the name of the student who died.
- For just under one-quarter of these deaths (23%), the government and the schools did not record the gender of the student who died.
- For just under one-half of these deaths (49%), the government and the schools did not record the cause of death.
- Aboriginal children in residential schools died at a far higher rate than school- aged children in the general population.
- For most of the history of the schools, the practice was not to send the bodies of students who died at schools to their home communities.
- For the most part, the cemeteries that the Commission documented are aban- doned, disused, and vulnerable to accidental disturbance.
- The federal government never established an adequate set of standards and reg- ulations to guarantee the health and safety of residential school students.
- The federal government never adequately enforced the minimal standards and regulations that it did establish.
- The failure to establish and enforce adequate regulations was largely a function of the government’s determination to keep residential school costs to a minimum.
https://collections.irshdc.ubc.ca/index.php/Detail/objects/8788