The Memorial Cloth, with the names of thousands of children who died due to residential schools, is carried during an event for National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Parliament Hill on Wednesday.Justin Tang/The Canadian Press
Residential school denialism and the death of Miranda Mamakwa, a 31-year-old mother of three, on Sept. 8, are inextricably linked. After all, erasure of Indigenous people in Canada was at the heart of the Indian Residential School system – and that erasure continues in the system’s substandard treatment of Indigenous peoples.
When the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 Calls to Action in 2015 following testimonies from 7,000 survivors, the report found that 3,200 children died in Indian Residential Schools in Canada from the mid-1800s to 1996, though this was just a fraction of the actual number. Horrifically, the names of one-third of the 3,200 children were lost; for another 23 per cent, there are no records of whether they were boys or girls. And for a full 49 per cent of those children, no one bothered to record the cause of death.
Why were the standards for Indigenous and non-Indigenous people so different?
First Nations leaders, family demand answers for woman’s death after she was denied medical travel
At least this much is clear: A lack of basic health care played a significant part in these deaths. In a scathing 1907 report, Dr. Peter Bryce, then the chief medical officer in the department of Indian Affairs, found that Indigenous children died of tuberculosis and other ailments at an alarming rate. He blamed poor care, combined with a lack of ventilation in the schools.
As of this year, there are about 4,000 names of children who died in residential school listed on the red memorial banner that the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation keeps. The banner normally unfurls on Sept. 30, or what is called Orange Shirt Day.
My great-uncles Samuel Skelliter and Thomas Skelliter are on the banner. They died at Shingwauk Indian Residential School, and both are buried in unmarked graves along with their former classmates. Sam was sent to Shingwauk when he was 4, in 1902, and Thomas arrived in 1900 when he was 6. Sam died of typhoid, a bacterial infection related to poor sanitation, in 1905. His older brother died of TB in 1913.
They were two of many children who died because of the conditions in residential school and a lack of quality health care. And so, Calls 18 to 24 of the TRC’s Calls to Action deal with the health care system – but to this day, there are First Nations communities without full-time doctors or hospitals, or public health infrastructure.
Which brings us back to Miranda Mamakwa. The young mom underwent open-heart surgery in April. She was sent home to Fort Severn, in NAN territory, to recuperate, and four follow-up appointments were set up for her. She didn’t make it to any of them, however, because the federal Non-Insured Health Benefits (NIHB) program cancelled her travel arrangements.
The NIHB covers medically necessary health services such as medical transport and accommodations for Status Indians in Canada. Travel to a medical appointment is a necessity, not a perk, if you are trying to access the health system from a remote First Nations community. For decades, there have been complaints by First Nations leaders, with missed appointments being blamed for worsening health problems among their people. Imagine missing a round of chemotherapy, just because you couldn’t get there.
The Indigenous Physicians Association of Canada, Nishnawbe Aski Nation and the Sioux Lookout First Nations Health Authority want an investigation into Ms. Mamakwa’s death. They want a probe to understand just how many Indigenous people are dying or having acute health issues owing to failures in care. NAN Grand Chief Alvin Fiddler has called for reform and for urgent safeguards: “We will not accept piecemeal fixes to a fundamentally flawed program. We need to work as partners to build something better,” he said.
We must all stand up for Ms. Mamakwa. You see, this is all part of the greater story. There is a shameful wave of denialism sweeping Canada, and it casts doubt on lived realities of Indigenous people. At its most hateful, it expresses itself in masked white nationalists demanding to see the bones of dead children in Kamloops, B.C. But denialism has wormed its way into the Canadian conversation, and it is a real barrier to any real progress for Indigenous people today. It makes it harder to marshal the moral will and the public buy-in to fulfill the 94 Calls to Action, and it only breeds more denialism and more hate.
As part of the reparations to our ancestors, Canada needs to speak out against denialism, and demand the calls be fulfilled. This is not a matter that belongs to some distant past – this is affecting lives, today.