Canada's residential schools. the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada Volume 4 Missing children and unmarked burials

Summary: "Canada's Residential Schools: Missing Children and Unmarked Burials is the first systematic effort to record and analyze deaths at the schools, and the presence and condition of student cemeteries, within the regulatory context in which the schools were intended to operate. As part of its work the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada established a National Residential School Student Death Register. Due to gaps in the available data, the register is far from complete. Although the actual number of deaths is believed to be far higher, 3,200 residential school victims have been identified. The analysis also demonstrates that residential school death rates were significantly higher than those for the general Canadian school-aged population. The failure to establish and enforce adequate standards of care, coupled with the failure to adequately fund the schools, resulted in unnecessarily high death rates at residential schools. Senior government and church officials were well aware of the schools' ongoing failure to provide adequate levels of custodial care. Children who died at the schools were rarely sent back to their home community. They were usually buried in school or nearby mission cemeteries. As the schools and missions closed, these cemeteries were abandoned. While in a number of instances Aboriginal communities, churches, and former staff have taken steps to rehabilitate cemeteries and commemorate the individuals buried there, most of these cemeteries are now disused and vulnerable to accidental disturbance. In the face of this abandonment, the TRC is proposing the development of a national strategy for the documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries."--Provided by publisher.