Vancouver, B.C. conference covers Indigenous data sovereignty

Indigenous data sovereignty is a key topic on the path to healing and reconciliation at the 3rd National Gathering on Unmarked Burials in Vancouver.

Leaders at the National Gathering on Unmarked Burials are saying Indigenous communities need to access all documents about children who never returned home from Canada’s residential school system, citing the path to truth and reconciliation in the gathering.

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Many of the challenges facing searches for missing children and unmarked graves associated with residential schools are tied to Indigenous data sovereignty, and that’s what the gathering in Vancouver this week aims to address.

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Keynote speaker Kimberly Murray, an independent special interlocutor for missing children, unmarked graves, and burial sites associated with Indian residential schools, told a crowd at the conference in Vancouver today that there are many hard questions that need to be answered.

“Who are the children that died? What did the children die from? Where are the children buried? And how many how many little ones die and still are missing?” Murray asked.

Murray says without the records the deniers will continue to deny and future generations will be led to forget what happened to the children.

“Records are important because without them, the deniers will continue to deny and future generations will be led to forget. And when we forget, we are at risk of reoccurrence,” said Murray.

Murray says they know many of the documents have been lost because a 1935 federal government policy allowed school returns to be destroyed after five years, while reports of accidents could be eliminated.