The Undocumented Non-Deaths

Rosanne Casimir, chief, Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc

"While we want facts and answers as quickly as possible, we face significant challenges in accessing government and Catholic Church records for the 88-year-period the school operated. Our progress has been hindered by government restrictions on certain records and slow response."

"Indigenous communities place deep importance on honouring and protecting ancestral remains, and with 38 affected Nations involved, we must seek consensus on any future outcome."

"No interviews will be granted at this time, and Tk'emlups te Secwepemc will continue to provide updates as the investigation develops." 

Tk'emlups Chief Rosanne Casimir

The Ahousaht First Nation released findings on April 10 from their ground-penetrating radar search for possible graves of missing residential school children. (Chris Corday/CBC)

 

The history of the particular residential school that Chief Casimir focuses on may reflect 88 years of abuse of aboriginal children in her opinion when religious institutions in Canada -- primarily Catholic -- in agreement with the federal government of the time instituted elementary schools on and around traditional Indigenous land for the purpose of exposing children from nearby reservations to an education system reflecting the European roots of the mainstream Canadian population, to prepare the children to take their place within the greater Canadian population. But five years on from her declaration of unmarked graves no proof of her claim has surfaced despite millions provided for that purpose.

 

At that time and in those places, most Indigenous families were supportive of having their children receive a formal education. It was, unfortunately, an educational system unsupportive in its focus, of Indigenous history, tradition, language and values, exchanging them for a European style of education focusing on the elementals of education with the perspective entirely that of a Europe-centered ideological bent, meant to ignore and deliberately downplay the students' origins. Its intention was to prepare the children to go on to higher education and some did, exposed to the professions whose purpose they entered and took advantage of.

 

The modern perspective of the residential school system was that it erred in separating and alienating Indigenous children from their heritage, language and customs, which the schools substituted with the intention of preparing students to disown their own and adapt to the colonialist views of education leading to a participatory workforce. Well intentioned for the most part, but oblivious to the harm being perpetrated even while endowing the children with knowledge relating to the world outside the confines of the cloistered communities in which they came from. Which the outer world disdained, leading to societal prejudice. 

 

Firefighters inspect the damage at the burned-out Roman Catholic St Jean Baptiste church in Morinville, Alberta, Canada. Photograph: Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

 

In 2021 Canada awoke to the startling news that a ground-penetrating radar survey of the Kamloops Indian Residential School grounds had revealed that unmarked graves were identified, holding the remains of bodies of hundreds of aboriginal children. "Ground-penetrating radar primarily detects changes in the soil and we want to emphasize that we do not see any bodies or bones using this particular technique. This does not work like an X-ray" an explainer published by the Canadian Archaelogical Association stated. 

 

That explanation followed directly on the statement in May of 2021 announcing "confirmation of the remains of 215 children" at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, by the local Tk'emlups te Secwepemc tribe. The announcement spoke of "lost children" whose remains were discovered as "lost loved ones", including ages of those buried: "Some were as young as three years old", added Tk'emlups Chief Rosanne Casimir who sponsored a resolution that year at the Assembly of First Nations that referred to a "mass grave". 

 

No one questioned the details and the accuracy of the charges, and the Trudeau government immediately ordered the lowering of the Canadian flag for six months of mourning. Stories appeared in all news media mourning the unspeakable discovery of undocumented, unidentified remains of Indigenous children who attended the school and never returned home. The shocking news was picked up by the international press, and the Liberal government under Trudeau labelled the news as proof of a 'genocide' carried out against Canada's First Nations.

 

Crowfoot St.Joseph's Residential School 

 

From the aboriginal communities the reaction was incendiary -- literally. Churches, mostly on aboriginal land, were burned down and destroyed. There was no government action, little effort at investigation, much less taking any perpetrators into custody. Demands from aboriginal groups and their supporters that Canada's Prime Minister at the time of the residential school inauguration be censured, statues memorializing Sir John A. Macdonald, Canada's first prime minister be taken down, as well as that of Queen Victoria, along with others that were vandalized with no consequences for those besmirching the reputations of people who in actual fact were concerned for the future welfare of the aboriginal communities.

 

Following the initial declaration of the discovery of a "mass grave", when doubts began to set in, Chief Casimir walked back the definite nature of her revelations, to begin referring to 'anomalies' revealed by the ground-penetrating radar; disturbances in the earth, and not verification of bodies buried in those areas. Funding was given to the Kamloops area First Nations as well as others across Canada, to dig in the suspected burial areas at the discredited schools and disinter any possible body remnants to affirm the reality -- or not -- of  the allegations. Five years later, no First Nation group has used that funding to prove the accusation levied of 'genocide'.

 

Now, Tk'emlups te Secwepemc claims no exhumations would be performed in the absence of unanimous agreement from every other First Nation whose ancestors were known to have attended the Kamloops Indian Residential School.  But they still speak darkly of the sinister intent of the non-aboriginal community whose agenda was clearly to destroy First Nations dignity, heritage, culture, language and the next generation. There is, said Chief Casimir "a knowing in our community that we were able to verify" in the "undocumented deaths".

 

St.Anthony's Sacred Heart Residential School

 

Organized Crime and Contraband Cigarette Sales

A man lights a cigarette in rain at the intersection of Murray St and King Edward in Ottawa, August 09, 2024. Photo by Jean Levac /Postmedia

"I think the biggest takeaway is that this is a pan-Canadian problem."

"It's  hitting every single province. It's fuelling organized crime and violence in every community across the country, and it's something that there's been really no attention from the federal government on at all."

"We're seeing closures across the country, particularly in rural areas. How does a legal, responsible retailer compete with $5 packs of cigarettes?"

Sara MacIntyre, Convenience Industry Council of Canada vice-president for Western Canada 

"It was no longer an issue of somebody driving into a First Nations community buying 200 'rollies' and then hitting the road."

"It is absolutely organized crime at the highest level. It's a billion-dollar industry for [organized criminal groups]."

"It involves all the levels of violence, and extortion and gangsterism that comes along with it."

"It's an issue where organized crime groups have made partnerships with individuals in Indigenous communities that have access to either manufacture or distribute large amounts of contraband tobacco and so those partnerships are really what has caused this issue, along with heavy taxation, to really flourish."

Rick Barnum, executive director, National Coalition for Contraband Tobacco

Peter Bruni-Bossio, senior manager in charge of investigations for Alberta's north at Alberta Gaming, Liquor and Cannabis, showed these packs as the types that are used for illicit tobacco. (Dayne Patterson/CBC)

 

Canada now has a growing illicit industry in contraband cigarette sales, surpassing legal sales of tobacco across the country. A new study commissioned by the Convenience Industry Council of Canada representing retailers and convenience stores across the country, reveals that contraband tobacco is accountable for 29 percent of the market in Alberta, 38 percent in Nova Scotia, 45 percent in Manitoba, and 52 percent in New Brunswick.

Quebec alone has a provincial task force which has been cracking down on tax evasion in the tobacco industry for the past several decades In Quebec the proportion of illicit tobacco sales comes to 11.9 percent. According to the study, in 2023 alone the resulting provincial tobacco tax revenue loss is likely to have been over $102 million in Alberta, $54 million in Nova Scotia, $60 million in Manitoba, $42 million in New Brunswick and $58 million in Quebec. The combined total reaches a loss of $316 million.

Calculating for the past three years, the tax revenue loss for the provinces may have totalled over $760 million. Gross sales revenue generated by the sellers of contraband cigarettes in the five provinces for the three-year period under discussion is estimated at over $1.3 billion. Contraband cigarettes accounted for up to 45 percent of the total market in British Columbia, 50 percent in Ontario and up to 44 percent in Newfoundland and Labrador, resulting in lost revenue in the billions.

Former deputy commissioner of the Ontario Provincial Police Rick Barnum, stated that contraband tobacco only became an issue for the OPP about a decade ago. Contraband cigarettes mostly originate on First Nations reserves in Ontario and Quebec, but now low-cost tobacco products have become a "major selling feature" for known and established organized criminal groups like the Hells Angels.

 

 

Not only are contraband cigarettes considered more profitable than cocaine, those revenues generate profits for organized crime groups, helping to fund their other illegal activities. Much as profits from Canada-wide car thefts that have escalated in the past several years, also are involved in funding criminal activity in the import of proscribed and illegal firearms into Canada from the United States. Still, Mr. Barnum feels the issue is not Indigenous, rather in those communities some individuals are responsible for collaborating with criminal organizations.

A clear link between the temporary closure of tobacco manufacturing operations on First Nations reserves at the onset of the pandemic in mid-March of 2020 has been linked through a study from Ernst & Young with a dramatic rise in legal tobacco sales. Legal sales of cigarettes rose between 44 and 47 percent in Atlantic Canada which had imposed travelling restrictions outside the 'Atlantic Bubble'. 

With the reopening of on-reserve cigarette factories and distribution networks in July of 2020, legal sales "plummeted back down to pre-pandemic levels", the Ernst & Young report noted.

 

"I don't believe the average person that goes out and buys contraband cigarettes really understands how directly their money goes into organized crime."

Rick Barnum