By Doug George-Kanentiio.

The Six Nations Survivors Secretariat sponsored their annual residential school conference June 27-29 on the Ohsweken Territory with delegates coming from across Canada.

The three days had presenters from Parks Canada, Know History, the Woodlands Cultural Centre, and the Secretariat, Laura Arndt. The intent was to share information and create standards for the location of the burial grounds on residential school grounds, to identify the children who died in those schools, to arrange for their return home and to hold those who abused the victims to be brought to justice.

This process will be complicated since it involves the use of contemporary investigative techniques using ground radar and other electronic devices, the need to have forensic anthropologists and medical examiners as active participants along with Native and non-Native police agencies.

The delegates took part in sessions in which they learned about the work to preserve the Mohawk Institute as a national museum. The recent renovations have meant the removal of lead and asbestos material. Those known contaminants resulted in the exposure of poisons to the children yet have not been included as a health factor in any of the Canadian responses to the residential school resolution policies.

The Institute will have a series of displays designed to show the daily lives of the children from their sleeping dorms to the recently completed dining area. Visitors will follow the steps of the children as they lived, worked, and played. Acts of discipline, a common experience, will also be explained.

The delegates were able to walk around the Institute grounds. Many of the former detainees experienced powerful emotions as they visited the central building, a red brick edifice built in 1904 after the former structure was burned in 1903 by some of the students, one of whom was from Akwesasne.

The Akwesasronon Shonataten:ron were present to learn what can be done to enhance the efforts at Akwesasne to preserve this part of our history.

It was noted that far from being broken by their time at the schools, many of those who survived have become local and national leaders, determined to secure restitution and equity on their terms. They gave testimony as to instances of abuse but wanted to devote their time to the creation of a national movement designed by the survivors. They rejected the claim by any group to speak on behalf of the survivors including the Assembly of First Nations.

Critical to the survivors was to repatriate the remains of the victims to be followed by criminal investigations, the naming of the abusers and the need to hold the administrators of the institutions liable for the pain, suffering and death of thousands of Indigenous children.

The Akwesasne contingent is faced with a unique situation since many of the taken Mohawk children were placed in Canadian and American schools. Data regarding the children has to be collected from places such as the Thomas Indian School in western New York and Carlisle Institute in Pennsylvania.

Once a comprehensive list is made the lives of the students will be followed to determine what happened to them during and after their internment.

The next gathering of the survivors will be this September in Montreal where the issue of protecting burial grounds will be discussed.

The Akwesasne survivors will be meeting with the St. Regis Tribal Council, the Mohawk Nation Council, and the Mohawk Council of Akwesasne to secure consensus as to communal actions needed to bring about resolution and healing with an emphasis on the preservation of the stories of each person confined in those schools.