Survivors, leaders raise concerns about Ontario residential school burial search fund rollout

Darlene Laforme, who was forced as a child to attend the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ont., said $20 million is still not enough.

Residential school survivors and Indigenous leaders are raising concerns about the allocation process for funds the Ontario government has promised to support searches for burial sites near residential schools.

The Progressive Conservative government on Thursday announced a $10 million top-up to the initial $10 million it pledged in June for investigations into unmarked graves. That announcement came after disturbing reports that the remains of 215 children had been found on the grounds of a residential school in Kamloops, B.C.

Ontario has said it believes there are likely more unmarked burial sites in the province than the 12 identified by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which documented abuse suffered by Indigenous children at residential schools and the deaths of more than 4,000 children.

Darlene Laforme, who was forced as a child to attend the Mohawk Institute in Brantford, Ont., said $20 million is still not enough.

“It’s another example (of) how they did not consult with the community on our needs,” she said. “There’s a lot of money that has to go into all the work.”

Laforme was with a group of survivors who spoke at a press conference hosted by the provincial New Democrats on Friday.

She is involved in ongoing efforts to investigate what happened to lost children at the Mohawk Institute, and said Friday that Ontario Indigenous Affairs Minister Greg Rickford had not yet responded to a letter from Six Nations of the Grand River Elected Chief Mark Hill that laid out several concerns about the provincial funding process for that work.

In Hill’s Oct. 27 letter addressed to Premier Doug Ford, he said the community is offended by the ministry’s current approach to funding requests from the Survivors Secretariat, the group working on the search for burial sites.