Feds confuse the funding for unmarked graves evidence search – The Hill Times

August 19, 2024

This September and on this National Day of Reconciliation, take the time to consider the amount of expertise in Indigenous communities, the strength to survive, the strength to come back.

OTTAWA—In the weeks leading up to the National Day of Reconciliation on Sept. 30, Crown-Indigenous Relations unilaterally cut the funding available to communities to search for unmarked graves at residential schools.

More than 100 communities are currently collecting evidence at sites with unmarked graves. This is not cheap work. It requires the experts and kinds of processes that you would expect at any crime scene with potential victims. The federal government decided to arbitrarily cap the funding that a community would receive at $500,000 per year.