Residential school survivors urge Ottawa to step up funding for searches – National [Video]

Residential school survivors say the federal government is keeping the truth about those institutions in the dark by cutting back on funding for records and ground searches looking for unmarked graves of children who died at the schools.

More than 150,000 children were forced to attend residential schools, and many survivors detailed the horrific abuse they suffered to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. An estimated 6,000 children died while attending the schools, although experts say the actual number could be much higher.

In 2021, after numerous First Nations reported locating what appeared to be human remains on the sites of former residential schools, Ottawa stepped in with more than $116 million to search for unmarked graves and to memorialize the children who died. As of March 2024, the government had actually provided $216 million through 146 different funding agreements.

That ended up averaging about $71 million a year.

In the most recent budget, the government allocated $91 million over the next two years to …