‘You cannot just raise the flags and replace it with nothing’: AFN national chief
Questions about what to do with the national flag have surfaced in the lead up to Remembrance Day, an occasion on which it has traditionally been lowered to half-mast as a tribute to soldiers who died while serving Canada.
OTTAWA — The national chief of the Assembly of First Nations says there needs to be another symbolic gesture made to recognize the genocide of Indigenous children if Canada wants to raise its flag.
RoseAnne Archibald says ideas for such an expression will be discussed when the organization’s executive meets this week, adding national Inuit and Metis leaders must also be involved.
Questions about what to do with the national flag have surfaced in the lead up to Remembrance Day, an occasion on which it has traditionally been lowered to half-mast as a tribute to soldiers who died while serving Canada.
The flags on the Peace Tower at Parliament Hill and other federal buildings have been flying at half-mast since late May, but The Royal Canadian Legion says it plans to raise the flag at Ottawa’s National War Memorial on Nov. 11 before immediately lowering it to half-mast again.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau requested the lowering of the national flags after the Tk’emlups te Secwepemc nation announced ground-penetrating radar detected what are believed to be the remains of 215 Indigenous children at a former residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
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Weeks later, the Cowessess First Nation near Regina revealed it found 751 unmarked graves, prompting Indigenous leaders and many non-Indigenous Canadians to redouble their calls for Ottawa to help deliver justice for residential school survivors.
“You cannot just raise the flags and replace it with nothing,” Archibald told The Canadian Press in an interview Saturday.
“That, to me, is a great dishonour and would be a great dishonour and would be hurtful to all of the children we have yet to find.”
Archibald said “a symbolic gesture must be found if the flags are going to be raised.”
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Such action would need to be meaningful, said Archibald, adding AFN believes some kind of symbol needs to stay in place over the long term because there are many former residential school sites that have yet to be searched for unmarked graves.
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It is estimated more 4,000 Indigenous children died while being forced to attend the church-run, government-funded institutions, where thousands more suffered physical and sexual abuse, neglect and malnutrition.
The 2015 report from Canada’s the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which was based on testimony from thousands of former students, said the system that operated for more than 120 years perpetuated a “cultural genocide” against survivors.
Archibald said there’s well over 130 of these institutions of “assimilation and genocide” left to investigate.
“We have a long road,” she said.
“These children deserve to be found, named and buried with proper ceremony and returned, either physically or ceremonially, to their homelands. This is a very important thing for us as First Nations people.”
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