Brantford asks province, feds to release Mohawk Institute documents

Councillors unanimously supported a motion calling on the federal and provincial governments and the Anglican Church to immediately release all documents related to the Mohawk Institute residential school.

Survivors from the former residential school are supporting the effort. They hope the documents will help in the search for unmarked graves on the site.

The documents may contain vital information for the Survivor’s Secretariat which was established last year to uncover the truth of what happened during the institute’s 136 years of operation.

A survivor-led search for unmarked graves on the 500 acres of grounds at the Mohawk Institute began last November and is set to resume this spring.

Records indicate at least 54 children died at the Mohawk Institute but it’s unknown where they are buried.

“Every residential school had a cemetery, where is it for the mohawk institute?,” residential school survivor Diane Hill said.

Hill also hopes the documents include the names of the missing children, “we have to be able to put our children at peace so that they can complete their journey.”

CHCH News asked the Crown-Indigenous Affairs Ministry to respond to the request yesterday, we also asked the prime minister’s office who directed us to Crown-Indigenous Affairs Minister Marc Miller’s office.

Miller’s office sent a three-sentence response this afternoon that said the documents had been shared with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and the survivors can access them that way. The Centre has yet to release them to the Secretariat.

Survivors John Elliott, Roberta Hill, her sister Dawn and their niece Diane are raising money in Oshweken today to help others who went to the institute.