By Chris Brown

Multimillion-dollar package

Kenney says money coming for Indigenous groups to identify residential school grave sites

Jun 15, 2021 | 3:06 PM

Premier Jason Kenney says the province will support Indigenous communities in Alberta to identify potential unmarked graves at residential school sites.

“Alberta will be announcing in the days to come a multimillion-dollar package of support for First Nations to help them in their work of identifying any unmarked graves and properly commemorating sites where there were residential schools where there may be undiscovered remains,” Kenney said today.

He was speaking at a virtual news conference at the conclusion of the annual Western Premiers Conference.

Kenney said Alberta had the largest number of residential schools in the country.

“As the Truth and Reconciliation Commission underscored a great deal of work has been done over the years by First Nations and others to help identify remains but there is probably much more work that still needs to be done,” he said.

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Alberta’s Indigenous Relations Minister Rick Wilson has been working to assemble the package and Kenney said an announcement will be made in the days to come.

The premier added the support will be in grants to Indigenous organizations so that they can decide how best to approach these sensitive issues. He said some may not want to do disturb the graves for spiritual reasons while others may want to do the full archaeological research.