Special City Council

3 WHEREAS the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, 2015 confirmed that Residential Schools were part of a coherent policy implemented by the Federal Government to eliminate Indigenous people as distinct Peoples and to assimilate them into Christian society against their will; and WHEREAS the Deputy Minister of Indian Affairs Duncan Campbell Scott outlined the goals of that policy in 1920, when he told a parliamentary committee that “our object is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic…”; and WHEREAS the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Final Report, 2015 also confirmed that despite the coercive measures that the government adopted, it failed to achieve its policy goals. Although Indigenous Peoples and cultures have been badly damaged, they continue to exist; and WHEREAS the former Mohawk Institute Residential School operated from 1831 to 1970 within the boundaries of what is now the City of Brantford; and WHEREAS Survivors have released statements of missing, murdered, and buried students; and WHEREAS, to date, the unmarked burials of over 7000 missing Indigenous children have been discovered nation-wide; and WHEREAS, following the May 2021 announcement by Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc First Nation of locating 215 potential burials of children in unmarked graves at the Kamloops Indian Residential School in British Columbia, the Survivors of the Mohawk Institute, along with their families and community

THAT LEAVE BE GIVEN to the Mover and Seconder to introduce the following By-law for 1st and 2nd Reading: 74-2022 By-law to confirm the Proceedings of the Council of The Corporation of the City of Brantford with respect to the Special Meeting held on May 17, 2022.

THAT By-law 74-2022, having received a first and second reading, BE TAKEN as read a third time, and be finally passed and signed by the Mayor and Clerk.