Is the CBC pressuring the federal government to continue funding conspiracy theories about 'missing' and 'disappeared' children which originated with Kevin Annett?
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Is the CBC pressuring the federal government to continue funding conspiracy theories about 'missing' and 'disappeared' children which originated with Kevin Annett?
By Nina Green
Is the CBC pressuring the federal government to continue funding conspiracy theories about 'missing' and 'disappeared' children which originated with Kevin Annett?
That appears to be the case.
A CBC article by Brett Forester published 19 December 2024 claims the federal government would be 'breaking promises and lying to survivors' if it fails to immediately provide further funding to the Survivors Secretariat at the former Mohawk Institute on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve in Ontario so that it can continue its 'investigation into missing children and unmarked burials' at the school.
Forester writes:
A residential school survivors' group on the verge shutdown due to a lack of funding is accusing the federal government of breaking promises and lying to survivors about Canada's commitment to uncovering the truth.
The Survivors' Secretariat, which is conducting an investigation into missing children and unmarked burials associated with the former Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School in Brantford, Ont., says it will have to close its doors at the end of the month unless it receives a funding decision from Crown Indigenous Relations.
Forester's CBC article ties the Survivors Secretariat funding issue to Special Interlocutor Kimberly Murray's deeply misleading final report released on 29 October 2024, in which Murray claims missing Indian residential school children are 'victims of the crime against humanity of forced disappearance'. Forester writes:
Kimberly Murray, the special interlocutor for missing children and unmarked burials associated with residential schools, has repeatedly criticized Crown-Indigenous Relations for treating these searches like any other program.
Murray, whose two-year mandate ends this month, recently released a final report arguing children who died and were buried at residential schools aren't just missing, but victims of the crime against humanity of enforced disappearance.
She argued Canada has obligations under international law to facilitate access to the truth, meaning it's required to ensure adequate funding. The federal government hasn't commented on her report yet.
Thus, the premise of Forester's article is that the Survivors Secretariat is doing worthwhile work conducting searches for missing and 'disappeared' children, and that according to Kimberly Murray, Canadian taxpayers are obliged under international law to indefinitely fund that work.
Is that true? Is the Survivors Secretariat doing worthwhile work conducting searches for missing children? Are Canadian taxpayers obliged under international law to indefinitely fund searches for missing and 'disappeared' children?
The answer to these questions is 'No'.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was influenced by Kevin Annett's conspiracy theories
To understand why the answer to those questions is 'No', it's necessary to go back to Kimberly Murray's tenure as Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) from 2010-2015, and to the indisputable fact that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was influenced by Kevin Annett's conspiracy theories. In 2007, Annett's documentary Unrepentant, and his fake organization, Friends and Relatives of the Disappeared Residential School Children, went mainstream in the media and in Parliament, where Indian Affairs Minister Jim Prentice stated:
We will get to the bottom of the disappeared children. The truth and reconciliation commission will hear much about that. I have instructed our officials to look into that and to work with oblate records of the churches to get to the bottom of this issue, and this sad chapter in our history.
True to his word, Prentice formed a Working Group under Bob Watts, whose recommendations incorporated Annett's conspiracy theories into the TRC's work from that point forward.
Forester's CBC article thus omits important information which links Kimberly Murray, the TRC, and the Survivors Secretariat directly to Kevin Annett's conspiracy theories.
Kevin Annett's search and dig at the Mohawk Institute in 2011
Forester's article also omits important information about Annett's own notorious 2011 GPR search and dig at the former Mohawk Institute where the Survivors Secretariat currently complaining about lack of continued funding is now located.
After lobbying by Annett, on 12 April 2011 ten elders of the Six Nations of the Grand River invited Annett to do a GPR search at the former Mohawk Institute.
In Murder By Decree, published on the internet on 25 April 2013, Annett stated that the initial GPR work and dig took place between 29 September and 11 October 2011. According to a 12 October 2011 article in Turtle Island News, Annett brought in a psychic from British Columbia to show him where to dig. A second dig, which turned up animal bone fragments, took place between 21-24 November 2011.
In Murder By Decree, Annett claimed that an 'enormous sabotage campaign' was mounted to stop his dig at the Mohawk Institute. However the evidence establishes that Annett's failure to find any missing children at the former Mohawk Institute was due to much more prosaic causes:
(1) the fact that no children were ever missing from the former Mohawk Institute, so there were no missing children to find;
(2) the fact that Mohawk elders were angered by his work and the public claims he made (see Turtle Island News, 12 October 2011).
The unscientific quality of Annett's work is revealed in a video filmed on 2 October 2011 which shows him standing in a hole haphazardly digging up animal bone fragments and other debris.
The unprofessional quality of his work is also revealed by the fact that, without having had the fragments tested by an expert, Annett made several public statements, including a press release about his discovery of 'children's bones' (see Turtle Island News, 30 November 2011), an appearance at Occupy Toronto on 28 November 2011 in which he held up 'children's bones' which he had apparently brought there in his pocket, and a video filmed on 29 November 2011 (see below) in which he claimed that the animal bone fragments spread out on a table in front of him were the bones of former students of the Mohawk Institute.
Annett made an even more preposterous public claim based on his dig at the Mohawk Institute when he stated in Murder By Decree that the 'forensic evidence' he had found (animal bone fragments) proved his earlier claim in 2008 that the English Crown, the Vatican, and Canadian government and churches were responsible for the death of more than 50,000 Indian residential school students, i.e. more than one-third of the estimated 150,000 children who ever attended a residential school!
Moreover in both Murder By Decree and in a fake 'Ministerial Briefing' on 15 March 2018, Annett claimed his opponents had resorted to assassination to stop him, stating outright that 'senior forensic pathologist, Dr. Donald Ortner of the Smithsonian Institute in Washington, DC', was killed by American 'contractors' because Annett had sent him the animal bone fragments dug up at the Mohawk Institute. In his fake 'Ministerial Briefing', Annett wrote:
Minister: Speaking of which, I was never clear who dealt with that forensic pathologist. Was it us or the Americans?
Agent: The latter sir, through their usual contractors, after a request from us.
Minister: That's a relief. Funny that Annett didn't mention his death ...
Agent: Oh but he did, sir. He claimed outright that Dr. Ortner had been killed. He also drew the connection between the day of his death and the decision of eight of the ten sponsoring Mohawk elders to pull their support for the dig.
Does that sound crazy?
Yes, it does sound crazy.
And that craziness doubtless explains why, in a video filmed on 29 May 2012, fifteen or more Mohawk elders formally and publicly severed all connection with Annett and his fake 'International Tribunal into Crimes of Church and State, known as ITCCS'.
Kimberly Murray's fruitless search for missing children while at the TRC
As noted above, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was influenced by Annett's conspiracy theories, and thus, while Annett was involved in his fruitless GPR search and dig at the Mohawk Institute in 2011, Kimberly Murray, then Executive Director of the TRC, was simultaneously pursuing a fruitless search at the TRC for 'disappeared' children for whom no one could provide a name. Alex Maass was hired to manage the project, as reported by the Winnipeg Free Press on 19 February 2011, and by the CBC on 18 February 2013. The documents Maass generated at the TRC as manager of the Missing Children Project have never been released by the University of Manitoba.
Murray's fruitless search at the TRC for missing children culminated in the Missing Children And Unmarked Burialsvolume of the TRC Report, for which Murray claimed credit in an affidavit in the Mohawk Mothers lawsuit in 2022.
Not a single name of a student verifiably missing from an Indian residential school is provided in that volume.
In other words, the TRC, under Kimberly Murray's direction, foisted on the world through its Missing Children and Unmarked Burials volume the myth that there are thousands of missing Indian residential school children when Murray had no verifiable evidence that a single student had ever gone missing or 'disappeared' from an Indian residential school in the sense that the parents did not know what had happened to their child.
Kimberly Murray takes up at the Mohawk Institute where Kevin Annett left off
After the TRC filed its report in 2015, Murray worked for the province of Ontario for several years. However in August 2021 she renewed her search for missing children who by then she clearly knew aren't missing. At that time, Murray took up where Kevin Annett had left off at the Mohawk Institute when she became Executive Lead for the organization now lamenting its lack of funding in Brett Forester's CBC article - the newly created Survivors’ Secretariat at the Six Nations of the Grand River, allegedly working (like Kevin Annett) to recover the missing children at the Mohawk Institute.
In her year as Executive Lead at the Survivors Secretariat at the Mohawk Institute, Murray supervised GPR and LiDAR searches. Unsurprisingly, Murray's searches turned up no missing children, as had been the case with her predecessor, Kevin Annett. However on 26 January 2022 Murray secured $10.3 million in federal government funding over three years to support the Secretariat in these pointless searches.
In June 2022, Kimberly Murray left the Survivors Secretariat to become Special Interlocutor and was replaced as Executive Lead at the Secretariat by Laura Arndt, who now complains the $10.3 million dollars the Secretariat received during Murray's tenure has been exhausted.
Canadians might thus well ask why Brett Forester and the CBC are pressuring the federal government to hand over more hard-earned Canadian taxpayer dollars to the Survivors Secretariat when the Secretariat burned through $10.3 million dollars in three years with absolutely nothing to show for it other than a burgeoning complement of staff and advisors.
Kimberly Murray's failure to find missing or 'disappeared' children as Special Interlocutor
As noted above, Kimberly Murray left her Executive Lead position at the Survivors Secretariat after a year, and became a federal civil servant on 13 June 2022 when she was appointed by Order in Council as special adviser to the Minister of Justice, to be known as 'Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites associated with Indian Residential Schools'.
Murray was allocated a budget of $10 million dollars which she spent during the ensuing two and half years chiefly in hosting expensive Indigenous National Gatherings in major cities across Canada. Despite being a federal civil servant paid by Canadian taxpayers, as stated in her title Murray operated independently without any government oversight.
According to her affidavit in the Mohawk Mothers lawsuit, she set up her office as Special Interlocutor at Ohsweken on the Six Nations of the Grand River reserve, the same reserve at which Kevin Annett had carried out his GPR search and dig at the Mohawk Institute in 2011, and the same reserve on which the Survivors Secretariat where Murray had earlier been Executive Lead is located.
Setting up her office on the same reserve at which both she and Annett had already spectacularly failed to find any allegedly missing or 'disappeared' children seems a strange choice, and true to form, while situated on that reserve as Special Interlocutor, Kimberly Murray failed yet again to find a single missing child or, in fact, even to provide Canadians with the name of a single verifiably missing child. In fact on 21 March 2023, Murray let the cat out of the bag and told the Senate Committee on Indigenous Peoples that in fact there actually aren't any missing children when she told the Committee 'The children aren't missing; they're buried in the cemeteries'.
Why are Brett Forester and the CBC continuing to promote Kevin Annett's conspiracy theories by championing the Survivors Secretariat at the Mohawk Institute, and Kimberly Murray's deeply misleading final report?
Considering Kimberly Murray's unbroken record of failure at finding missing or 'disappeared' children, Canadians need to know why Brett Forester and the CBC are promoting Kevin Annett's conspiracy theories by demanding that Canadian taxpayers hand over yet more millions to continue searches for missing children at the former Mohawk Institute, and that taxpayers have a legal obligation to provide this funding on the basis of Kimberly Murray's final report as Special Interlocutor.
Canadians particularly need to know this in view of Kimberly Murray's deeply misleading final report, whose primary objective, like Kevin Annett's, is to have federal government and Catholic church officials prosecuted in an international court for crimes against humanity.
Under the Rome Statute the International Criminal Court (ICC) can only prosecute living individuals for crimes against humanity, and Kimberly Murray and Kevin Annett both allege that a continued cover-up by individuals in the federal government and the churches constitutes such a crime. Do Brett Forester and the CBC want to see Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, or Minister of Justice Arif Virani, or Pope Francis and Canadian Bishops, prosecuted for crimes against humanity at the ICC? On what evidence do Murray and Annett consider Trudeau, Virani, Pope Francis or Canadian Bishops could be prosecuted? No child is missing.
If Brett Forester and the CBC do not want to see federal government and church officials prosecuted by the ICC, should they not cease publishing articles pressuring the Minister of Justice to reply to Kimberly Murray's deeply misleading final report which echoes Kevin Annett's conspiracy theories and takes them to a new level?
It is interesting to note that whether Kimberly Murray was influenced by Kevin Annett or not, Annett clearly thinks she, and everyone else in Canada, has been. In his fake 'Ministerial Briefing', Annett claims credit for the entire missing children and unmarked burials fraud:
Agent: Sir, I'm a total realist. We've tended to be too dismissive of Kevin Annett. We've consistently underestimated his impact and his endurance. It's almost as if we've come to believe our own black ops propaganda about him, that he's irrelevant, a crazy, someone of no account. If any of that was true none of this would have happened, and he wouldn't have achieved what he has. The truth is that this one man has shaken the foundations of our country and even of the Vatican. He really began the whole global awareness of religious-sanctioned genocide and institutionalized child trafficking. He's the father of a movement that we don't even understand or appreciate yet.
Minister: What is that supposed to mean?
Agent: Well, look at the facts. Against every conceivable odd and virtually penniless, Annett not only exposed these crimes, rallied the survivors here and abroad and forced admissions of guilt, but he went on to begin a world-wide movement to disestablish – that's the word he uses – disestablish the institutions responsible. He may be one man but an idea can mobilize millions, sir. And the idea he has injected into the global body politic is that the existing systems of church and state must come down and be replaced by a new kind of authority, under the common law. He's launched a revolution, Minister.
Pause
Minister: You sound like he impresses you, Inspector.
Agent: I don't have to agree with him to respect him, Minister. But as for the fallout from this twenty five year campaign of his: in a word, it's inestimable.
In her final report's 42 Legal, Moral and Ethical Obligations, Kimberly Murray demands that this conspiracy initiated by Kevin Annett be funded by the federal government for the next 20 years; that millions if not billions in reparations be paid to families of missing children who were never missing; and that federal government and Catholic Church officials be prosecuted at the International Criminal Court for deliberately 'disappearing' children who actually never disappeared. Murray appears to have swallowed Kevin Annett's conspiracy theory whole, and taken it to a new level which could seriously damage the country financially and in many other ways.
It all boils down to one essential fact. Whether it's Kevin Annett with his conspiracy theory, or Kimberly Murray with hers, there are no missing Indian residential school children whose parents didn't know what happened to their child. No one has ever been able to provide the name of a single missing child.
Isn't it long past time Brett Forester and the CBC stopped promoting Kevin Annett and Kimberly Murray's conspiracy theories, and promoting funding for these pointless searches for missing children who aren't missing?
Thanks for reading. For more from this author read, Why has Canada twice been referred to the International Criminal Court on the basis of false claims about Indian residential schools?
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Watch the, "National Advisory Committee on Residential Schools Missing Children and Unmarked Graves" webinar on You Tube called, "Best Practises and Red Flags".
About 7 minutes into the video you will hear the sad tale told by Jacquie Bouvier, a Committee member, a member of the Survivors Circle and 3rd gen. IRS Survivor. Jacquie was born in 1952 and is now in her '70's. She attended Beauval and alleges she was abused there-No details of her abuse or abusers given in the video. Her Step Father apparently worked at the school at some point. Her Mother had also attended Beauval and was married previously in an arranged marriage by the school. When she was 90, Jacquie's Mum said she wanted a family ring with all 9 of her kid's birthstones on it. This is where its gets interesting.
Apparently the ring was to also have the stones of 2 infant girls from her 1st marriage, Jacquie's step sisters, whom Jacquie never knew had existed. One died at age 6 months in 1929 and the other at 9 Months Old in 1931. Note: neither of these infants were students! Her Mother took Jacquie to the COMMUNITY cemetary near the Beauval School. Indicating to an unmarked area of the cemetary she said, " I THINK this is where the girls are buried". So, an apparently bereaved Mother of 2 baby girls didn't know where they were buried? Never kept their graves marked or tended them? Seems odd doesn't it?
After Kamloops May 27, 2021 announcement, Jacquie came forward to join the Survivors Circle. Then she approached the Advisory Committee who helped her obtaìn the death certificates for her , "2 baby sisters". Yes, records of them exist! (No cause of death is mentioned in the video).
But now a GPR search of the Beauval cemetary was initiated and Jacquie waited to hear if they found her "missing baby sisters". You can find that video on the net too. Lo and behold, the searchers announced they found 93 unmarked graves! In a graveyard of all places! 79 children and 14 infants were "found"! (Undoubtedly these included Jacquie's non student step sisters).
Oh the trauma and sorrow and the anger towards the govt and church for the loss of these "missing" kids. No one in that video mentions that GPR cannot reliably detect graves, let alone indicate the ages of children. No one mentions the possible causes of deaths, it's left to one's imagination, hence the sorrow, trauma and anger. Even Kisha Supernant in the Advisory Committee video states exhumation is necessary and a full forensic examination is needed if the COMMUNITY wishes to proceed that far. Another presenter Emily Holland states about 1 hour into that video that, "Even if you exhume a GPR "hit" and find nothing, ITS NOT OVER! We have the oral testimonies of survivors as the Truth", suggesting searches should continue despite no evidence being found.
How many of these now unmarked graves are actually graves? How many contain children or infants remains? How many are non students, natives or non natives alike-its a COMMUNITY cemetary after all? How many are actually "missing" and were they murdered or did they die of natural causes ( as I assume Jacquie's sisters had died)? Why are taxpayers being forced to pay to find graves that may not belong to a native or a res school student, something which should be a family responsibility?
One more thing from the video-Emily Holland states, "if community searchers find bones that are older than say 500 years old and couldn't possibly be IRS students, don't tell anyone or leak it to the media. It will only increase "denialism". I guess that would be worse than finding nothing after excavating a GPR hit, but hey, they would still have their "Truth".
Nina says, “Forester's article also omits important information about Annett's own notorious 2011 GPR search …”
Brett Forester isn’t the only one who has omitted mention of Annett’s meddling at the Mohawk Institute. Kimberly Murray herself has been conspicuously silent on anything to do with Kevin Annett, even though as Nina points out, Murray and others in the TRC were clearly influenced by the background noise he’d created. In fact, CBC as a NETWORK has barely mentioned Annett’s name in the two+ decades he’s been causing mischief. Why? Because his obvious lunacy would taint the credibility of the orthodox IRS narrative.
What does it say that in the four volumes of her final report – nearly 2000 pages – Kimberly Murray doesn’t even MENTION Kevin Annett or reference his 2011 ‘work’ at the Mohawk Institute? Of course she’d never want to be associated with him, a crackpot repudiated by the Mohawks and every other First Nation in the country. And OF COURSE she’d never want to acknowledge the influence he’s had on people’s perceptions of residential schools.
But he IS a part of the story of the ostensibly ‘disappeared’ children, and it’s plainly dishonest for Murray and her collaborators to have left him completely out of the picture. In a $10-million-dollar “study” he SHOULD have been mentioned, and his theories and actions unequivocally denounced.
It's not hard to see why Kimberly Murray wouldn’t want to pronounce on the rantings of Kevin Annett, pro OR con. To her mind, it’s safest just to “disappear” Annett from the public consciousness. He makes her and her collaborators look like they, too, could be lying in service of an agenda.