The province’s Ministry of Indigenous Relations has approved a $750,000 grant for the Lesser Slave Lake Indian Regional Council.
The announcement was put on Facebook for the public to see by MLA for Lesser Slave Lake Pat Rehn.
The grant money will be used to look at supporting community led engagement and research activities for the LSLIRC four member nations associated with both documented and undocumented deaths and burials of Indigenous children at three former residential schools in Joussard, Grouard and Lesser Slave Lake.
Shane Pospisil, Executive Director for the LSLIRC says “St Bernard’s operated from 1894-1957 and St. Bruno’s 1913-1969 and St. Peter’s was a smaller one.” Pospisil notes the bottom line is a lot of people from northern Alberta attended those schools so there’s a lot of trauma associated with it.
“The regional council is really appreciative of the provincial support with the announcement, being solid partners every step of the way as we developed a proposal.” Pospisil said.
The LSLIRC is already underway with activities in each community doing consultations with residential school survivors. “It’s not just the survivors, it’s the inter-generational trauma that has transferred from the residential school generations to a lot of our young people today and some of the struggles they have.” said Pospisil.
Preliminary stages of ground penetrating work is done with data collected. The data is being interpreted and analyzed internally and Pospisil says with the winter now set in “We have a number of sites we really haven’t looked at yet and that’s where we’ll pick up again in the spring of 2022.”
The LSLIRC’s member nations are: Driftpile, Kapawe’no, Sucker Creek, Swan River and Sawridge.
-Erika Rolling, Trending 55 Newsroom
