Awacak is an Indigenous-led organization that helps Cree and Inuit families find answers about their children who were hospitalized and never returned.
They work with the department of family support in Quebec’s Indigenous affairs ministry to access records under a provincial law enacted in 2021. Then known as Bill 79, the law is a response to the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls.
“When we search, we search with our hearts,” said Awacak’s Pikogan-based director Françoise Ruperthouse. “We try to find answers because I know what it does when we search and we don’t find them. It hurts so badly. We are always in waiting.”
Before Quebec’s law was adopted, Ruperthouse had worked for years trying to find two siblings lost in the healthcare system. Ruperthouse eventually located her sister in a Baie-Saint-Paul facility not long before she passed away in 2000, but she believes that the family could have enjoyed more time together if the law had arrived earlier.
Retired investigative journalist Anne Panasuk joined Awacak as a consultant after working with Innu families seeking their missing children and later with the government as it implemented the law. The provincial minister sought her advice in engaging with communities and to guide families requesting a search.
“I told them you have a trust problem and a transparency problem,” said Panasuk. “Bill 79 really unlocks the medical files – it’s mandatory to give out information. We can say to the families, all that has been found is going to be given back to you. Nothing is going to be hidden.”
After Panasuk produced a 20-minute segment for Radio-Canada’s Enquête program in 2015 about eight Innu children from Pakuashipi who never returned from hospital 40 years ago, the Atikamekw contacted her with their own stories. Later joined by the Anishinaabe, the First Nations began collaborating to seek answers.
Since Awacak was established five years ago, it’s reached Indigenous communities across the province through public gatherings, radio addresses and meetings with families. Nearly 250 searches have been launched, with 21 files now closed, including 10 in the last year.
“At the beginning it was a little difficult but now there’s a lot of cooperation,” Panasuk explained. “The problem is some documents don’t exist and hospitals were [formerly] private and religious. Those archives are sometimes in boxes under the bed of the priest.”
Sometimes there’s only a death certificate, containing the child’s date of birth and death, cause of death and to whom the body was returned. Two hospitals unlawfully destroyed documents, leaving no way to trace the deceased child. Awacak works with physicians who answer families’ questions about whether the treatment seemed adequate.
“Families would like to know if the child was well treated,” said Panasuk. “Was there someone there when they passed away? We have no answers for that. At least if they can bring home the body or do a ceremony it allows closure.”
While these children were often buried in common or unmarked graves, Awacak’s lawyers have helped families conduct five exhumations so far. Some cemetery managers have been so moved by these stories that they’ve offered free gravesites and tombstone engraving.
In 2024, the body of nine-year-old Juliette Rabbitskin was moved from La Tuque after nearly 50 years to be laid to rest in Mistissini. Her cousin Emily Rabbitskin told the Nation after the reburial, “It’s like a load from my soul was lifted.”
When Awacak made a presentation at a Cree Nation Government board council meeting in 2023, former Deputy Grand Chief Norman A. Wapachee shared a story about his sister Hattie, who remained at Roberval hospital in January 1956 with pneumonia after her two older brothers were discharged. The seven-month-old child passed away that April.
“When my parents went to Roberval to see the body, they were told to wait at the cemetery,” recalled Wapachee. “They stayed there all afternoon and it never arrived. The taxi had to return and they never got to see where it was buried. I never got to meet her but it impacted my life, wondering if she was still alive.”
Driving to Montreal for meetings over the years, Wapachee would think of Hattie whenever he passed Roberval. Consulting the hospital’s archives yielded little progress until Awacak entered the picture. Working primarily with Wapachee’s wife Anouk, Awacak eventually traced Hattie’s remains to a Catholic cemetery in Mashteuiatsh, near Saguenay.
“We went over to my parents’ place that evening,” said Wapachee. “Of course, my mom cried. She was relieved and happy. I remember her words: ‘After 67 years, I’m finally going to bed knowing where my baby is.’ My mom and dad passed away shortly after that.”
Since then, a public meeting in Mistissini resulted in other families initiating searches. Following a recent presentation in Waswanipi, Awacak intends to visit all other communities in both the Cree Nation and Nunavik in the coming months. The organization hopes to hire Cree and Inuit people to ensure cultural safety throughout the process.
Several missing Cree children may have gone to Ontario hospitals, where it isn’t yet mandatory to unlock medical and religious records. Similar situations occurred across Canada, wherever parents weren’t permitted to accompany their children. Indian Affairs agents could decide that it was too costly to return bodies to the communities while no information was given to families.
“It’s outrageous taking the baby like that,” Panasuk asserted. “They say, ‘We didn’t know where they were.’ I don’t accept that. People answer, ‘They knew where we were to take us for residential school.’ So we’re repairing things that shouldn’t have happened.”
With a property not far from Hattie’s unmarked grave in Mashteuiatsh, Wapachee has noticed many Cree and Inuit names in the cemetery. His family still hopes to locate Hattie’s exact location as “it would be nice to bring her home.”
“I’ll probably be there every other day in July,” said Wapachee. “Before Goose Break, we received a binder of all the research that was done – it was nice to put closure on that. I’m very happy my parents were able to find the truth of what happened.”