Province scraps name-change fee for residential school survivors

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This article was published 07/06/2023 (864 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Residential school survivors and their families will no longer have to pay to have their name changed to their traditional Indigenous name.

“At birth, these children were given names that connected them to their rich Indigenous cultures, only to have those names taken away when they entered the residential school system,” Government Services Minister James Teitsma said in a statement Wednesday.

“This change will allow those affected to proudly reclaim that important link to their families and heritage at no cost.”

The decision related to one of the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which demands governments scrap administrative fees for five years for people who had their names changed when in residential school.

The Vital Statistics Branch will cut the fees indefinitely and plans to work with Indigenous groups to create application forms and processes specific to survivors, Teitsma said.

Jennifer Wood of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation called the change overdue.

“When you’re not having your rightful name, you’re never going to feel like you’re standing and living in your true identity in your culture,” she said. “So you always feel a sense of — I’ll use the word ‘displacement.’”

Wood said her legal name is that of a missionary who went to her ancestor’s community.

“To hear that this is happening, that to me is reconciliation,” she said. “That, to me, is governments recognizing that perhaps it’s time to make things right.”

Manitoba amended the Vital Statistics Act in 2022 to expand the number of acceptable characters in name registration and include single names to line up with Indigenous cultural practices, a change also called for by the commission.

“Helping to reconnect residential school survivors and their families with their traditional names is an important step in moving reconciliation forward,” said Indigenous Reconciliation Minister Eileen Clarke.

Manitoba said the federal government should recognize these changes and include them on federally issued documents such as passports.

malak.abas@freepress.mb.ca