Searching for Closure – Awacak helps find Indigenous children lost in Quebec’s healthcare system

By Patrick Quinn, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Nation An Indigenous-led organization called Awacak is expanding its outreach in Cree and Inuit communities to help 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-bas…