Much of the current state of troubled relations between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians is attributable to educational institutions and what they have taught, or failed to teach, over many generations. Despite this history—or, perhaps more correctly, because of its potential—the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) believes that education is also the key to reconciliation. Educating Canadians for reconciliation involves not only schools and post-secondary institutions but also dialogue forums and public history institutions such as museums and archives. Education must remedy the gaps in historical knowledge that perpetuate ignorance and racism.
But education for reconciliation must do even more. Survivors told us that Canadians must learn about the history and legacy of residential schools in ways that change both minds and hearts. At the Manitoba National Event in Winnipeg, Allan Sutherland said,
There are still a lot of emotions [that are] unresolved. People need to tell their stories. . . . We need the ability to move forward together, but you have to understand how it all began [starting with] Christopher Columbus, from Christianization, then colonization, and then assimilation. . . . If we put our minds and hearts to it, we can [change] the status quo.1
At the Commission’s Community Hearing in Thunder Bay, Ontario, in 2010, Esther Lachinette-Diabo said,
I’m doing this interview in hope that we could use this as an educational tool to educate our youth about what happened. . . . Maybe one day the Ministry of Education can work with the TRC and develop some kind of curriculum for Native Studies, Indigenous learning. So that not only Aboriginal people can understand, you know, what we had to go through—the experiences of all the Anishinaabe people that attended—but for the Canadian people as well to understand that the residential schools did happen. And through this sharing, they can understand and hear stories from Survivors like me.2
In Lethbridge, Alberta, in 2013, Charlotte Marten said,
I would like to see action taken as a result of the findings of this Commission. I would like to see the history of the residential school system be part of the school curriculum across Canada. I want my grandchildren and the future generations of our society to know the whole truth behind Canada’s residential school policy and how it destroyed generations of our people. It is my hope that by sharing the truth . . . it will help the public gain a better understanding of the struggles we face as First Nations.3
Non-Aboriginal Canadians hear about the problems faced by Aboriginal communities, but they have almost no idea how these problems developed. There is little understanding of how the federal government contributed to this reality through the residential schools and the policies and laws in place during their existence. Our education system, through omission or commission, has failed to teach this history. It bears a large share of the responsibility for the current state of affairs.
It became clear over the course of the Commission’s work that most adult Canadians have been taught little or nothing about the residential schools. More typically, they were taught that the history of Canada began when the first European explorers set foot in the New World. Nation building has been the main theme of Canada’s history curricula for a long time, and Aboriginal peoples, with a few notable exceptions, have been portrayed as bystanders, if not obstacles, to this enterprise.
Prior to 1970, school textbooks across the country depicted Aboriginal peoples as being either savage warriors or onlookers who were irrelevant to the more important history of Canada: the story of European settlement. Beginning in the 1980s, the history of Aboriginal peoples was sometimes cast in a more positive light, but the poverty and social dysfunction in Aboriginal communities were emphasized without any historical context to help students understand how or why these conditions came about. This omission has left most Canadians with the view that Aboriginal people were and are to blame for the situations in which they find themselves, as though there were no external causes. Aboriginal peoples have therefore been characterized as a social and economic problem that must be solved.
By the 1990s, textbooks emphasized the role of Aboriginal peoples as protestors advocating for rights. Most Canadians failed to understand or appreciate the significance of these rights, given the overriding perspective of Aboriginal assimilation in Canada’s education system.
Although textbooks have become more inclusive of Aboriginal perspectives over the past three decades, the role of Aboriginal peoples in Canadian history during much of the twentieth century remains invisible. Students learn something about Aboriginal peoples prior to contact and during the exploration, fur trade, and settlement periods. They learn about Métis resistance in the 1880s, and the signing of Treaties. Then Aboriginal peoples virtually disappear until the 1960s and 1970s, when they resurface as political and social justice activists. The defining period in between remains largely unmentioned.4 Thus much of the story of Aboriginal peoples, as seen through their own eyes, is still missing from Canadian history.
In the Commission’s view, all students—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal—need to learn that the history of this country did not begin with the arrival of Jacques Cartier on the banks of the St. Lawrence River. They need to learn about the Indigenous nations the Europeans met, about their rich linguistic and cultural heritage, about what they felt and thought as they dealt with early explorers like Samuel de Champlain and Pierre Gaultier de Varennes et de La Vérendrye, or with the representatives of the Hudson’s Bay Company. Canadians need to learn why Indigenous nations negotiated the Treaties and to understand that they negotiated with integrity and in good faith. They need to learn about why Aboriginal leaders and Elders still fight so hard to defend these Treaties, what these agreements represent to them, and why they have been ignored by European settlers or governments. They need to learn about what it means to have inherent rights, what those are for Aboriginal peoples, and what the settler government’s political and legal obligations are in those areas where Treaties were never negotiated. They need to learn why so many of these issues are ongoing. They need to learn about the Doctrine of Discovery—the politically and socially accepted basis for presumptive European claims to the land and riches of this country—and to understand that this same doctrine is now being repudiated around the world, most recently by the United Nations and the World Council of Churches.
Survivors have also said that knowing about these things is not enough. Our public education system also needs to influence behaviour by undertaking to teach our children—Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal—how to speak respectfully to, and about, each other in the future. Reconciliation is all about respect.
The Commission’s 2012 Interim Report made three recommendations directed at provincial and territorial governments:
Recommendation 4: The Commission recommends that each provincial and territorial government undertake a review of the curriculum materials currently in use in public schools to assess what, if anything, they teach about residential schools.
Recommendation 5: The Commission recommends that provincial and territorial departments of education work in concert with the Commission to develop age-appropriate educational materials about residential schools for use in public schools.
Recommendation 6: The Commission recommends that each provincial and territorial government work with the Commission to develop public education campaigns to inform the general public about the history and impact of residential schools in their respective jurisdictions.
At various times, the Commission met with provincial and territorial education ministers from across Canada. In July 2014, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada gave us an update on the status of curriculum-development commitments across the country.5 The Commission was encouraged to see that progress has been made. We note, however, that not all provinces and territories have yet made curriculum about residential schools mandatory, and not all courses cover the subject in depth.
The Northwest Territories and Nunavut have taken a leadership role in developing and implementing mandatory curriculum about residential schools for all high school students, in engaging Survivors directly in the development of new materials, and in ensuring that teachers receive appropriate training and support, including direct dialogues with Survivors. Working in partnership with the Legacy of Hope Foundation, the Governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut unveiled the new curriculum, The Residential School System in Canada: Understanding the Past—Seeking Reconciliation—Building Hope for Tomorrow, in October 2012.6 At the time of this writing, Yukon had begun the process of adapting the Northwest Territories and Nunavut materials for mandatory use in its territory. Among the provinces, Alberta has publicly declared that it is launching its own initiative to develop mandatory curriculum on the Treaties and residential schools for all students.
These education initiatives are significant, but it will be essential to ensure that momentum is not lost in the years following the end of the Commission’s mandate. To be successful over the long term, this and similar initiatives will require substantive and sustained support from provincial and territorial governments, educators, and local school districts. An ongoing commitment from ministers of education throughout the country is critical. The Commission notes that on July 9, 2014, the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada announced that education ministers
agreed to additional pan-Canadian work in Aboriginal education to take place over the next two years, which will focus on four key directional ideas: support for Aboriginal students interested in pursuing teaching as a career; development of learning resources on Canadian history and the legacy of Indian Residential Schools that could be used by teacher training programs; sharing of promising practices in Aboriginal education; and ongoing promotion of learning about Indian Residential Schools in K–12 education systems.7
In regions where curriculum and teacher training on residential schools have been introduced, it will be necessary to build on these early successes and evaluate progress on an ongoing basis. Where education about residential schools is minimal, provincial and territorial governments can benefit from the lessons learned in jurisdictions that have made this material a mandatory requirement.
The Commission notes that throughout the residential school era, Catholic and Protestant religious schools taught students only about their own religions. Students were ill prepared to understand or respect other religious or spiritual perspectives, including those of Aboriginal peoples. In our view, no religious school receiving public funding should be allowed to teach one religion to the complete exclusion of all other religions. This is consistent with the Supreme Court of Canada decision in S. L. v. Commission scolaire des Chênes in 2012. At issue was whether Québec’s mandatory Ethics and Religious Cultures Program, which was introduced in 2008 to replace Catholic and Protestant programs of religious and moral instruction with a comparative religions course taught from a neutral and objective perspective, violated the charter right of Catholic parents and children to be taught only Catholic religious beliefs.8 However, the court ruled,
Exposing children to a comprehensive presentation of various religions without forcing the children to join them does not constitute an indoctrination of students that would infringe the freedom of religion. . . . Furthermore, the early exposure of children to realities that differ from those in their immediate family environment is a fact of life in society. The suggestion that exposing children to a variety of religious facts in itself infringes on religious freedom or that of their parents amounts to a rejection of the multicultural reality of Canadian society and ignores the Quebec government’s obligations with regard to public education.9
The Commission believes that religious diversity courses must be mandatory in all provinces and territories. Any religious school receiving public funding must be required to teach at least one course on comparative religious studies, which must include a segment on Aboriginal spiritual beliefs and practices.
62) We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal peoples, and educators, to:
i. Make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada a mandatory education requirement for Kindergarten to Grade Twelve students.
ii. Provide the necessary funding to post-secondary institutions to educate teachers on how to integrate Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods into classrooms.
iii. Provide the necessary funding to Aboriginal schools to utilize Indigenous knowledge and teaching methods in classrooms.
iv. Establish senior-level positions in government at the assistant deputy minister level or higher dedicated to Aboriginal content in education.
63) We call upon the Council of Ministers of Education, Canada to maintain an annual commitment to Aboriginal education issues, including:
i. Developing and implementing Kindergarten to Grade Twelve curriculum and learning resources on Aboriginal peoples in Canadian history, and the history and legacy of residential schools.
ii. Sharing information and best practices on teaching curriculum related to residential schools and Aboriginal history.
iii. Building student capacity for intercultural understanding, empathy, and mutual respect.
iv. Identifying teacher-training needs relating to the above.
64) We call upon all levels of government that provide public funds to denominational schools to require such schools to provide an education on comparative religious studies, which must include a segment on Aboriginal spiritual beliefs and practices developed in collaboration with Aboriginal Elders.
The Commission believes that to be an effective force for reconciliation, curriculum about residential schools must be part of a broader history education that integrates First Nations, Inuit, and Métis voices, perspectives, and experiences, and that builds common ground between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. The education system itself must be transformed into one that rejects the racism embedded in colonial systems of education and treats Aboriginal and Euro-Canadian knowledge systems with equal respect.10
This is consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which articulates the state’s responsibility with regard to public education and the promotion of respectful relationships between citizens.
Indigenous peoples have the right to the dignity and diversity of their cultures, traditions, histories and aspirations which shall be appropriately reflected in education and public information [Article 15:1].
States shall take effective measures, in consultation and cooperation with the indigenous peoples concerned, to combat prejudice and eliminate discrimination and to promote tolerance, understanding and good relations among indigenous peoples and all other segments of society [Article 15:2].
Fully implementing this national education framework will take many years, but it will ensure that Aboriginal children and youth see themselves and their cultures, languages, and histories respectfully reflected in the classroom. Non-Aboriginal learners will benefit as well. Taught in this way, all students, both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, will gain historical knowledge while also developing respect and empathy for each other. Both elements will be vital to supporting reconciliation in the coming years.
Developing respect for, and an understanding of, the situation of others is an important but often ignored part of the reconciliation process. Survivors’ testimonies compelled those who listened to think deeply about what justice really means in the face of mass human rights violations. Teaching and learning about the residential schools are difficult for educators and students alike. They can bring up feelings of anger, grief, shame, guilt, and denial. But they can also shift understanding and alter worldviews.11
Education for reconciliation requires not only age-appropriate curriculum but also ensuring that teachers have the necessary skills, supports, and resources to teach Canadian students about the residential school system in a manner that fosters constructive dialogue and mutual respect. Educating the heart as well as the mind helps young people to become critical thinkers who are also engaged, compassionate citizens.12
In 2008, Ottawa teacher Sylvia Smith, troubled by the lack of knowledge about residential schools in the Ontario education system, created Project of Heart. This hands-on collaborative approach to learning about residential schools combines history, art, and social action. The project grew, and eventually hundreds of schools and community groups across the country participated.
Through Project of Heart, students and teachers have come together with Survivors and Elders to learn about the history and legacy of residential schools and to find out more about Aboriginal languages, values, cultural traditions, and teachings. Together they have created a national network of commemorative works that remember and honour those children who did not return home from the residential schools, and all Survivors. By bearing witness, the project enables participants to transform empathy into action and solidarity on social justice issues affecting the lives of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples across the country.13
In 2011, Ms. Smith won the Governor General’s Award for Excellence in Teaching for her work on Project of Heart. In a subsequent interview, she spoke of the importance of young people learning the truth of their own history and using this learning as the basis for action.
Change doesn’t happen by just wanting things to change. Caring isn’t enough. Caring is good, but it’s not enough. We actually have to do something with our caring, and young people understand that. Students want to inherit a world that’s better than the one they’ve got right now. Once they actually get their feet dirty, once they actually start doing these kinds of things, it’s catching. It travels from student to student, it travels to the schools, and it travels outside the school. I think Project of Heart actually has proven that. We’ve got schools that have adopted this in most of the provinces, or church groups, or whatever. So you know you’ve got a good thing when people can make it their own, and when it can be contextualized to meet the needs of that particular group. . . . This kind of learning is something we can’t get from books. A lot of our teaching experiences don’t touch on the heart and the spirit. And yet, as teachers, I think that we all know that the affective component is the most important component. It’s what stays with you . . . [W]e can teach empathy, we can teach compassion, we can teach social justice through history.14
The Commission has been privileged to see many of the works created by the Project of Heart. At the TRC’s Final Event in June 2015 in Ottawa, the Commission inducted Ms. Smith as an Honorary Witness in recognition of her leadership in education for reconciliation.
Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth are also finding their own ways to learn about the residential school history and legacy. Through dialogue, they are building new relationships that strengthen mutual respect and initiate action.
At the Alberta National Event, a youth delegation from Feathers of Hope, a project sponsored by Ontario’s Provincial Advocate for Children and Youth, offered an expression of reconciliation. Samantha Crowe said,
Feathers of Hope began as a First Nations youth forum, but it quickly [became] a movement of hope, healing, and positive change within northern Ontario’s First Nations communities. You spoke passionately about wanting to learn about the past, and said that First Nations and non-First Nations people alike need to understand our history, and the impacts it still has on everything around us. . . . First Nations and non-First Nations people need to understand how colonization, racism, [and] residential schools still continue to negatively impact the quality of life in our communities.
Everyone, especially the young people . . . need to learn of Canada’s history, of our past, to truly try and understand our present. This needs to be taught in school, but it also needs to be heard first-hand from our family, our friends, and our other community members. This will begin the journey of healing together as a family or as a community because we can no longer live [with] a silence that hides our pain. So while youth want to know of their past, they are ready to move forward. They understand they need positive change, but they don’t want to do this alone. We all need to come together so we can share, so we can grow, and then we can uplift one another, because that’s what reconciliation is about.15
Learning about the residential schools’ history is crucial to reconciliation, but it can be effective only if Canadians also learn from this history in terms of repairing broken trust, strengthening a sense of civic responsibility, and spurring remedial and constructive action.16 In the digital world, where students have ready access to a barrage of information concerning Treaties, Aboriginal rights, or historical wrongs such as the residential schools, they must know how to assess the credibility of these sources for themselves. As active citizens, they must be able to engage in debates on these issues, armed with real knowledge and deepened understanding about the past.
Understanding the ethical dimension of history is especially important. Students must be able to make ethical judgments about the actions of their ancestors while recognizing that the moral sensibilities of the past may have been quite different from their own. They must be able to make informed decisions about what responsibility today’s society has to address historical injustices.17 This ethical awareness will ensure that tomorrow’s citizens both know and care about the injustices of the past as they relate to their own futures.
For reconciliation to thrive in the coming years, it will also be necessary for federal, provincial, and territorial governments, universities, and funding agencies to invest in and support new research on reconciliation. Over the course of the Commission’s work, a wide range of research projects across the country have examined the meaning, concepts, and practices of reconciliation. Yet there remains much to learn about the circumstances and conditions in which reconciliation either fails or flourishes. Equally important, there are rich insights into healing and reconciliation that emerge from the research process itself. Two research projects sponsored by the Commission illustrate this point.
Through a TRC-sponsored project at the Centre for Youth and Society at the University of Victoria, seven Aboriginal youth researchers embarked on a digital storytelling project, “Residential Schools Resistance Narratives: Significance and Strategies for Indigenous Youth.” The project enabled youth researchers to learn about the critical role that resistance and resilience played in the residential schools and beyond, but it also allowed them to reflect on their own identities and roles within their families and communities. One youth researcher said that “what started as a research job turned into a personal hunt for knowledge of my own family’s history with residential schools.” Others noted the importance of respecting and incorporating ceremony and protocols into their digital storytelling project. Asma Antoine, the project coordinator, reported that the group learned the importance of
knowing that when speaking to a Survivor . . . you have to hear their past before you can hear their understanding of resistance. This project allowed the group [to have] a learning process that weaves [together] traditional [Indigenous] and Western knowledge to build our stories of resistance. . . . This research project has ignited a fire that shows in each digital story. The passion of resistance that validates the survival and resiliency of First Nations people and communities provides hope for healing and reconciliation over the next seven generations.18
In 2012, a digital storytelling project was undertaken by Aboriginal women at the Prairie Women’s Health Centre of Excellence, “Nitâpwewininân: Ongoing Effects of Residential Schools on Aboriginal Women—Towards Inter-generational Reconciliation.” Consistent with the use of ceremony and protocols throughout the project, the first workshop began with a pipe ceremony, followed by a Sharing Circle in which participants talked about their lives and group members discussed their individual and collective need for support. They later moved on to making videos of their individual stories, which were screened in March 2012 at the University of Winnipeg.19 One of the participants, Lorena Fontaine, said,
Reconciliation is about stories and our ability to tell stories. I think the intellectual part of ourselves wants to start looking for words to define reconciliation. And then there is the heart knowledge that comes from our life experiences. It’s challenging to connect the two and relate it to reconciliation. . . . Without even thinking of the term reconciliation, I’m reminded about the power of story. . . . [People who watched the videos] said that when they saw the faces of Aboriginal women and heard their voices in the videos they understood assimilation in a different way. They felt the impact of assimilation. . . . It’s far more powerful to have Aboriginal peoples talk about the impact of assimilation and hope for reconciliation than having words written down in a report.20
Research is vital to reconciliation. It provides insights and practical examples of why and how educating Canadians about the diverse concepts, principles, and practices of reconciliation contributes to healing and transformative social change.
The benefits of research extend beyond addressing the legacy of residential schools. Research on the reconciliation process can inform how Canadian society can mitigate intercultural conflicts, strengthen civic trust, and build social capacity and practical skills for long-term reconciliation. First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples have an especially strong contribution to make to this work.
Research partnerships between universities and communities or organizations are fruitful collaborations and can provide the necessary structure to document, analyze, and report research findings on reconciliation for a broader audience.
65) We call upon the federal government, through the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, and in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, post-secondary institutions and educators, and the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation and its partner institutions, to establish a national research program with multi-year funding to advance understanding of reconciliation.
Education for reconciliation must happen not only in formal education settings, such as elementary and secondary schools and post-secondary institutions, but also in more informal places. One of the ways that the Commission fulfilled its public education mandate was through forums such as National Event Education Days and Youth Dialogues. The Commission believes that establishing a strong foundation for reconciliation depends on the achievement of individual self-respect and mutual respect between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians. Although this is true for adults, it is particularly urgent for young people; they are the lifeblood of reconciliation into the future.
Mary Ellen Turpel-Lafond is a member of the Muskeg Lake Cree Nation, a former judge of the Saskatchewan Provincial Court, and now the British Columbia representative for children and youth. Her children’s great-great-grandparents attended the St. Michael’s Residential School in Duck Lake, Saskatchewan.21 In a written submission following her attendance at the TRC’s Victoria Regional Event in April, 2012, she noted that the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child and the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples are essential tools for “[a]pplying a human rights lens to Aboriginal children’s lives [that] encourages us to expand our understanding about past injustices, to recognize the full extent of abuses of their human rights, and to seek ways to remedy those abuses.”22 With regard to the importance of engaging children and youth in reconciliation, she said, “There are many dimensions to reconciliation, which can occur within families, communities, Canadian society and the international community. . . . There is developing awareness about children’s potential role in societal reconciliation processes and the need to pay particular attention to children’s special considerations.”23
The Commission concurs with these findings. There is also a growing international consensus that children and youth must be involved in the reconciliation process itself.24 Findings from earlier truth and reconciliation commissions indicate that children have often been marginalized in the very processes that are designed to remedy the impacts of violence on young lives. As both victims and witnesses of violence, children and youth bring unique perspectives to what is needed to address intergenerational harms and to promote reconciliation in their families, their communities, and broader society.25
At the Saskatchewan National Event, Grade Eight student Brooklyn Rae, who attended the Education Day, said, “I think it’s really important for youth to voice their opinions, to not only prove to themselves that they can, that their voice is important, but to prove to adults that they have a voice and that they have a strong opinion that is important in the world.”26 Elder Barney Williams, a member of the TRC’s Survivor Committee and one of the panelists at the Education Day Youth Dialogue, said,
I think more and more people are realizing that the engagement of youth is crucial. For me, as a Survivor, I’m really impressed with how much they knew. I was very impressed with the type of questions the audience asked. It tells me, as somebody who’s carried this pain for over sixty-eight years, that there’s hope. Finally there’s hope on the horizon and it’s coming from the right place. It’s coming from the youth.27
The Commission agrees. We believe that children and youth must have a strong voice in developing reconciliation policy, programs, and practices into the future. It is therefore vital to develop appropriate public education strategies to support the ongoing involvement of children and youth in age-appropriate reconciliation initiatives and projects at community, regional, and national levels.
Through direct participation in the TRC’s National Events, thousands of young people and their teachers across the country had the opportunity to learn about the residential schools and think about their own role and responsibility in reconciliation. The TRC’s Education Days were designed specifically for elementary and high school students and their teachers. Young people had the opportunity to listen to, and interact with, Elders and Survivors. They attended interactive workshops where they learned about the residential school history, resilience, and healing through the arts—painting, carving, storytelling, music, and film. They visited the Learning Places to walk through the Legacy of Hope Foundation display, “One Hundred Years of Loss,” and to see posters and archival photographs of the residential schools from their own region.
Education Days were well attended. For example, at the British Columbia National Event in Vancouver, approximately 5,000 elementary and high school students from across the province spent the day at the National Event. In advance of Education Day, teachers in each region were given orientation materials to help prepare their students and themselves. In total, close to 15,000 young people across the country have participated in such Education Days, most with a commitment to take what they learned and witnessed back to their home schools to share with thousands more of their fellow students.
Over the course of the TRC’s mandate, the Commission worked in partnership with the International Center for Transitional Justice’s (ICTJ) Children and Youth Program to host a series of small retreats and workshops. Youth Dialogues were also integrated into Education Day activities at National Events. Their purpose was to engage youth in dialogue and to support their efforts to make their own submissions to the TRC. For example, in October 2010, the Commission co-sponsored a retreat for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth near Vancouver, British Columbia. Young people came together to learn about the residential schools, talk with Elders, and share team-building activities. One young participant said that during the retreat, “we learn[ed] more about each other and the past. It’s really important because it actually teaches us, the stories that we heard it touched us, and it inspired us to become better people.”28
In June 2011, Molly Tilden and Marlisa Brown, two young women who attended this retreat, produced their own video documentary, Our Truth: The Youth Perspective on Residential Schools. The production featured interviews with their classmates in Yellowknife about what they knew about the residential schools. They presented the video at the Northern National Event in Inuvik, Northwest Territories.29 Virginie Ladisch, director of ICTJ’s Children and Youth Program, summarized what the two young women found and the subsequent impact of the project.
The answers are shocking: some students had no knowledge, or simply complete indifference; those are largely the non-Aboriginal youth interviewed. Other students talk about the enduring impact they see in terms of high rates of alcoholism, suicide, and teenage pregnancies.
So there’s a huge disconnect in terms of how the young people view the relevance of this legacy and what knowledge they have of it. When that video was shared with people involved in designing the secondary school curriculum for the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, they could not believe that their youth had such reactions.
So the curriculum on residential schools, which was previously barely addressed in the classroom, was revised to be a mandatory 25 hours of instruction, of which Ms. Brown and Ms. Tilden’s video is a critical component.30
In October 2011, the TRC–ICTJ initiative prepared and supported a group of Mi’kmaq youth reporters at the Atlantic National Event in Halifax, Nova Scotia. They interviewed Survivors and documented the TRC event. At a follow-up retreat in the community, the young reporters discussed their experiences and produced a documentary called Our Legacy, Our Hope.31 In 2012, the documentary was presented at the Youth Dialogue during the TRC’s National Event in Saskatchewan.32 Some of the youth also presented this documentary to international policymakers at the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues in 2012.33
The Commission’s interactions with youth indicated that young people care deeply about the past. They understand that knowing the whole story about Canada’s history is relevant for today and crucial for their future. In a Youth Dialogue forum at the TRC British Columbia National Event, Rory Shade told the Commission,
I strongly believe that all youth should learn of what happened with the residential schools . . . because it is a part of our history as a nation. We cannot progress as a society until we learn from the mistakes made in the past. . . . Knowledge is power and knowledge should be shared. The history and impacts of the residential school system must be taught because to deny a part of our history simply because it is unpleasant or controversial means to deny ourselves the chance to grow as a society. . . . Reconciliation is the process of accepting what happened and growing from it. . . . We must listen to the testimonies of those who survived such events. . . . We must learn to live together, and to do that, we must first reconcile with our past.34
In an expression of reconciliation made to the TRC at the Alberta National Event on March 27, 2014, by a group of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth from the Centre for Global Citizenship Education and Research in Edmonton, one of the non-Aboriginal youth, Hanshi Liu, told us about their project. First, the group—made up of youth from First Nations reserves, the rural communities of High Prairie and Fort MacLeod, and the city of Edmonton—spent a month studying and talking about residential schools and their shared history. They then held a virtual town hall where over 300 students talked about their vision for reconciliation.
Emerald Blesse from Little River Cree Nation told us that “youth believe that reconciliation is the way to re-establish lost trust and open doors to positive and productive communications. When we affirm every culture’s pride in their heritage, healing can take place.” Hayley Grier-Stewart, representing the Kainai, Siksika, Tsuu T’ina, and Stony First Nations, said,
The youth believe that within our communities, we need to teach and create awareness, cultural appreciation, as well as healing and restoration. If we introduce youth to the culture at a young age in our schools, through curriculum and the practice of restorative justice, it will teach the younger generation to be proactive instead of reactive.
Métis youth Shelby Lachlan said,
The youth of Alberta believe that in order to move forward, towards healing and reconciliation, it is important for action to be taken on a national and provincial level. First we must re-establish trust between these two [Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal] collectives, and through the honouring, acknowledgement, and respect of all Treaties and settlements, we believe this can be achieved.
Hanshi Liu then spoke again.
We, the youth of Alberta, came together as a diverse and dynamic group. With representatives from Treaty 6, 7, and 8, a Métis settlement, and non-Aboriginal communities, together we created our vision for the future. This will serve as hope for our province and nations as we seek to facilitate healing and reconciliation for the Survivors of the Indian residential school system. This will take the commitment of multiple generations and many stakeholders, but when reconciliation is achieved, it will make for a better Canada. Today, we [the youth] are 11% of the population . . . [but] we are 100% of the future and we will be a powerful ally. We only have one request. We want to be an active part of the conversation. We want to be an active part of the solution. We want to be part of making that better, stronger Canada that everyone is proud to call home.35
This project is one example of the significant work being undertaken by non-profit organizations that work with youth on issues related to intercultural understanding, reconciliation, and peace building. There are many others across the country.
The Canadian Roots Exchange began a Youth Reconciliation Initiative in 2012. This nationwide initiative provides Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth with volunteer opportunities to work together on reconciliation and education activities in their region. The initiative provides youth with leadership development, experience delivering community workshops, opportunities to plan and organize reciprocal exchanges, and participation in a national leadership exchange or youth conference.36
In 2014, Reconciliation Canada introduced a new youth program, “Through Our Eyes: Changing the Canadian Lens.” The program provides opportunities for youth from diverse communities in British Columbia to build leadership and develop filmmaking and video production skills while learning about residential schools and the truth and reconciliation process. Participants also received training to deliver reconciliation dialogue workshops.37
Youth forums and dialogues are a vital component of education for reconciliation. Non-profit organizations can play a key role in providing ongoing opportunities for Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal youth to participate in intercultural dialogue and work actively together to foster reconciliation.
66) We call upon the federal government to establish multi-year funding for community-based youth organizations to deliver programs on reconciliation, and establish a national network to share information and best practices.
Museums and archives, as sites of public memory and national history, have a key role to play in national reconciliation. As publicly funded institutions, museums and archives in settler colonial states such as Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and the United States have interpreted the past in ways that have excluded or marginalized Aboriginal peoples’ cultural perspectives and historical experience. Museums have traditionally been thought of as places where a nation’s history is presented in neutral, objective terms. Yet, as history that had formerly been silenced was revealed, it became evident that Canada’s museums had told only part of the story.38
In a similar vein, archives have been part of the “architecture of imperialism”—institutions that held the historical documents of the state.39 As Canada confronts its settler colonial past, museums and archives have been gradually transforming from institutions of colony and empire into more inclusive institutions that better reflect the full richness of Canadian history.
Political and legal developments on international and national fronts have contributed to this change. Around the globe, the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples has resulted in the growing recognition that Indigenous peoples have the right to be self-determining peoples and that the state has a duty to protect Indigenous traditional knowledge and cultural rights. The Declaration also establishes that actions by the state that affect Indigenous peoples require their free, prior, and informed consent. States have an obligation to take effective measures to protect the rights of Indigenous peoples or to make reparations where traditional knowledge or cultural rights have been violated. These provisions have significant implications for national museums and archives and for the public servants who work in them.40
The Commission emphasizes that several articles under the Declaration have particular relevance for national museums and archives in Canada. These include:
• Indigenous peoples have the right to practise and revitalize their cultural traditions and customs. This includes the right to maintain, protect and develop the past, present and future manifestations of their cultures, such as archaeological and historical sites, artefacts, designs, ceremonies, technologies and visual and performing arts and literature [Article 11:1].
• States shall provide redress through effective mechanisms which may include restitution, developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples, with respect to their cultural, intellectual, religious and spiritual property taken without their free, prior and informed consent or in violation of their laws, traditions and customs [Article 11:2].
• Indigenous peoples have the right to manifest, practise, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies; the right to maintain, protect and have access in privacy to their religious and cultural sites; the right to use and control of their ceremonial objects; and the right to the repatriation of their human remains [Article 12:1].
• States shall seek to enable the access and/or repatriation of ceremonial objects and human remains in their possession through fair, transparent and effective mechanisms developed in conjunction with indigenous peoples concerned [Article 12:2].
The Declaration, in conjunction with Section 35 of Canada’s Constitution Act, 1982, which recognizes and affirms existing Aboriginal and Treaty rights, and various court rulings related to Aboriginal rights have fundamentally altered the landscape in Canada’s public history institutions. In light of court decisions that have declared that the principle of the honour of the Crown must be upheld by the state in all its dealings with Aboriginal peoples and that Aboriginal peoples’ oral history must be “placed on an equal footing” with written historical documents, national museums and archives have been compelled to respond accordingly.41 The governance structures, policies, ethical codes, and daily operations of national museums and archives have had to adapt to accommodate the constitutional and legal realities of Canada’s changing relationship with Aboriginal peoples.42
The 1996 Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples made a specific recommendation to Canada’s museums.
Museums and cultural institutions [should] adopt ethical guidelines governing all aspects of collection, disposition, display and interpretation of artifacts related to Aboriginal culture and heritage, including the following:
a) Involving Aboriginal people in drafting, endorsing and implementing the guidelines;
b) Creating inventories of relevant holdings and making such inventories freely accessible to Aboriginal people;
c) Cataloguing and designating appropriate use and display of relevant holdings;
d) Repatriating, on request, objects that are sacred or integral to the history and continuity of particular nations and communities;
e) Returning human remains to the family, community or nation of origin, on request, or consulting with Aboriginal advisers on appropriate disposition, where remains cannot be associated with a particular nation;
f) Ensuring that Aboriginal people and communities have effective access to cultural education and training opportunities available through museums and cultural institutions [Recommendation 3.6.4].43
In the years following the Royal Commission’s report, museums across the country have implemented many of its recommendations.44 Many have worked with communities to repatriate human remains or cultural artifacts. For some institutions, consultation and collaborative partnerships with Aboriginal communities have become standard practice, and Aboriginal internships and other training opportunities have been established. Yet more is still needed, even as museums are faced with significant challenges in obtaining adequate and stable multi-year funding to properly support these critical initiatives.45
Over the past three decades, Canadian museums that used to tell the story of the nation’s past with little regard for the histories of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples have been slowly transforming. Although dialogue between museums and Aboriginal peoples has improved substantially since the 1980s, the broader debate continues over whose history is told and how it is interpreted. Here, we focus on two national museums: the Canadian Museum of History, formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization;46 and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights. As national public history institutions, they bear a particular responsibility to retell the story of Canada’s past so that it reflects not only diverse cultures, histories, and experiences of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples but also the collective violence and historical injustices that they have suffered at the hands of the state. It is instructive to examine how these two public history institutions plan to interpret the history of Aboriginal peoples and address historical injustices in the coming years.
Appearing before the House of Commons Standing Committee on Canadian Heritage in June 2013, Mark O’Neill, president and chief executive officer of the Canadian Museum of Civilization Corporation, acknowledged that many important aspects and milestones of Canadian history—including the residential schools—have been missing from the museum.
[P]erhaps the most egregious flaw in the Canada Hall is its starting point. If you’ve been there, you will know that its telling of our national story begins not with the arrival of First Peoples but with the arrival of Europeans in the eleventh century. Colonization as a term or concept is not mentioned in Canada Hall. This is something we intend to correct. Canadians made it very clear to us during the public engagement process that the voices and the experiences of First Peoples must have a place in any narrative of Canadian history. . . . Canadians want us to be comprehensive, frank and fair in our presentation of their history. They want us to examine both the good and the bad from our past. We were urged to foster a sense of national pride without ignoring our failings, mistakes and controversies.47
In July 2013, the Canadian Museum of Civilization and its partner, the Canadian War Museum, released a joint research strategy intended to guide the research activities at both institutions until 2023. “Memory and commemoration” are a key research theme; objectives include the presentation of competing and contentious historical narratives of Confederation and the two world wars, and the use of “selected commemorations to explore concepts of myth, memory, and nation.” The museums intended to “present honestly, but respectfully, for public understanding issues of contention or debate . . . [through] deliberate exploration of traumatic pasts (e.g. Africville or residential schools).”48
Drawing on research showing that Canadians valued their “personal and family connections to history,” the Canadian Museum of History said that it intended to “explore the realities of contemporary life for Canada’s First Peoples [including] cultural engagements with modernity, environmental change, and globalization, evolving concepts of tradition, political mobilization, and new avenues of social expression . . . [and] the impact of rapid change in Canada’s North, especially for Inuit.”49 Another key research theme is “First Peoples,” with a particular focus on Aboriginal histories.
The histories and cultures of Aboriginal peoples are central to all Canadians’ understanding of their shared past. Respectful exploration of the interwoven, often difficult histories of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Peoples is a responsible, timely contribution to contemporary Canada, and to global understanding of Aboriginal Peoples. . . . There are four principal objectives in exploring and sharing Aboriginal narratives. . . . 1) Represent Aboriginal histories and cultures within broader Canadian narratives . . . 2) Explore inter-cultural engagement and its continuing impacts . . . 3) Broaden understanding of Aboriginal history before European contact . . . [and] 4) Deepen efforts to support First Peoples’ stewardship.50
We are encouraged to note that much of what the museum’s research strategy emphasizes is consistent with our own findings: Canadians, including youth and teachers, think they should learn about the history and legacy of residential schools, and about Aboriginal history more broadly. We take particular note of the prominence given to presenting both the positive and negative aspects of Canada’s history, demonstrating the relevance of the past to the present, including marginalized voices and perspectives, encouraging collaboration, and making connections between personal and public history.
As a national public history institution, the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg is mandated to “explore the subject of human rights, with special but not exclusive reference to Canada, in order to enhance the public’s understanding of human rights, to promote respect for others, and to encourage reflection and dialogue.”51 Speaking at the TRC’s Forum at the National Research Centre in Vancouver on March 3, 2011, CMHR president and chief executive officer Stuart Murray talked about the museum’s vision for, and role in, national reconciliation. He emphasized the prominent role of the CMHR’s First Nations, Inuit, and Métis advisors, as well as the Elders Advisory Council, Aboriginal Youth Council, and the broader Aboriginal community, in the planning and programs developed by the museum.52
Given the deep controversies that exist regarding the history of the residential school system, it is perhaps not surprising that the CMHR was criticized by the Southern Chiefs Organization in Manitoba in June 2013 after media reports that the museum would not “label human rights violations against First Nations as genocide.” From the perspective of the Southern Chiefs Organization, the museum was “sanitizing the true history of Canada’s shameful treatment of First Nations.”53 Stuart Murray issued a statement on July 26, 2013, clarifying the museum’s position.
In the Museum, we will examine the gross and systemic human rights violation of Indigenous peoples. This will include information about the efforts of the Aboriginal community, and others, to gain recognition of these violations as genocide—and we will use that word. We will look at the ways this recognition can occur when people combat denial and work to break the silence surrounding such horrific abuses. . . . We have chosen, at present, not to use the word “genocide” in the title for one of the exhibits about this experience, but will be using the term in the exhibit itself when describing community efforts for this recognition. Historical fact and emerging information will be presented to help visitors reach their own conclusions. While a museum does not have the power to make declarations of genocide, we can certainly encourage—through ongoing partnership with the Indigenous community itself—an honest examination of Canada’s human rights history, in hopes that respect and reconciliation will prevail.54
The museum signalled its intention to create opportunities for Canadians to engage in a much broader and long-overdue public dialogue about the issue of genocide as it relates to the residential school system. The CMHR envisioned creating a public education venue for teaching all Canadians to think more critically about the history of human rights violations against Aboriginal peoples.
Speaking about the forthcoming 2017 commemoration of Canada’s Confederation, Murray observed that Canada’s human rights record is not unblemished, and that
for many Aboriginal communities, this is not necessarily an event that warrants celebration. But by looking honestly and openly at our past, by engaging a diversity of voices and perspectives, and by celebrating what has been accomplished to overcome these mistakes, we will serve to make our nation more united, more proud, and more just. We can use this anniversary to continue on a journey of reconciliation.55
The Commission believes that, as Canada’s 150th anniversary approaches in 2017, national reconciliation is the most suitable framework to guide commemoration of this significant historical benchmark in Canada’s history. This intended celebration can be an opportunity for Canadians to take stock of the past, celebrating the country’s accomplishments without shirking responsibility for its failures. Fostering more inclusive public discourse about the past through a reconciliation lens would open up new and exciting possibilities for a future in which Aboriginal peoples take their rightful place in Canada’s history as founding nations who have strong and unique contributions to make to this country.
In the Commission’s view, there is an urgent need in Canada to develop historically literate citizens who understand why and how the past is relevant to their own lives and the future of the country. Museums have an ethical responsibility to foster national reconciliation, and not simply tell one party’s version of the past. This can be accomplished by representing the history of the residential schools and of Aboriginal peoples in ways that invite multiple, sometimes conflicting, perspectives, yet ultimately facilitate empathy, mutual respect, and a desire for reconciliation that is rooted in justice.
The Canadian Museum of History and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, working collaboratively with Aboriginal peoples, regional and local museums, and the Canadian Museums Association, should take a leadership role in making reconciliation a central theme in the commemoration of the 150th anniversary of Canada’s Confederation in 2017.
It must be noted that although we have focused on national museums here, regional and local museums also have a critical role to play in creating opportunities for Canadians to examine the historical injustices suffered by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples, engage in public dialogue about what has been done and what remains to be done to remedy these harms, and reflect on the spirit and intent of reconciliation. Through their exhibits, education outreach, and research programs, all museums are well positioned to contribute to education for reconciliation.
67) We call upon the federal government to provide funding to the Canadian Museums Association to undertake, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, a national review of museum policies and best practices to determine the level of compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and to make recommendations.
68) We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, and the Canadian Museums Association to mark the 150th anniversary of Canadian Confederation in 2017 by establishing a dedicated national funding program for commemoration projects on the theme of reconciliation.
As Canada’s national archives, Library and Archives Canada (LAC) has a dual function with regard to its holdings on Aboriginal peoples. It is both a public history institution tasked with making documents relevant to Aboriginal history accessible to the public, and it is the custodian of federal government departmental historical records.
In 2005, LAC issued a “Collection Development Framework,” which set out the principles and practices that would guide the institution’s acquisition and preservation of its holdings. The framework made specific commitments regarding materials related to Aboriginal peoples.
LAC recognizes the contributions of Aboriginal peoples to the documentary heritage of Canada, and realizes that, in building its collection of materials, it must take into account the diversity of Aboriginal cultures, the relationship the Government of Canada has with Aboriginal peoples, and the unique needs and realities of Aboriginal communities. The development of a national strategy will be done in consultation and collaboration with Aboriginal communities and organizations, and will respect the ways in which indigenous knowledge and heritage is preserved or ought to be preserved and protected within or outside of Aboriginal communities.56
Library and Archives Canada has developed various guides and resources related to researching Aboriginal heritage.57 But a fundamental tension exists between LAC’s public education mandate to work collaboratively with Aboriginal peoples in order to document their cultural and social history and LAC’s legal obligation to serve the state. This tension is most evident where archived documents are relevant to various historical injustices involving Aboriginal peoples. Historical records housed at LAC have been used extensively as evidence by both Aboriginal claimants and Crown defendants in litigation involving residential schools, Treaties, Aboriginal title and rights cases, and land claims.
In the case of documents related to residential schools, the problems associated with LAC’s dual function became apparent during the litigation period prior to the Settlement Agreement. During this time, with regard to its public education mandate, LAC produced “Native Residential Schools in Canada: A Selective Bibliography” in 2002, and assisted Aboriginal people, academics, and other researchers who wished to access these holdings.58 But because the residential schools litigation put the federal government in the position of being the major defendant in the court cases, the overriding priority for LAC, as the custodian of federal government departmental records, was to meet its legal obligations to the Crown.
Librarian and Archivist Emeritus Dr. Ian Wilson, Canada’s former national archivist, described this tension. He explained that, as the residential school litigation intensified,
Lawyers besieged the archives. Archivists, caught between the vagaries of old informal recordkeeping practices in church schools across the country, legal demands for instant and full access and obligations to employer and profession, struggled to uphold their ideal of the honest stewardship of the records. . . . This process has tested the capacity of the archives and our professional ability to respond.59
These challenges did not end with the implementation of the 2007 Settlement Agreement. The TRC’s own difficulties in gaining access to government records held at LAC demonstrated why state-controlled archives are not necessarily best suited to meet the needs of Survivors, their families, and their communities.
By 2009, in terms of public education, LAC had partnered with the Legacy of Hope Foundation and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation on two exhibitions: Where Are the Children? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools; and “We were so far away”: The Inuit Experience of Residential Schools.60 Library and Archives Canada also produced an updated online version of “The Legacy of the Residential School System in Canada: A Selective Bibliography.”61 In 2010, LAC made an online finding aid available, “Conducting Research on Residential Schools: A Guide to the Records of the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program and Related Resources at Library and Archives Canada.”62
In the spirit of reconciliation, LAC archivists (along with church archivists) brought binders of residential school photographs to the Learning Places at the TRC’s National Events, where Survivors and others could see them and get copies of their class pictures and other school activities. For many Survivors, especially those who had no visual record of their own childhood or no pictures of siblings who have since passed away, this proved to be one of the most treasured aspects of the National Events experience. However, during this same time period, LAC’s holdings and its role in complying with the federal government’s legal obligations for document production, under the terms of the Settlement Agreement, became the focus of court proceedings between the TRC and the federal government.
Schedule N of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement describes the mandate of the TRC as well as the obligations of the parties to the Agreement to assist the Commission in its work. There is a provision that deals with the obligation of the parties to provide relevant records to the Commission.
In order to ensure the efficacy of the truth and reconciliation process, Canada and the churches will provide all relevant documents in their possession or control to and for the use of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, subject to the privacy interests of an individual as provided by applicable privacy legislation, and subject to and in compliance with applicable privacy and access to information legislation, and except for those documents for which solicitor-client privilege applies and is asserted.
In cases where privacy interests of an individual exist, and subject to and in compliance with applicable privacy legislation and access to information legislation, researchers for the Commission shall have access to the documents, provided privacy is protected. In cases where solicitor-client privilege is asserted, the asserting party will provide a list of all documents for which the privilege is claimed.
Canada and the churches are not required to give up possession of their original documents to the Commission. They are required to compile all relevant documents in an organized manner for review by the Commission and to provide access to their archives for the Commission to carry out its mandate. Provision of documents does not require provision of original documents. Originals or true copies may be provided or originals may be provided temporarily for copying purposes if the original documents are not to be housed with the Commission.
Insofar as agreed to by the individuals affected and as permitted by process requirements, information from the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), existing litigation and Dispute Resolution processes may be transferred to the Commission for research and archiving purposes.63
Gaining access to archival government records about the administration of the residential school system has been an important part of the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. Such access has been essential for our own understanding of the history of government policy and practice in relation to Aboriginal peoples in general and the residential schools in particular. But it has also been necessary to fulfilling our mandate obligation to ensure ongoing public access to the records through the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. The Commission’s attempts to obtain records were frustrated by a series of bureaucratic and legal roadblocks.
In April 2012, the Commission was compelled to file a “Request for Direction” in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice regarding access to relevant federal records housed in the national archives. At issue was the question of what Canada’s obligations were under the Settlement Agreement with respect to providing to the TRC archived government documents housed at Library and Archives Canada. The Commission, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, the Department of Justice, and Library and Archives Canada had very different views as to how the TRC should acquire these records.
In LAC’s view, its role was that of the neutral keeper of government records, whose task was to facilitate and empower federal government departments to canvass their own archival holdings.
Faced with the onerous task of conducting its own research through LAC’s vast holdings, Canada’s position was that its obligation was limited to locating and producing relevant documents from the active and semi-active files in various departments. The government’s view became that departments needed to provide the TRC only with departmental researcher status in order for the Commission to access their archived documents at LAC and conduct its own research.
The TRC’s position was that Canada was obligated to produce all relevant documents, including those at LAC, and had an additional obligation to provide the Commission with access to LAC in order to conduct its own research. Although the TRC, in the spirit of co-operation, had agreed to obtain departmental researcher status, it maintained that this was unnecessary because the Settlement Agreement already gave the Commission unconditional access to the archives. The end result was that Canada had effectively shifted its responsibility to produce LAC documents onto the TRC.
In rendering his decision in favour of the Commission, Justice Stephen Goudge said,
In my view, the first paragraph of section 11 sets out Canada’s basic obligation concerning documents in its possession or control. The plain meaning of the language is straightforward. It is to provide all relevant documents to the TRC. The obligation is in unqualified language unlimited by where the documents are located within the government of Canada. Nor is the obligation limited to the documents assembled by Canada for production in the underlying litigation [para. 69].
I therefore conclude that given their meaning, the language in section 11 of Schedule N does not exclude documents archived at LAC from Canada’s obligation to the TRC. The context in which the Settlement Agreement was created provides further important support for that conclusion in several ways [para. 71].
First, telling the history of Indian Residential Schools was clearly seen as a central aspect of the mandate of the TRC when the Settlement Agreement was made. Since Canada played a vital role in the IRS [Indian Residential School] system, Canada’s documents wherever they were held, would have been understood as a very important historical resource for this purpose [para. 72].
Second, the Settlement Agreement charged the TRC with compiling an historical record of the IRS system to be accessible to the public in the future. Here too, Canada’s documents, wherever housed, would have been seen to be vital to this task [para. 73].
Third, the story of the history and the historical record to be compiled cover[s] over 100 years and dates back to the nineteenth century. In light of this time span, it would have been understood at the time of the Settlement Agreement that much of the relevant documentary record in Canada’s possession would be archived in LAC and would no longer be in the active or semi-active files of the departments of the Government of Canada [para. 74].
Fourth, it would have been obvious that the experienced staff at LAC would have vastly more ability to identify and organize the relevant documents at LAC than would the newly hired staff of the newly formed TRC. It would have made little sense to give that task to the latter rather than the former, particularly given its importance to the TRC’s mandate [para. 75].64
In 2014, the auditor general of Canada’s report “Documentary Heritage of the Government of Canada: Library and Archives Canada” concluded that systemic problems within LAC presented significant obstacles to accessing archival records.
Overall, we found that Library and Archives Canada was not acquiring all the archival records it should from federal institutions. . . . Of those records it had acquired, Library and Archives Canada had a backlog of some 98,000 boxes of government archival records as of April 2014, and does not know when it will be able to complete the processing of these records and facilitate public access to them. This is important because Canadians do not have knowledge of the government’s archival records that have not yet been transferred from the institutions to Library and Archives Canada, nor of records still in Library and Archives Canada’s backlog.65
More specifically, with regard to the TRC, the auditor general found that the Commission’s research had been impeded by deficiencies in the quality of research finding aids that researchers use to identify relevant records.
In the fall of 2013, the researchers conducted a pilot project to identify as many student health care records as possible. The pilot project demonstrated that 77 percent of the health care records had either non-existent or incomplete finding aids. . . . As an example, one of the researchers found an undescribed box to contain three years of reports that confirmed students’ attendance in residential schools. In the spring of 2014, Library and Archives Canada drafted a work plan to identify and correct the deficiencies of the finding aids.66
Although the difficulties that the TRC encountered in obtaining LAC documents were specific to the Commission’s mandate, they highlight broader questions concerning the role of state archives and archivists in providing access to documents that reveal the facts of why and how a targeted group of people has suffered harms on a massive scale. As part of a growing trend towards demanding better government accountability and transparency, and the evolution of new privacy and freedom of information legislation, archives have become more directly connected to struggles for human rights and justice.67
Library and Archives Canada’s federal government departmental records pertaining to Aboriginal peoples are vital to understanding how human rights violations occurred and their subsequent impacts. In 2005, the United Nations adopted the Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, which set out remedial measures that states must undertake to satisfy their duty to guard against impunity from past human rights violations and prevent their reoccurrence. This includes victims’ right to know the truth about what happened to them and their missing family members. Society at large also has the right to know the truth about what happened in the past and what circumstances led to mass human rights violations. The state has a duty to safeguard this knowledge and to ensure that proper documentation is preserved in archives and history books.
The Joinet-Orentlicher Principles state, “The full and effective exercise of the right to truth is ensured through preservation of archives.” Equally important, ready access to the archives must be facilitated for victims and their relatives, and for the purposes of research (Principles 5, 14, 15, 16).68
The Commission notes that in his August 2013 report to the United Nations Human Rights Council, Pablo de Greiff, Special Rapporteur on the Promotion of Truth, Justice, Reparation and Guarantees of Non-Recurrence, made specific reference to the importance of archives. He found that both a truth commission’s own records and those housed in national, regional, and local archives extend the life and legacy of the truth commission’s work. Archives can serve as permanent sites where post-commission accountability and the right to truth can be realized.69 He further explained that archives “are a means of guaranteeing that the voices of victims will not be lost, and they contribute to a culture of memorialisation and remembrance. They also provide a safeguard against revisionism and denial—essential given the long duration and non-linearity of social reconciliation and integration processes.”70 He concluded that “truth commissions and national archives contribute in a substantial manner to realizing the right to truth and may further criminal prosecutions, reparations, and institutional and personnel reforms,” and he recommended that international archival standards be established.71
Although de Greiff does not reference Indigenous peoples specifically, we note that in many countries, including Canada, access to protected historical records has been instrumental in advancing the rights of Indigenous peoples and documenting the state’s wrongful actions. In the wake of the South African and other truth commissions, some archivists have come to see themselves not simply as neutral custodians of national history but also as professionals who are responsible for ensuring that records documenting past injustices are preserved and used to strengthen government accountability and support justice.72
69) We call upon Library and Archives Canada to:
i. Fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why, with regard to human rights violations committed against them in the residential schools.
ii. Ensure that its record holdings related to residential schools are accessible to the public.
iii. Commit more resources to its public education materials and programming on residential schools.
70) We call upon the federal government to provide funding to the Canadian Association of Archivists to undertake, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, a national review of archival policies and best practices to:
i. Determine the level of compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why, with regard to human rights violations committed against them in the residential schools.
ii. Produce a report with recommendations for full implementation of these international mechanisms as a reconciliation framework for Canadian archives.
Over the course of the Commission’s work, many Aboriginal people spoke to us about the children who never came home from residential school. The question of what happened to their loved ones and where they were laid to rest has haunted families and communities. Throughout the history of Canada’s residential school system, there was no effort to record across the entire system the number of students who died while attending the schools each year.
The National Residential School Student Death Register, established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, represents the first national effort to record the names of the students who died at school. The register is far from complete: there are, for example, many relevant documents that have yet to be received, collected, and reviewed.
Some of these records have been located in provincial records. In June 2012, at their annual general meeting, the Chief Coroners and Medical Examiners of Canada approved a unanimous resolution to support the TRC’s Missing Children Project by making available to the Commission their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities. The Office of the Chief Coroner of Ontario had already done some groundbreaking work in terms of screening and reviewing its records, and identifying 120 possible cases of death of an Aboriginal residential school student. The TRC subsequently contacted chief coroners across the country to request their assistance in locating records related to deaths at residential schools. As of 2014, chief coroners’ offices in Saskatchewan, the Northwest Territories, Manitoba, and Nova Scotia had also responded to the Commission’s request for records.
Other regional agencies also hold critical information in their records. The TRC contacted offices of provincial vital statistics across the country. At the Alberta National Event, Assistant Deputy Minister Peter Cunningham, from the Ministry of Aboriginal Relations and Reconciliation in British Columbia, offered a flash drive in a small, carved, Bentwood Box as an expression of reconciliation.
I think it’s incredibly important that all of the information comes out about what was a very deeply dark and disturbing event in Canadian history . . . residential schools. . . . I’m here today to add to that body of knowledge on behalf of the government of British Columbia and the Vital Statistics Agency of BC. . . . The information on this flash drive is information about Aboriginal children between the ages of four and nineteen years of age who died in British Columbia between the years 1870 and 1984.73
As of 2014, in addition to the office in British Columbia, vital statistics offices in Alberta, Nova Scotia, Ontario, Saskatchewan, Yukon, and Nunavut had responded to the Commission’s request for records. To complete the work begun by the Commission on the National Residential School Student Death Register, it will be critical for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to obtain all records related to the deaths of residential school students.
71) We call upon all chief coroners and provincial vital statistics agencies that have not provided to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada their records on the deaths of Aboriginal children in the care of residential school authorities to make these documents available to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
The completion and maintenance of the National Residential School Student Death Register will require ongoing financial support.
72) We call upon the federal government to allocate sufficient resources to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to allow it to develop and maintain the National Residential School Student Death Register established by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
There is also a need for information sharing with the families of those who died at the schools. As the historical record indicates, families were not adequately informed of the health condition of their children. There is a need for the federal government to ensure that appropriate measures are undertaken to inform families of the fate of their children and to ensure that the children are commemorated in a way that is acceptable to their families.
73) We call upon the federal government to work with churches, Aboriginal communities, and former residential school students to establish and maintain an online registry of residential school cemeteries, including, where possible, plot maps showing the location of deceased residential school children.
74) We call upon the federal government to work with the churches and Aboriginal community leaders to inform the families of children who died at residential schools of the child’s burial location, and to respond to families’ wishes for appropriate commemoration ceremonies and markers, and reburial in home communities where requested.
As Commissioners, we have been honoured to bear witness to commemoration ceremonies held by communities to remember and honour children who died in residential schools. Such ceremonies have played an important role in the reconciliation process. At the Alberta National Event, the board members of the Remembering the Children Society offered an expression of reconciliation. They spoke about the process they undertook to identify children who had died while attending the Red Deer Industrial School. Richard Lightning said,
My father, Albert Lightning, and his younger brother, David, from Samson First Nation, went to the Red Deer Industrial School, which was operated by the Methodist Church from 1893 to 1919. Albert Lightning survived this school experience, but David died of Spanish flu in 1918. In 1986, Albert visited the Red Deer and District Museum and Archives, saying to the staff person, Lyle Keewatin-Richards, “Oh, there you are. You’re the one who is going to find my little brother.” Lyle learned that along with three other students who had died at the same time, David was buried in the Red Deer City Cemetery. Lyle also became aware of the existence of the school cemetery beside Sylvan Creek.
The Reverend Cecile Fausak74 explained,
Around 2004 . . . people at Sunnybrook United Church began to ask themselves, “Is there anything we can do to build better relations with First Nations peoples in this area?” And Lyle, remembering back, suggested then, “There is this little project. The children who were buried at the long-neglected [residential] school cemetery and in this city need to be remembered.” So the church formed a committee . . . and over the next few years, we researched the site and the school records, personally visited the seven Cree and Stony communities and the Métis nation from which all the students had come. In September 2009, over thirty people from those concerned First Nations and Métis communities travelled to Red Deer, had stew and bannock at Sunnybrook United Church, and visited the school cemetery for the first time, where we were welcomed by the [current] landowner.
Muriel Stanley Venne, from the Sunnybrook United Church, continued,
A working group was formed to organize the first [commemoration] feast, which was held at Fort Normandeau, on June 30, 2010. As the more than 325 names of students were read, a hush fell over the crowd. . . . Since then the collaboration [has] continued, with First Nations Treaty 6 and 7, Métis Nation of Alberta, United Church members, the Red Deer Museum and Art Gallery, the City and County [of Red Deer], the [Indian] Friendship Centre, and school boards. This led to the formation of the Remembering the Children Society in 2011. . . . Our society’s objectives include: continued support for recovering Indian residential school cemeteries and histories in Alberta; educating the public about the same; honouring the Survivors, and those who died in the schools; as well as identifying the unmarked graves. Each year for the next three years, a commemorative feast was held. At the third gathering, many descendants shared stories of the impact on them, their parents, and grandparents, because they attended the Red Deer Industrial School.
Charles Wood then said,
The society has worked with the museum in developing a new standing exhibit and with the Waskasoo Park administration in the preparation of new interpretive signage at Fort Normandeau regarding the school history. We are grateful for the truth spoken of a painful shared history, the friendships we have formed, and the healing that has happened as a result of working together for over five years. We will continue to remember the children of the past and present. In the Bentwood Box, as symbols of our work together, we place a program of the first ceremony, a DVD from the museum display, flower and ribbon pins from the third feast, and a copy of guidelines we have published of our experience for those who wish to undertake a similar recovery of a residential school cemetery.75
For the most part, the residential school cemeteries and burial sites that the Commission documented are abandoned, disused, and vulnerable to disturbance. Although there have been community commemoration measures undertaken in some locations, there is an overall need for a national strategy for the documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries. This work is complex and sensitive. Although former schools might be associated with specific Aboriginal communities, the cemeteries may contain the bodies of children from many communities. They may also contain the bodies of teachers (or their children) who died while working at the institutions. No one set of recommendations will serve all circumstances.
75) We call upon the federal government to work with provincial, territorial, and municipal governments, churches, Aboriginal communities, former residential school students, and current landowners to develop and implement strategies and procedures for the ongoing identification, documentation, maintenance, commemoration, and protection of residential school cemeteries or other sites at which residential school children were buried. This is to include the provision of appropriate memorial ceremonies and commemorative markers to honour the deceased children.
As infrastructure and resource development accelerates throughout Canada, the risk of damage to undocumented residential school cemeteries increases. Depending on the jurisdiction, environmental impact assessments, which include the assessment of heritage sites, are usually required prior to development. This generally involves a review of existing documentation, an evaluation of the potential for heritage sites within the development zone, and a physical search. Such work is often done in phases, with a preliminary review of centralized archives and databases informing subsequent investigation. Local knowledge about residential cemeteries might not be readily accessible to non-local planners, resource managers, and impact assessors. Therefore, it is important that locally collected information is shared with agencies responsible for land-use planning, environmental impact assessment, and protection and regulation of cemeteries.
Such information sharing is hindered by limited documentation, unclear jurisdictional responsibility, and uncoordinated consolidation of information. These problems could be addressed through the establishment of a registry of residential school cemeteries that could be available online. At a minimum, such a registry should include the identification, duration, and affiliation of each cemetery, its legal description, its current land ownership and condition, and its location coordinates.
The complex and sensitive work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries must be undertaken according to a set of guiding principles that are based on community priorities and knowledge. Any physical investigation of the cemeteries must involve close consultation with interested communities, identification of community-driven objectives, suitable methodologies, and attention to spiritual and emotional sensitivities.
The generally sparse written documentation must be combined with locally held knowledge. Often, this information will be unwritten, and held by Survivors, the families of Survivors, staff, or local residents. This locally held information can be used to verify, correct, and amplify archival information. This work might involve local initiatives to physically document a cemetery’s extent and location, and also to identify individual graves within or around the cemetery area. When undertaking physical inspection and documentation of the cemeteries, the most cost-effective strategy involves collection and consolidation of both documentary and locally held knowledge prior to initiating fieldwork. This will improve efficiency of the physical search, and aid selection of the most effective field methodologies. It will also enable researchers to determine community wishes regarding the most appropriate approaches to site investigation. These approaches include adherence to preferred protocols regarding prayers and ceremonial observance prior to a site visit.
76) We call upon the parties engaged in the work of documenting, maintaining, commemorating, and protecting residential school cemeteries to adopt strategies in accordance with the following principles:
i. The Aboriginal community most affected shall lead the development of such strategies.
ii. Information shall be sought from residential school Survivors and other Knowledge Keepers in the development of such strategies.
iii. Aboriginal protocols shall be respected before any potentially invasive technical inspection and investigation of a cemetery site.
The Commission believes that assisting families to learn the fate of children who died in residential schools, locating unmarked graves, and maintaining, protecting, and commemorating residential school cemeteries are vital to healing and reconciliation. Archives and government departments and agencies have a crucial role to play in this process. Equally important, archival records can help Survivors, their families, and their communities to reconstruct their family and community histories. Yet accessing such holdings is not without problems.
We have outlined how Library and Archives Canada has dealt with its residential school records. Other records that are relevant to the history and legacy of the residential school system are scattered across the country in provincial, territorial, municipal, and local archives, as well as in government departments and agencies that were not parties to the Settlement Agreement. All this has made it extremely difficult for Survivors, their families, and their communities to access records that hold critical pieces of information about their own lives and the history of their communities.
The Settlement Agreement church archives, to varying degrees, have endeavoured to make their residential school records more accessible to Survivors, their families and communities, researchers, and the general public.76 For example, the United Church of Canada, “as a form of repatriation to First Nations communities,”77 has put all of its residential school photographs and school histories online to make them more accessible to Survivors and others.
Archives may be viewed with distrust by First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples. Many feel that much of their lives is contained in documents (most of which they have never seen) kept by the state in order to study and categorize them in a depersonalized manner.78 In various ways, existing archives have been ill suited to serving the needs of Survivors, their families, and their communities. What Aboriginal peoples require is a centre of their own—a cultural space that will serve as both an archive and a museum to hold the collective memory of Survivors and others whose lives were touched by the history and legacy of the residential school system.
With this understanding, the TRC mandate called for the establishment of a new National Research Centre (NRC) to hold all the historical and newly created documents and oral statements related to residential schools, and to make them accessible for the future. This NRC, as created by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, and now renamed the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), is an evolving, Survivor-centred model of education for reconciliation. Implementing a new approach to public education, research, and recordkeeping, the centre will serve as a public memory “site of conscience,” bearing permanent witness to Survivors’ testimonies and the history and legacy of the residential school system.79 Along with other museums and archives across the country, the centre will shape how the residential school era is understood and remembered.
The concept of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has deep roots. For many years, Survivors and their supporters called for a centre that would be a lasting legacy to Survivors’ own history and to Canada’s national memory. In March 2011, the TRC hosted an international forum in Vancouver, “Sharing Truth: Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools,” to study how records and other materials from truth and reconciliation commissions around the world have been archived.80 Several speakers talked about their vision for the NCTR. Georges Erasmus, former co-chair of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, and then president of the Aboriginal Healing Foundation, said,
Those who become the keepers of the archives become stewards of human stories and relationships, of what has been an endowment to what will be. Because no legacy is enriched by counterfeit, a nation is ill served by a history which is not genuine. This is a high calling indeed and it must be said that too often the promise and the potential of this stewardship has gone unrealized. . . . If the stories of our people are not accessible to the general public, it will be as if their experiences never occurred. And if their voices are rendered as museum pieces, it will be as if their experience is frozen in time. What we need are open, dynamic, interactive spaces and participatory forms of narrative, knowledge, and research. This would be a fitting way to step into the twenty-first century and into a new kind of relationship. . . . The National Research Centre ought to be a treasure valued by all sorts of people.81
Charlene Belleau, a Survivor and manager of the Assembly of First Nations Residential Schools Unit, talked about how important it was for the centre to provide access to communities and individual Survivors.
When I thought about the National Research Centre, coming from a community-based process and Tribal Council work, I really feel that the National Research Centre has to be regionally based or tribally based where possible so that it is accessible to the former students or to the public within our areas. . . . If we put all our eggs in one basket and put a thirty million dollar project in Alberta or Saskatchewan, who has access to it? For sure, the Survivors that are on welfare, the Survivors who have no money will never get to see a place like that. I think we need to be real and make sure that we have that access so that we can continue to heal and work together.82
James Scott, General Council officer for the United Church of Canada, was involved in the Settlement Agreement negotiations. He recalled,
We [the parties] wanted to honour and acknowledge the experience of Survivors, their families, and communities, and we wanted to create a vehicle through which that history would forever be protected and available in order that it be understood, that it not be forgotten, and that it never happen again. The National Research Centre was, and is, to be that vehicle . . .
The Research Centre can be so much more than an archive or museum. It can . . . be a catalyst for education and transformation. . . . While the residential school system no longer exists as a system, other tools used by the settler population to dominate, dispossess, and assimilate Aboriginal peoples in this country still operate. So the National Research Centre, in my view, must be a striking and visible reminder to all Canadians that the battle for justice, equality, respect and self-determination for Aboriginal people is not over. It must be fought on a daily basis for the sake of the future of our country, for our children, and for our children’s children.83
The Commission subsequently issued an open invitation for organizations to submit proposals for the NCTR based on specific criteria. In June 2013, the TRC announced that the University of Manitoba would house the new centre.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation will play a key educational role in ensuring that historic harms and Treaty, constitutional, and human rights violations against Aboriginal peoples are not repeated. As a highly visible site of conscience, it will serve as an intervention in the country’s public memory and national history. The centre is independent from government. It is guided by a Governing Circle, the majority of whose members must be Aboriginal and which includes Survivor representatives. Among its various responsibilities, this governing body will make decisions, provide advice on ceremonies and protocols, and establish a Survivors’ Circle.84
The centre will house TRC records, including Survivors’ oral history statements, artworks, expressions of reconciliation, and other materials gathered by the Commission, as well as government and church documents. It is intended to be a welcoming and safe place for Survivors, their families, and their communities to have access to their own history. The centre has committed to creating a culturally rooted and healing environment where all Canadians can honour, learn from, and commemorate the history and legacy of the residential schools.
Once the centre is fully operational, it will be well positioned to take a leadership role in forging new directions for research on residential schools and on Indigenous rights, and in establishing new standards and benchmarks for archival and museum policy, management, and operations based on Indigenous and Western principles and best practices.
The University of Manitoba and its partners85 have emphasized that the centre recognizes the
paramount importance of accessibility [for] the Aboriginal survivor, family member [or] researcher, [and is] committed to recognition of Aboriginal peoples as co-creators of the IRS records, through co-curation and participatory archiving; and committed to continuing the work of the TRC of statement-gathering, public education, engagement and outreach.86
The NCTR will incorporate an
archival system and approach which is devoted to “reconciling records”; [it] will . . . support Indigenous frameworks of knowledge, memory and evidence, and reposition . . . Indigenous communities as co-creators of archival records that relate to them, including government archives. Such approaches acknowledge rights in records that extend beyond access to working in partnership with archival institutions to manage appraisal, description and accessibility of records relating to Indigenous communities.87
The centre is committed to “establish[ing] trust with Aboriginal communities by working with these communities to realize their own goals through participatory archiving. . . . The process of participatory archiving, interacting with as complete a record as possible, will be a powerful force for reconciliation and healing.”88 As well, the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is committed to
personally supporting survivors, their families, and all researchers in navigating, using, and understanding the records, in a culturally sensitive environment. The support that the NRC will provide includes emotionally-sensitive support, acknowledging that accessing the NRC documents may be traumatic, difficult or otherwise emotional experiences for many users. An Elder will be present or on call (from a nearby building) most of the time the NRC is open to the public. LAC and other government departments have no mandate or capacity to offer these various supports, which are critical to relationship-building and overcoming the perception of archives as yet another mechanism of colonization, cultural appropriation by Western society and hyper-surveillance and objectification of Aboriginal peoples.89
On October 27, 2011, at the Atlantic National Event, David T. Barnard, president and vice chancellor of the University of Manitoba, offered an apology on behalf of the university to Survivors, to their families and communities, and to Aboriginal students, faculty, and staff. He acknowledged the university’s complicity in the residential school system and the role of all educational institutions in “perpetuating the misguided and failed system of assimilation that was at the heart of the Indian residential school system.” He further noted that this complicity did not end with the residential school system but continued through the “Sixties Scoop” adoption policy, which forcibly removed thousands of Aboriginal children from their families. He admitted that “the University of Manitoba educated and mentored individuals who became clergy, teachers, social workers, civil servants and politicians. They carried out assimilation policies aimed at the Aboriginal peoples of Manitoba.”90
By acknowledging the pain that the university had inflicted, President Barnard hoped that “we can begin the process of restoring trust.” He committed the university to ensuring that “the values of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit cultures and communities are included in scholarship and research across the university.” To do so, he said that “we must acknowledge our mistakes, learn from them, apologize and move forward in a spirit of reconciliation.”91
The National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is not only a tangible and long-term demonstration of how the university is putting the words of its apology into action; it is also an example of the substantive and concrete contributions that universities can make to education for reconciliation.
On June 21, 2013, First Nations, Inuit, and Métis Survivors, Elders, the TRC, and the University of Manitoba and its partner institutions, along with other dignitaries, gathered in Treaty 1 territory of the Anishinaabe peoples and homeland of the Métis Nation for a signing ceremony at the University of Manitoba.92 This signing of a “Trust Deed” with the university marked the transfer of a sacred trust—a solemn promise that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission made to Survivors and all those affected by the residential schools as it travelled across the country bearing witness to their testimonies.
The NCTR is committed to making all its holdings readily accessible to Survivors, their families, and their communities, as well as to the public, educators, and researchers.93 To support reconciliation at the local level, the Commission believes, it will be especially important to ensure that communities are able to access the centre’s holdings and resources in order to produce histories of their own residential school experiences and their involvement in the truth, healing, and reconciliation process.
The centre will be a living legacy, a teaching and learning place for public education that will promote understanding and reconciliation through ongoing statement gathering, new research, commemoration ceremonies, dialogues on reconciliation, and celebrations of Indigenous cultures, oral histories, and legal traditions.94
77) We call upon provincial, territorial, municipal, and community archives to work collaboratively with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation to identify and collect copies of all records relevant to the history and legacy of the residential school system, and to provide these to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
78) We call upon the Government of Canada to commit to making a funding contribution of $10 million over seven years to the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, plus an additional amount to assist communities to research and produce histories of their own Indian residential school experience and their involvement in truth, healing, and reconciliation.