For Survivors who came forward at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) National Events and Community Hearings, remembering their childhood often meant reliving horrific memories of abuse, hunger, and neglect. It meant dredging up painful feelings of loneliness, abandonment, and shame. Many still struggle to heal deep wounds of the past. Words fail to do justice to their courage in standing up and speaking out.
There were other memories too—of resilience, of lifetime friendships forged with classmates and teachers, of taking pride in art, music, or sports accomplishments, and of becoming leaders in their communities and in the life of the nation. Survivors shared their memories with Canada and the world so that the truth could no longer be denied. Survivors also remembered so that other Canadians could learn from these hard lessons of the past. They want Canadians to know, to remember, to care, and to change.
One of the most significant harms to come out of the residential schools was the attack on Indigenous memory. The federal government’s policy of assimilation sought to break the chain of memory that connected the hearts, minds, and spirits of Aboriginal children to their families, communities, and nations. Many, but not all, Survivors have found ways to restore these connections. They believe that reconciliation with other Canadians calls for changing the country’s collective, national history so that it is based on the truth about what happened to them as children, and to their families, communities, and nations.
Public memory is important. It is especially important to recognize that the transmission of this collective memory from generation to generation of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis individuals, families, and communities was impaired by the actions of those who ran residential schools.
In order for any society to function properly and to its full capacity, it must raise and educate its children so that they can answer what philosophers and Elders call ‘the great questions of life.’ Those questions are:
Where am I going?
Why am I here?
Who am I?
Children need to know their personal story, including the part that precedes their birth. We need to know the stories of our parents and grandparents, our direct and indirect ancestors, and our real and mythological villains and heroes. As part of this story, we also need to know about the community of people to which we are attached—our collective story—all the way back to our place in the creation of this world. We all have a creation story, and we all need to understand it. We also need to learn that although not all creation stories are the same, they all have truth. This is an important teaching about respect.
Knowing where we are going is a natural outcome of knowing where we have come from. It is not just about where we are going to be next week, or next year, or in twenty-five years. It is also about what happens to us when we die. It is about the spirit world, and life after death, and a reaffirmation of the role of the Creator in matters of life and death. It is about belief, and faith, and hope.
Knowing why we are here is also related to the other two questions. Knowing one’s creation story is always imbued with teachings about why the Creator made this world to begin with and what our place as human beings was intended to be within it. But the answer to this question is also about knowing what role we play in the overall collective. It is about knowing whether our purpose is fulfilled through being an artist, or a leader, or a warrior, or a caregiver, or a healer, or a helper. Clan teachings and naming ceremonies in Indigenous cultures provide answers to this question, but the answer is also influenced by knowing what our family and community need, and then filling this need and feeling the satisfaction that results.
The fourth question—“Who am I?”—is the most important, because it is the constant question. It is influenced by everything and everyone. We fight to maintain the answer we like, and we fight to change and improve the answer we dislike. We strive to attain the perfect answer by the time we die, not realizing that in fact there is no right or wrong answer. It is a question about understanding our life. It is about identity. It is about what we have become, but it is also about what we want to become. This is why it is constant. In many ways, it is the answer that derives from knowing the answers to the other three questions. If one of them is unanswered or the answer is in doubt, this question remains unfulfilled. Our life is not in balance.
For children in the residential schools, these questions went unanswered, and their sense of belonging to a collective community went unfulfilled. The answers that they were forced to accept ran counter to much of the knowledge they carried. The schools were about changing their identities, and the potential for internal conflict was enormous. Their loss of a sense of collective memory was a loss that directly resulted from the breaking of family ties, the attack on their languages and cultures, and the denial of access to any information about their own unique and special histories. These losses were carried forward to the next generation.
As youngsters, Survivors were vulnerable rememberers.1 That is, their connection to their own family and community memory was more easily severed or damaged than it would have been if they had been adults. This ruptured memory also had a significant impact on their children and grandchildren, who lost their culture and language, which were normally transmitted through family and community memory, and often knew nothing about the residential school system or what their older relatives had gone through. Generations of young people have grown up not knowing the history of their own families and communities, and feeling excluded from Canada’s history as well. At the TRC Alberta National Event in Edmonton, at a panel on “Recollection and Collective Memory in a Divided Society,” Métis scholar Jennifer Adese said,
It’s an honour to be here with you . . . in . . . Métis [and] Treaty 6 territory . . . so close to the homes of the lands where my father . . . and grandmother were born . . . and so close to the home of all our relations that have come before us . . . I was lucky to grow up connected to an active urban Native community, but it’s taken me at least the last ten years to reconnect to my family here, close and extended, and to . . . reweave myself back into the web of kinship ties that I was separated from at a young age. . . .
I can’t tell you how to bridge the gap and the memories of Métis and settler people . . . [but] when I was thinking about what I would share with you today, I kept thinking of the phrase “the train left without me.” . . . The role that Canadian prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald’s vision for building a railway through First Nation and Métis territory [played in] the displacing of our relations . . . It also speaks to the use of the railway to transport Métis into the farming colonies in the twentieth century, displacing them from the homes they kept trying to make for themselves in the wake of their displacements in 1869–70 and in 1885 . . .
For Métis, we’re moving into an era of reconciliation when the intergenerational impacts of broader systems of colonization on Métis peoples have scarcely been addressed. When talk of reconciliation and remembering come up, people often forget the very important reality that residential schools were just one of hundreds of different paths taken by church and state in efforts to change and assimilate Indigenous peoples. . . .
The assimilation of Indigenous peoples didn’t begin or end with schooling. It’s ongoing now. It also didn’t exist in isolation, and it didn’t target only culture. Its purpose was to take everything: language, family ties, stories, memories, political structures, governing structures, and economic relationships. These are things we need to remember.2
Aboriginal women—those who are Elders and Knowledge Keepers in their communities as well as those who are disconnected from their roots—are vital to national reconciliation.
Aboriginal women told the Commission about damaged relationships with female relatives, high levels of domestic and societal violence, and the gendered racism they have experienced throughout their lives. They also told us that learning about their own history—women’s traditional roles in the political, cultural, social, and economic life of their communities—was an empowering catalyst for healing. They emphasized the importance of storytelling to restoring their dignity and repairing family relationships. Aboriginal women, storytellers, scholars, and activists are themselves at the forefront of this work, reshaping public memory and national history through storytelling and ceremonies that remember and honour the life stories, experiences, and struggles of their grandmothers, mothers, sisters, daughters, and aunties. Although much has been lost from family and community memory, much still remains. In many communities, women continue to hold positions of status and power that have been passed down through the generations.3
The power of women’s stories and the process of sharing these stories strengthen healing, resilience, and reconciliation at the family, community, and national levels. Saulteaux Elder Danny Musqua explains,
We never had any doubt that women were the centre and core of our community and nation. No nation ever existed without the fortitude of our grandmothers, and all of those teachings have to somehow be recovered. And it will be up to these young people . . . they’ve got to dig up the medicines, to heal the people. And the medicines in this case are the teachings.4
The concept of women’s stories as medicine resonates with us as Commissioners. At TRC National and Regional Events and at Community Hearings, as well as in public and private statements and written submissions, the Commission heard from thousands of Aboriginal women from all walks of life across the country.
At the British Columbia National Event in Vancouver, a dialogue panel, “Honouring Women’s Wisdom: Pathways of Truth, Resilience and Reconciliation,” took place on September 21, 2013. One of the panelists, Sharon Jinkerson-Brass, community health liaison for the Pacific Association of First Nations Women, observed that many urban Aboriginal women have lost touch with the teachings and ceremonies of their grandmothers. She emphasized the importance of reviving matriarchal cultural traditions in contemporary contexts. She said that women are the “seed-carriers” of cultural knowledge and explained that although “many of our ceremonies are still sleeping . . . many strands are missing, we walk on the breath of our ancestors and we are here to bring beauty into the world.” She spoke of bringing an urban group of Aboriginal women together to weave cedar capes for a grandmother ceremony held on the Musqueam reserve. After the ceremony, the capes became a community bundle for women to use in rites-of-passage ceremonies.
The importance of women’s ceremonies to healing was evident in the discussion that followed the panel presentations. One speaker said that all women have a responsibility to ensure that their children have a grandmother influence in their lives, and she explained that “cedar weaving has become our medicine.”5
For many years, Aboriginal women have taken a strong political leadership role in advocating for real change in their communities and the nation. Aboriginal women are inspiring models of resilience who work to address legacy issues even as they revitalize matriarchal systems, cultural traditions, ceremonies, and laws that ensured gender equity prior to colonization. They are Elders, Clan Mothers, Knowledge Keepers, and teachers who draw on the collective wisdom of their grandmothers from seven generations past. They are carriers of memory whose ability to transmit family and community history to their children and grandchildren was severely impacted by the residential schools.
Despite making inroads over the past three decades, Aboriginal women continue to be marginalized and misrepresented in Canada’s public memory and national history. Over time, popular history and the media have reinforced misperceptions of Aboriginal women, often portraying them either as ‘noble Indian princesses’ or in derogatory and racist terms.6 It is clear that the negative stereotypes and social attitudes that fuel racist and gendered violence persist.
Although a direct causal link cannot be drawn between the harmful stereotypes of Aboriginal women that are deeply embedded in the Canadian psyche and the ongoing violence against Aboriginal women and girls, the Commission believes that it is a significant factor. We concur with law professor and legal historian Constance Backhouse, who argues that Canada’s lack of action on missing and murdered Aboriginal women and girls and other forms of systemic violence can be attributed in part to “the legacy of misogyny and racism that runs through the heart of Canadian history.”7 The Commission believes that correcting the historical record concerning Aboriginal women is essential to reconciliation.
As Commissioners, we are governed in our approach to reconciliation with this thought: the way that we all have been educated in this country—Aboriginal children in residential schools and Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children in public and other schools—has brought us to where we are today: to a point where the psychological and emotional well-being of Aboriginal children has been harmed, and the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples has been seriously damaged. We believe that true reconciliation can take place only through a reshaping of a shared, national, collective memory of who we are and what has come before. The youth of this country are taking up this challenge.
Reshaping national history is a public process, one that happens through discussion, sharing, and commemoration. As Canadians gather in public spaces to share their memories, beliefs, and ideas about the past with others, our collective understanding of the present and future is formed.8 As citizens, our ideas, worldviews, cultural identities, and values are shaped not only in classrooms and museums or by popular culture but also in everyday social relationships and patterns of living that become our way of life.9
Public memory is dynamic—it changes over time as new understandings, dialogues, artistic expressions, and commemorations emerge. Public memory, much like national history, is often contentious. Although public memory can simply reinforce the colonial story of how Canada began with European settlement and became a nation, the process of remembering the past together also invites people to question this limited version of history.
Unlike some truth and reconciliation commissions that have focused on individual victims of human rights violations committed over a short period of time, this Commission has examined both the individual and collective harms perpetrated against Aboriginal families, communities, and nations for well over a century, as well as the preconditions that enabled such violence and oppression to occur.
Of course, previously inaccessible archival documents are critically important to correcting the historical record, but we have given equal weight and greater voice to Indigenous oral-based history, legal traditions, and memory practices in our work and in this final report since these sources represent previously unheard and unrecorded versions of history, knowledge, and wisdom.10 This has significantly informed our thinking about why repairing and revitalizing individual, family, and community memory are so crucial to the truth and reconciliation process.
Just as Survivors were involved in the long struggle to achieve a legally binding Settlement Agreement for the harms they have experienced, and an official apology, they have also continued to advise the Commission as it has implemented its mandate. Guided by Elders, Knowledge Keepers, and the members of the TRC Survivor Committee, the Commission has made Aboriginal oral history, legal traditions, and memory practices—ceremony, protocols, and the rituals of storytelling and testimonial witnessing—central to the TRC’s National Events, Community Hearings, forums, and dialogues.
The Commission’s proceedings themselves constitute an oral history record, duly witnessed by all those in attendance. Working with local communities in each region, sacred ceremonies and protocols were performed and followed at all TRC events. Elders and traditional healers ensured that a safe environment was created for truth sharing, apology, healing, and acts of reconciliation.
Sacred ceremony has always been at the heart of Indigenous cultures, law, and political life. When ceremonies were outlawed by the federal government, they were hidden away until the law was repealed. Historically and, to a certain degree, even at present, Indigenous ceremonies that create community bonds, sanctify laws, and ratify Treaty making have been misunderstood, disrespected, and disregarded by Canada. These ceremonies must now be recognized and honoured as an integral, vital, ongoing dimension of the truth and reconciliation process.
Ceremonies also reach across cultures to bridge the divide between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples. They are vital to reconciliation because of their sacred nature and because they connect people, preparing them to listen respectfully to each other in a difficult dialogue. Ceremonies are an affirmation of human dignity; they feed our spirits and comfort us even as they call on us to reimagine or envision finding common ground. Ceremonies validate and legitimize Treaties, family and kinship lines, and connections to the land. Ceremonies are also acts of memory sharing, mourning, healing, and renewal; they express the collective memory of families, communities, and nations.
Ceremonies enable us to set aside, however briefly, our cynicism, doubts, and disbelief, even as they console us, educate us, and inspire hope.11 They have an intangible quality that moves us from our heads to our hearts. They teach us about ourselves, our histories, and our lives. Ceremony and ritual have played an important role in various conflict and peace-building settings across the globe, including North America, where Indigenous nations have their own long histories of diplomacy and peacemaking.
Ceremonial rituals have three functions in the peacemaking process. First, they create a safe space for people to interact and learn as they take part in the ceremony. Second, they enable people to communicate non-verbally and process their emotions. Third, ceremonies create an environment where change is made possible; worldviews, identities, and relationships with others are transformed.12
Those in attendance at TRC events learned to acknowledge and respect Indigenous ceremonies and protocols by participating in them. The Commission intentionally made ceremonies the spiritual and ethical framework of our public education work, creating a safe space for sharing life stories and bearing testimonial witness to the past for the future.
The Commission’s National Events were designed to inspire reconciliation and shape individual and collective memory by demonstrating the core values that lie at the heart of reconciliation: wisdom, love, respect, courage, humility, honesty, and truth. These values are known by many Aboriginal peoples as the Seven Grandfather and Grandmother Teachings or Seven Sacred Teachings. They are also in the ancient teachings of most world religions.13 Each National Event focused on one of these teachings.
Working closely with local Aboriginal communities and various regional organizations, representatives of the parties to the Settlement Agreement, and other government and community networks, the Commission took great care to ensure that the proper ceremonies and protocols were understood and followed throughout every National Event. Elders offered prayers and teachings at the opening and closing of each event. Smudges, sacred pipe and water ceremonies, cedar brushings, songs, and drumming occurred on a regular basis throughout.
At each event, a sacred fire was lit and cared for by Elders and Fire Keepers. Water ceremonies were performed by women who were recognized as the Protectors of the Waters. The sacred fire was also used for ongoing prayers and tobacco offerings, as well as to receive the tissues from the many tears shed during each event. The ashes from each of the sacred fires were then carried forward to the next National Event, to be added in turn to its sacred fire, thus gathering in sacred ceremony the tears of an entire country.
At the Manitoba National Event, a young Métis woman, Ms. Lussier, who had grown up with little knowledge of Métis culture, said,
I can’t express the emotion and the power that I’ve felt in the past week here. I was given an opportunity yesterday to make an offering to the sacred fire. What I felt was unexplainable. The wind blew the fire in my direction, and I closed my eyes and I breathed deep, and I felt for the first time I could really feel my father’s heritage.14
That same day, Ms. Kenny, a first-generation Irish Canadian, said,
I have learned the traditions . . . Thank you for teaching me the water ceremony. In these past few days, what I’ve learned of Aboriginal culture, I just feel it has enriched my life so much. For them to be made to feel ashamed of that culture, it just makes me feel angry and it makes me feel sadness. And I just would like to say thank you to all of them for sharing their stories, and I wish for all of them, all the healing in the world.15
The Commission’s mandate also instructed that there be a “ceremonial transfer of knowledge” at the National Events. Coast Salish artist Luke Marston was commissioned by the TRC to design and carve a Bentwood Box as a symbol of this transfer. The box was steamed and bent in the traditional way from a single piece of western redcedar. Its intricately carved and beautifully painted wood panels represent First Nations, Inuit, and Métis cultures.
The Bentwood Box is a lasting tribute to all residential school Survivors and their families, both those who are living and those who have passed on, including the artist’s grandmother, who attended the Kuper Island Residential School. This ceremonial box travelled with the Commission to every one of its seven National Events, where offerings—public expressions of reconciliation—were made by governments, churches and other faith communities, educational institutions, the business sector, municipalities, youth groups, and various other groups and organizations.
The Truth and Reconciliation Bentwood Box, along with the many other sacred items that the TRC received, will be housed permanently in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg.16
Reconciliation is not possible without knowing the truth. To determine the truth and to be able to tell the full story of the residential schools in this country, it was fundamentally important to the Commission’s work to be able to hear the stories of Survivors and their families. It was also important to hear the stories of those who worked in the schools—the teachers, the administrators, the cooks, the janitors—as well as their family members. Canada’s national history must reflect this complex truth so that 50 or 100 years from now, our children’s children and their children will know what happened. They will inherit the responsibility to ensure that it never happens again.
Regardless of the different individual experiences that children had as students in the schools, they shared the common experience of being exploited. They were victims of a system intent on destroying intergenerational links of memory to their families, communities, and nations. The process of assimilation also profoundly disrespected parents, grandparents, and Elders in their rightful roles as the carriers of memory, through which culture, language, and identity are transmitted from one generation to the next.17
In providing their testimonies to the TRC, Survivors reclaimed their rightful place as members of intergenerational communities of memory. They remembered so that their families could understand what happened. They remembered so that their cultures, histories, laws, and nations can once again thrive for the benefit of future generations. They remembered so that Canada will know the truth and never forget.
The residential school story is complicated. Stories of abuse stand in sharp contradiction to the happier memories of some Survivors. The statements of former residential school staff also varied. Some were remorseful, whereas others were defensive. Some were proud of their students and their own efforts to support them, whereas others were critical of their own school and government authorities for their lack of attention, care, and resources.
The stories of government and church officials involved acknowledgement, apology, and promises not to repeat history. Some non-Aboriginal Canadians expressed outrage at what had happened in the schools and shared their feelings of guilt and shame that they had not known this. Others denied or minimized the destructive impacts of residential schools. These conflicting stories, based on different experiences, locations, time periods, and perspectives, all feed into a national historical narrative.
Developing this narrative through public dialogue can strengthen civic capacity for accountability and thereby do justice to victims not just in the legal sense but also in terms of restoring human dignity, nurturing mutual respect, and supporting healing. As citizens use ceremony and testimony to remember, witness, and commemorate, they learn how to put the principles of accountability, justice, and reconciliation into everyday practice. They become active agents in the truth and reconciliation process.
Participants at Commission events learned from the Survivors themselves by interacting directly with them. Survivors, whose memories are still alive, demonstrated in the most powerful and compelling terms that by sitting together in Sharing Circles, people gain a much deeper knowledge and understanding of what happened in the residential schools than can ever be acquired at a distance by studying books, reading newspapers, or watching television reports.
For Indigenous peoples, stories and teachings are rooted in relationships. Through stories, knowledge and understanding about what happened and why are acquired, validated, and shared with others. Writing about her work with Survivors from her own community, social work scholar Qwul’sih’yah’maht (Dr. Robina Anne Thomas) said,
I never dreamed of learning to listen in such a powerful way. Storytelling, despite all the struggles, enabled me to respect and honour the Ancestors and the storytellers while at the same time sharing tragic, traumatic, inhumanely unbelievable truths that our people had lived. It was this level of integrity that was essential to storytelling. . . . When we make personal what we teach . . . we touch people in a different and more profound way.18
At a Community Hearing in St. Paul, Alberta, in January 2011, Charles Cardinal explained that although he did not want to remember his residential school experiences, he came forward because “we’ve got to let other people hear our voices.” When he was asked how, given the history of the residential schools, Canada could be a better place, he replied that we must “listen to the people.”19 When asked the same question in Beausejour, Manitoba, Laurie McDonald said that Canada must begin by “doing exactly what is happening now . . . Governments . . . [have got to know] that they can never, ever, ever do this again.”20 In Ottawa, Survivor Victoria Grant-Boucher said,
I’m telling my story . . . for the education of the Canadian general public . . . [so that they] can understand what stolen identity is, you know, how it affects people, how it affects an individual, how it affects family, how it affects community. . . . I think the non-Aboriginal person, Canadian, has to understand that a First Nations person has a culture. . . . And I think that we, as Aboriginal people, have so much to share if you just let us regain that knowledge. . . . And I also take to heart what Elders talk about . . . We have to heal ourselves. We have to heal each other. And for Canada to heal, they have to allow us to heal before we can contribute. That’s what reconciliation means to me.21
Survivors told the Commission that an important reason for breaking their silence was to educate their own children and grandchildren by publicly sharing their life stories with them. The effect of this testimony on intergenerational Survivors was significant. At the Manitoba National Event, Desarae Eashappie said,
I have sat through this week having the honour of listening to the stories from Survivors. And I just feel—I just really want to acknowledge everybody in this room, you know, all of our Elders, all of our Survivors, all of our intergenerational Survivors. . . . We are all sitting here in solidarity right now . . . and we are all on our own journey, and [yet we are] sitting here together . . . with so much strength in this room, it really is phenomenal. And I just want to acknowledge that and thank everybody here. And to be given this experience, this opportunity, you know, to sit here . . . and to listen to other people and listen to their stories and their experiences, you know, it has really humbled me as a person in such a way that is indescribable. . . . And I can take this home with me now and I can take it into my own home. Because my dad is a residential school Survivor, I have lived the traumas, but I have lived the history without the context.22
Survivors’ life stories are teachings rooted in personal experience; the human relationships of their childhoods were scarred by those who harmed them in the schools. Their stories teach us about what it means to lose family, culture, community, self-esteem, and human dignity. They also teach us about courage, resilience, and resistance to violence and oppression.
An ethical response to Survivors’ life stories requires the listener to respond in ways that recognize the teller’s dignity and affirm that injustices were committed. Non-Indigenous witnesses must be willing to “risk interacting differently with Indigenous people—with vulnerability, humility, and a willingness to stay in the decolonizing struggle of our own discomfort . . . [and] to embrace [residential school] stories as powerful teachings—disquieting moments [that] can change our beliefs, attitudes, and actions.”23
Relatively few former residential school staff or their family members came forward publicly at TRC events; some staff are deceased, others are now elderly or ill, and a small minority refused to admit, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, that the schools were destructive. Still others gave private statements to the Commission so that their memories would be preserved at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
The Commission observed that many former residential school staff expressed mixed feelings about their residential school experiences in the wake of revelations of widespread abuse. Whereas some remembered their time at the schools as a positive experience, others felt shame. They were haunted by knowing that they had failed to intervene on behalf of young students. They saw this as a stain on their lifework. The stories of the family members of staff are just beginning to surface. They too have been affected and must grapple with trying to reconcile their own family memories of relatives with what they now know about the schools.
In May 2011, in St. Albert, Alberta, the Commission met with a group of priests of the Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate and nuns of the Sisters of Providence and Grey Nuns. Many of the priests and nuns who attended the meeting had either taught at the residential schools or worked in Aboriginal communities for many years. Two key issues of concern were raised. First, the majority of those present felt that positive experiences at the schools were being ignored; second, they felt that many of their colleagues had been unjustly accused of abuse. One of the speakers said that in listening to what was being said about the residential schools,
I felt that there is so much negativeness, like we did everything wrong, everything wrong, and I don’t believe in that. I believe in the reconciliation, that’s for sure. But you know, we talk about apologies, apologies. When do we talk a little bit about gratitude for what we did? Because we certainly did something right. We never hear about that . . . We made mistakes, I’m sure, and many have been accused of sexual abuse that wasn’t true. What do you think of that, I wonder? I feel very bad for some people because I heard them, they talked to me. I heard them, and they’re destroyed.24
Another speaker said,
When Sister expressed the pain she was holding of a particular community member that has been falsely accused, it wasn’t that she was saying that those coming forth haven’t experienced abuse, she was saying that it happened in reverse as well, where some of us experienced accusations that were unfounded, and that’s the one she said she was prepared to walk through fire because she knew they were innocent, and she holds their pain. It wasn’t denying the fact that abuse happened to people that have the courage to stand up and express it in the wide public forums.25
Although the majority of Survivors who testified at TRC sessions described the individual and collective abuses that they experienced in the schools, the Commission also heard appreciation and gratitude from many Survivors for the education they received, and for individual teachers who were kind to them and very important to their success.
At the Northern National Event in Inuvik, Survivor Agnes Moses said,
Even though there was a lot of things that we didn’t like about residential schools, there were some good people in there that helped us. . . . When I went to live in Ottawa, who do I run into but my two teachers, and I knew them until they passed away just in the last couple of years. I’ve had contact with them.26
In Chisasabi, Québec, Survivor Samuel Tapiatic told the Commission that he was abused and bullied at residential school. He also said, “Now I realize that some of the things that happened in that residential school were good for the education I got. . . . So anyway, I’m grateful for what I have learned in the residential school.”27
A number of former residential school staff came to the Commission to speak not only about their perspectives on the time they spent at the schools but also about their struggles to come to terms with their own past. Florence Kaefer, a former teacher, spoke at the Manitoba National Event.
And from my English ancestors, I apologize today for what my people did to you. I taught in two residential schools. In 1954, I taught in Norway House United Church Residential School for three or four years, and then I taught in the Alberni United Church Indian Residential School in BC. I worked very hard to be the best teacher I could be, and I did not know about the violence and cruelty going on in the dormitories and in the playrooms. But I have found out through one of my former students, who was five years old when he came to Norway House, his name is Edward Gamblin, and Edward Gamblin and I have gone through a personal truth and reconciliation.28
In a media interview afterwards, Ms. Kaefer said that she had contacted Mr. Gamblin after
hearing his song a few years ago describing the cultural, physical and sexual abuse he had suffered at Norway House school. She said, “I just cried. I told my sister that I can never think of teaching in the residential school in the same way again.” She called Gamblin after hearing the song. He told her he had to hide his abuse from the good teachers for fear he would lose them if they found out what was happening and left. He invited Kaefer to a healing circle in 2006 and they became close friends. Kaefer said Gamblin taught her not to be embarrassed about her past, being part of a school where abuse took place. “I was 19 and you don’t question your church and your government when you’re 19, but I certainly question my church and my government today.” . . . Gamblin said Kaefer taught him how to forgive. “There are good people [teachers] who don’t deserve to be labeled,” he said.29
Some family members of former staff also came forward. At the Manitoba National Event, Jack Lee told the Commission,
My parents were staff members of the Indian residential school in Norway House. I was born on a reserve in Ontario and I moved with my family to Norway House when I was about one or two years old, and started school in the Indian residential school system, basically, at the very start as a day student . . . as a white boy. . . . My father agonized very much over his role. . . . But I just want everyone to know that my father tried his best, as many other staff members tried their best, but they were working with so limited resources, and many of them felt very bad about their role in it, but they chose to stay in the system because it was still better than nothing, it was still better than abandoning the system, and abandoning the students that were in it.30
At the Atlantic National Event, Mark DeWolf spoke to us about his father, the Reverend James Edward DeWolf, who was the principal at two residential schools: St. Paul’s in Alberta and La Tuque in Québec.
I’m quite hesitant to speak here this morning . . . I’m not here to defend my father [but] to speak part of the truth about the kind of person my father was. I think he was an exemplary principal of an Indian residential school. . . . Part of the story will be about what I saw around me, what my parents tried to do, however effective that was, however well-intentioned that was, however beneficial or not beneficial it was, you will at least, when you leave here today, have a bit more of the story and you may judge for yourselves. I hope you will judge with kindness, understanding, and generosity of spirit. . . .
[My father] did so many things, coached the teams, blew the whistle or shot off the starting pistol at the sports days. Twelve o’clock at midnight, on the coldest of winter days, he would be out on the rink that he had constructed behind the school, flooding it so that the children could skate. He devoted his life to the service of his church, his God, and those that he thought had been marginalized, oppressed. . . . It is a terrible shame there were not more like him. When we leave today, though, let’s remember that when you have a system like the residential school, there are the individuals within the system, some of whom are good, decent, loving, caring people, and some of whom are blind, intolerant, predatory. . . . My father worked within the system trying to make it a better one.31
In the introduction to this volume, we emphasized that the issue of timing is critical in the truth and reconciliation process. There is a time for speaking, a time for listening, and a time for reflection. Church and government officials sometimes spoke about how important it was for them just to listen to Survivors and to think about how to take action on reconciliation in their own institutions.
At the Saskatchewan National Event, the Reverend Dr. John Vissers, principal of the Presbyterian College in Montreal and director of the Montreal School of Theology, said,
How do communities reconcile? Survivors, as we’ve learned, have had to keep the painful experiences of residential schools a secret for many years. Family members, in many cases, knew little or nothing about what had happened to their parents or their grandparents. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada is giving Survivors this opportunity to share what has happened to them, to share painful memories with family members, with friends, and with Canadian society. . . .
Reconciliation is a conscious act involving two or more parties. . . . And reconciliation, of course, must be rooted in truth, in truth that comes from deep listening and deep respect for the other. For the members of the churches than ran the schools on behalf of the government of Canada and therefore the people of Canada, we need to listen deeply and profoundly to the stories of Survivors. . . .
Reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada, if it is to have any meaning, must be mutual. When there is mutuality, the journey then may begin. We understand, as churches, and we acknowledge that many Survivors are not yet prepared to participate in this journey in this way. But we must continue as churches to listen deeply and profoundly and to live into the reconciliation that we believe lies ahead of us.32
At the same event, Bishop Don Bolen, the Roman Catholic Bishop of Saskatoon, spoke about the importance of the church’s active participation in the truth and reconciliation process. He said that this involved
[b]earing witness to what happened at the residential schools and doing so in a way that tells the truth and which fosters genuine reconciliation. Those witnesses need to be heard. And we embrace the invitation to listen, to engage in a relationship-building process, to join in bearing witness, to working together toward a new future based on an honest dealing with the past.33
At the Atlantic National Event, Ian Gray, the regional director general of Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada for the Atlantic region, said that it was important for government officials to hear directly from Survivors.
[A]s an official within the department, you know, we all have our spheres of influence. We all work in a cubicle, [a] physical cubicle, but also a cubicle of terms and conditions, programs, legislation, rules, regulations, bosses, people that report to us. . . . So often we have our head down in dealing with those things. That’s the day-to-day stuff that we grind through as public servants in a department. And it’s just so special to have that opportunity and occasions like this to be able to rise above that [and] to really think about and talk about and hear from people about the real big issues about reconciliation.34
At the British Columbia National Event, a group of resolution managers from the BC Regional Office of Resolution and Individual Affairs, Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, offered an expression of reconciliation to Survivors.
We work to resolve claims of abuse made under the Settlement Agreement. This work includes attending former students’ Independent Assessment Process [IAP] hearings where we represent Canada. . . .
Listening carefully to your experiences and remembering what we have heard is critical. We leave each hearing as changed people. We want you to know that your courage and strength in coming forward to share your testimony transform each and every one of us. . . . The people we encounter in this work show a strength of character, a deep love of family and community, and a commitment to culture and healing that touches our hearts and teaches us to be better people. . . .
As resolution managers, our focus is always on reconciliation, while understanding that reconciliation means different things to different people. Reconciliation is something that grows, rather than something that is imposed. We acknowledge that while many [Survivors] come through the hearing process feeling lighter of heart and mind, and perhaps even feeling a measure of healing, this has not been everyone’s experience. We know that, in our role as Canada’s representatives, we cannot take away the hurt or give anyone back the childhood that was lost.
We sincerely hope to leave a legacy within the Canadian public service when the work of resolving IAP claims is complete. For this legacy, we will spread knowledge among people in Canada in the public service and beyond of the impact of Indian residential schools. We will bring an atmosphere of caring and respect with us in whatever work we do, as we have learned from Survivors and their families.35
The mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission describes reconciliation as an ongoing individual and collective process involving all the people of Canada. To help ensure that reconciliation will indeed be ongoing, even after the TRC’s own official work is done, the Commissioners decided early on to implement a public education and advocacy strategy for engaging high-profile supporters, each willing to foster the continuing work of public education and dialogue. We called upon more than seventy of them across the country and internationally, and inducted them as Honorary Witnesses in a public ceremony at each of the National Events.
Together, the Honorary Witnesses represent accomplished and influential leaders from all walks of life, now serving as ambassadors in educating the broader public about why reconciliation is necessary. Most of them, including some who had worked with Aboriginal people in the past, frankly admitted to their own prior gaps in knowledge and understanding of the residential school system and its continuing legacy. They now encourage the broader Canadian public to do what they have done: to learn and to be transformed in understanding and in commitment to societal change.
CBC broadcaster Shelagh Rogers, OC, who became an Honorary Witness at the Northern National Event, has said about the role and responsibility of witnessing, “Witnessing is an active verb . . . And if you’re seriously committed to the retelling of what you’ve seen and heard, it’s not always comfortable.”36
As a Witness, you keep the memory and you take the story further down the road and deliver it to more people. I have been very busy talking in churches, doing dialogues, meeting in community hall basements, [and] book clubs—just trying to get the real story of our country out to as many people as possible. It has really taken over my heart. It is bigger than just telling the story—I want to see policy change, curriculum change, to see concrete fixes in civil society that will enable us to have much better partnerships than we have right now.37
Speaking at the Saskatchewan National Event, TRC Honorary Witness and former member of Parliament the Honourable Tina Keeper, who is also a member of the Norway House Cree Nation, talked about the importance of honouring individual, family, and community relationships and memory, her own emotional involvement in the ratification of the Settlement Agreement, and the struggles surrounding Canada’s apology. She underscored the strong contributions that Aboriginal peoples have to make to national healing and reconciliation.
Yesterday was an incredible opportunity for me personally to let the tears flow, and they flowed all day long. And I didn’t do that when I was in the House of Commons. I had the privilege of delivering the speech on behalf of the official opposition when the Agreement was tabled in the House, and during that speech I had to stop midway and breathe . . . because I didn’t think I could do it. I kept thinking of my family, and my extended family, and my grandparents, and so many of the people in the communities. . . . Our cultures, our languages, our values, and spiritual beliefs that have taken care of us at this gathering . . . they will become tools for the healing of a nation.38
At the Québec National Event, TRC Honorary Witness and former prime minister the Right Honourable Paul Martin reminded participants about the role that education played in the attempted destruction of Aboriginal families, communities, and nations, and the role it must play in repairing this damage.
I’ve talked to a number of the people here, some of the members of Parliament are here . . . and the question we asked ourselves is, “How come we didn’t know what happened?” . . . I still can’t answer that. . . . [L]et us understand that what happened at the residential schools was the use of education for cultural genocide . . . [Let’s] call a spade a spade. What that really means is that we’ve got to offer Aboriginal Canadians, without any shadow of a doubt, the best education system that [it] is possible to have.39
Although some Honorary Witnesses already had significant knowledge of Aboriginal issues, including residential schools, through the act of witnessing Survivors’ testimonies, they learned about this history in a different way. At the Saskatchewan National Event, former prime minister the Right Honourable Joe Clark said that the event gave him a better understanding of the intergenerational impacts of the residential schools, and a better sense of the challenges and opportunities for reconciliation with the rest of Canada.
When I came to take my place this morning, I knew the storyline, if you will. I knew what had happened. I had some idea of the consequences it [the residential school system] involved, but I had no real idea because I had not been able to witness it before . . . the multi-generational emotion that is involved in what has happened to so many of the victims of the residential schools. . . . [Today] I heard, “We are only as sick as our secrets.” That is an incentive to all that have kept these emotions and this history too secret, too long, to show the courage that so many of you have shown, and let those facts be known. . . .
There are cross-cultural difficulties here as we seek reconciliation, the reconciliation of people who have not been part of this experience with those who have. We are going to deal with cultural differences, but no one wants to be torn away from their roots. And there are common grounds here by which consensus can be built. . . . Reconciliation means finding a way that brings together the legitimate concerns of the people in this room, and the apprehensions, call them fear . . . that might exist elsewhere in the country. . . . Among the things we have to do is to ensure that not only the stories of abuse as they touch First Nations and Aboriginal people, but also the story of their contribution to Canada, and the values that are inherent in those communities [are] much better known.40
Joe Clark’s observations reinforce this Commission’s view that learning happens in a different manner when life stories are shared and witnessed in ways that connect knowledge, understanding, and human relationships. He pinpointed a key challenge to reconciliation: how to bridge the divides between those who have been part of the residential school experience and those who have not, and between those who have participated in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s proceedings and those who have not.
Former minister of Aboriginal affairs and northern development Canada the late Honourable Andy Scott was inducted as an Honorary Witness at the 2012 Atlantic National Event in Halifax. He then served to welcome new inductees to the Honorary Witness Circle at the Saskatchewan National Event, and reflected on his experience. His comments reinforce the Commission’s conviction that relationship-based learning and ways of remembering lead to a deeper knowledge and understanding of the links between the Survivors’ experiences and community memory, on the one hand, and our collective responsibility and need to re-envision Canada’s national history, identity, and future, on the other.
When I was invited to become an Honorary Witness, I thought I was prepared, having been involved in the Settlement [Agreement] process and having already met and heard from Survivors. I was not. In Halifax, I heard about not knowing what it meant to be loved, not knowing how to love. I heard about simply wanting to be believed that it happened, ‘just like I said.’ . . . We heard about a deliberate effort to disconnect young children from who they are. We heard about a sense of betrayal by authority—government, community, and church. We heard about severe punishment for speaking one’s language, living one’s spirituality, seeking out one’s siblings. We heard about forced feeding, physical and sexual abuse. And we heard about deaths.
We heard about forgiving as a way to move on and we heard from those who felt that they would never be able to forgive. I could not and cannot imagine being taken away to a strange place as a five or a six year old, never knowing why or for how long. Perhaps I remember most poignantly Ruth, who said simply, “I never thought I’d talk about this, and now I don’t think I’ll ever stop. But Canada is big. I’ll need some help.”
Reconciliation is about Survivors speaking about their experiences, being heard, and being believed, but it’s also about a national shared history. As Canadians, we must be part of reconciling what we have done collectively with who we believe we are. To do that with integrity and to restore our honour, we must all know the history so we can reunite these different Canadas.41
The Commission also heard from other Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal witnesses from many walks of life. Some were there on behalf of their institution or organization. Some had close personal or professional ties to Aboriginal people, and others had none. Many said that the experience opened their eyes and was powerfully transformative. They commented on how much they had learned by listening to Survivors’ life stories. This was true for both non-Aboriginal witnesses and Aboriginal witnesses whose own families had been impacted by the schools but who may have had few opportunities to learn more about the residential schools themselves, especially in those many families where no one was yet willing or able to talk about it.
At the 2011 Northern National Event in Inuvik, Therese Boullard, then the director of the Northwest Territories Human Rights Commission, told us,
We need to have an accurate record of history. . . . As long as there are some that are in denial of what really happened, as long as we don’t have the full picture of what happened, we really can’t move forward in that spirit of reconciliation. . . . I want to acknowledge these stories as gifts, a hand towards reconciliation. I think it’s amazing that after all that has passed, after all that you’ve experienced, that you would be willing to share your pain with the rest of Canada in this spirit of openness and reconciliation and in this faith that the Government of Canada and non-Aboriginal Canadians will receive them in a way that will lead to a better relationship in the future. That you have that faith to share your stories in that spirit is amazing, and it’s humbling, and it’s inspiring, and I just want to thank Survivors for that.42
At the 2010 Manitoba National Event, Ginelle Giacomin, a high school history teacher from Winnipeg who served as a private statement gatherer at the event, said,
I was talking to a few students before I came this week to do this, and they said, “Well, what do you mean there are Survivors? That was a long time ago. That was hundreds of years ago.” To them, this is a page in a history book. . . . So, I’m so blessed to have spent the past week sitting down one-on-one with Survivors and listening to their stories. And I have heard horrific things and the emotions. It’s been very hard to hear. But what every single person I’ve spoken to has said is that “we are strong.” And the strength is one thing that I’ll carry with me when I leave. You carry on, and that’s something that I want to bring back to my classrooms, is the strength of everyone that I spoke to and their stories. And it is so important for high school students, and all students in Canada, to be talking about this a lot more than they are. I just want to thank everyone involved for doing this, for educating me. I have a history degree in Canadian history. I learned more in the past five days about Canada than I have in three years of that degree.43
Whether attitudes and actions were changed and transformed in any sustainable way can be known only in the fullness of time. There are however some early indications that for those who witnessed Survivors’ testimonies, the impacts were significant. In one study, interviews were conducted with a small sample of twenty-three non-Indigenous witnesses who had attended TRC events in British Columbia. Reflecting on their experiences in the months following these events, they told the researcher why they had attended and what they had learned in the process. Some of their reflections included the following:
Having [a] direct connection to stolen land, (grandfather cleared land and financially supported the residential schools) so I felt a personal reason to attend; also a wider more political reason, I wanted to be part of the larger effort. There is clearly a need for reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and non-Indigenous [people] have an important role—to deal with our own stuff and show up. I really wanted to witness.44
It opened my mind and my heart to how deep those impacts could be: it grows in me every time I’m part of a process around residential schools. What I got from the TRC is that it’s not just about people doing abusive things: it’s the whole experience. Even if everybody had been the best, nicest, kindest white person in the world, it would still have been a completely abusive system. I feel like my learning grows and my understanding grows.45
[S]haring of stories is really important because being in the room with someone talking about intergenerational effects is so human, so poignant, so unsettling and powerful. I can relate to them, I feel compassion for them. Hearing the stories firsthand was the only way it could pierce all that racism; it certainly was transformational.46
My witnessing pushes me to do more than just look on . . . Everyone has to be involved to right some of the wrongs and everyone has a responsibility to do whatever they can.47
A responsibility comes with hearing these stories . . . It was a real chance to communicate, a chance to connect to humanity for all of us, a chance to be there with an open heart and mind to connect with a thousand people as a human being, in a way to hope for change. It was powerful.48
The Commission’s seven National Events, by all accounts, provided a respectful space for public dialogue. Over 150,000 Canadians came out to participate in them and in some 300 smaller-scale Community Events. One of the most common words used in describing them was “transformational.” It will be up to others to determine their long-term effectiveness, and to judge this model’s potential in terms of ongoing public education. However, as Commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, we are both confident and convinced that public dialogue is critical to the reconciliation process.
The reconciliation process is not easy. It asks those who have been harmed to revisit painful memories and those who have harmed others—either directly or indirectly—to be accountable for past wrongs. It asks us to mourn and commemorate a terrible loss of people, cultures, and languages, even as we celebrate their survival and revitalization. It asks us to envision a more just and inclusive future, even as we struggle with the living legacies of injustice.
As the TRC has experienced in every region of the country, creative expression can play a vital role in this national reconciliation, providing alternative voices, vehicles, and venues for expressing historical truths and present hopes. Creative expression supports everyday practices of resistance, healing, and commemoration at individual, community, regional, and national levels.
Across the globe, the arts have provided a creative pathway to breaking silences, transforming conflicts, and mending the damaged relationships of violence, oppression, and exclusion. From war-ravaged countries to local communities struggling with everyday violence, poverty, and racism, the arts are widely used by educators, practitioners, and community leaders to deal with trauma and difficult emotions, and to communicate across cultural divides.49
Art is active, and “participation in the arts is a guarantor of other human rights because the first thing that is taken away from vulnerable, unpopular or minority groups is the right to self-expression.”50 The arts help to restore human dignity and identity in the face of injustice. Properly structured, they can also invite people to explore their own worldviews, values, beliefs, and attitudes that may be barriers to healing, justice, and reconciliation.
Even prior to the establishment of the TRC, a growing body of work, including Survivors’ memoirs and works of fiction by well-known Indigenous authors, as well as films and plays, had brought the history and legacy of the residential schools to a wider Canadian public, enabling people to learn about the schools through the eyes of Survivors. This body of work includes memoirs such as Isabelle Knockwood’s Out of the Depths: The Experiences of Mi’kmaw Children at the Indian Residential School at Shubenacadie, Nova Scotia (1992), and more recently, Agnes Grant’s Finding My Talk: How Fourteen Native Women Reclaimed Their Lives after Residential School (2004), Alice Blondin’s My Heart Shook Like a Drum: What I Learned at the Indian Mission Schools, Northwest Territories (2009), Theodore Fontaine’s Broken Circle: The Dark Legacy of Indian Residential Schools: A Memoir (2010), Bev Sellars’s They Called Me Number One: Secrets and Survival at an Indian Residential School (2013), and Edmund Metatawabin and Alexandra Shimo’s Up Ghost River: A Chief’s Journey through the Turbulent Waters of Native History (2014).
Works of fiction (sometimes drawn from the author’s own life experiences), such as Tomson Highway’s Kiss of the Fur Queen (1998), Robert Alexie’s Porcupines and China Dolls (2009), and Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse (2012), tell stories about abuse, neglect, and loss that are also stories of healing, redemption, and hope. In 2012, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation published Speaking My Truth: Reflections on Reconciliation and Residential Schools, and invited book clubs across the country to read and discuss the book. Documentary films such as Where the Spirit Lives (1989), Kuper Island: Return to the Healing Circle (1997), and Muffins for Granny (2008), as well as docu-dramas such as We Were Children (2012), all serve to educate Canadians and the wider world about the residential school experience, using the power of sound and images. Intergenerational Survivor Georgina Lightning was the first Indigenous woman in North America to direct a full-length feature film, Older Than America (2008). Kevin Loring’s stage play, Where the Blood Mixes, won the Governor General’s Award for literary drama in 2009. It combines drama and humour to tell the stories of three Survivors living in the aftermath of their residential school experiences.
Art can be powerful and provocative. Through their work, Indigenous artists seek to resist and challenge the cultural understandings of settler-dominated versions of Canada’s past and its present reality. Sharing intercultural dialogue about history, responsibility, and transformation through the arts is potentially healing and transformative for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples.51 Yet art does not always cross this cultural divide, nor does it have to in order to have a high impact. Acts of resistance sometimes take place in “irreconcilable spaces” where artists choose to keep their residential school experiences private or share them only with other Aboriginal people.52 This choice is also essential to individual and collective reclaiming of identity, culture, and community memory.
The Commission notes that the use of creative arts in community workshops promotes healing for Survivors, their families, and the whole community through the recovery of cultural traditions. In conducting surveys of 103 community-based healing projects, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation found that 80% of those projects included cultural activities and traditional healing interventions. These components included Elders’ teachings, storytelling and traditional knowledge, language programs, land-based activities, feasts, and powwows, as well as learning traditional art forms, harvesting medicines, and drumming, singing, and dancing. The foundation’s report observes,
A notable component of successful healing programs was their diversity—interventions were blended and combined to create holistic programs that met the physical, emotional, cultural, and spiritual needs of participants. Not surprisingly, arts-based interventions were included in many cultural activities (drum making, beading, singing, and drumming) as well as in therapeutic healing (art therapy and psychodrama).53
The Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s findings make clear that creative art practices are highly effective in reconnecting Survivors and their families to their cultures, languages, and communities. In our view, this report confirms yet again that funding for community-based healing projects is an urgent priority for Aboriginal communities.
Art exhibits have played a particularly powerful role in the process of healing and reconciliation. In 2009, nationally acclaimed Anishinaabe artist Robert Houle, who attended the Sandy Bay Residential School in Manitoba, created a series of twenty-four paintings to be housed permanently in the University of Manitoba’s School of Art Gallery. In an interview with CBC News on September 24, 2013, he explained that “during the process memories came back that he had previously suppressed . . . [but that] he found the whole experience cathartic. At the end, he felt a sigh of relief, a sigh of liberation.”54
Over the course of the Commission’s mandate, several major art exhibits ran concurrently with its National Events. During the British Columbia National Event in Vancouver, for example, three major exhibits opened featuring well-known Aboriginal artists, some of whom were also Survivors or intergenerational Survivors. A number of non-Aboriginal artists were also featured. Their work explored themes of denial, complicity, apology, and government policy. Two of these exhibits were at the University of British Columbia: Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools at the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery, and the Museum of Anthropology’s Speaking to Memory: Images and Voices from the St. Michael’s Residential School. Both exhibits were collaborative efforts that also engaged Survivors, artists, and curatorial staff in related public education initiatives, including workshops, symposiums, and public dialogues based on the exhibits.55
A significant number of the statements gathered by the Commission also came to us in artistic formats. Some Survivors said that although it hurt too much to tell their story in the usual way, they had been able to find their voice instead by writing a poem, a song, or a book. Some made a video or audio recording, offered photographs, or produced a theatre performance piece or a film. Others created traditional blankets, quilts, carvings, or paintings to depict residential school experiences, to celebrate those who survived them, or to commemorate those who did not. Lasting public memory of the schools has therefore been produced not only through oral testimonies but also through this wide range of artistic expressions. The arts have opened up new and critical space for Survivors, artists, curators, and public audiences to explore the complexities of truth, healing, and reconciliation.
The Commission funded or supported several arts-related projects. Early in its mandate, the TRC sponsored the Living Healing Quilt Project, which was organized by Anishinaabe quilter Alice Williams from Curve Lake First Nation in Ontario. Women Survivors and intergenerational Survivors from across the country created individual quilt blocks depicting their memories of residential schools. These were then stitched together into three quilts, Schools of Shame, Child Prisoners, and Crimes against Humanity.
The quilts tell a complex story of trauma, loss, isolation, recovery, healing, and hope through women’s eyes. The sewing skills taught to young Aboriginal girls in the residential schools and passed along to their daughters and granddaughters are now used to stitch together a counter-narrative.56 This project also inspired the Healing Quilt Project, which linked education and art. At the Manitoba National Event, as an expression of reconciliation, the Women’s and Gender Studies and the Aboriginal Governance Departments at the University of Winnipeg gave the TRC a quilt created by students and professors as part of their coursework. Through classroom readings, dialogue, and art, they created a space for learning about, and reflecting on, the history and legacy of the residential schools in the context of reconciliation.57
The ArtsLink Project, initiated by intergenerational Survivor Carol Greyeyes, is an online, interactive showcase featuring the artwork and cultural practices of ten Aboriginal artists who are also Survivors. Ms. Greyeyes summarizes the purpose of the project.
The ArtsLink website shares the wisdom, the stories, and insights of residential school survivors from the Western Provinces who have reclaimed their identity and pride through art and culture. Each webpage includes a biography, a short interview with the artist, samples of artwork and documents, innovative arts and learning practices, and community arts projects.
ArtsLink also provides an accessible, safe forum for discussion and expression of the residential school experience. . . .
Art bridges age, language, culture, economics, and promotes understanding by its transformative power. ArtsLink allows artists and website visitors to “link up” in the educative process. Just as the artists have reconnected with their own inner creative selves and transformed their lives, by showcasing their artwork and sharing their amazing stories, other Canadians will be able to connect to the artistic journey and healing process too.58
A report commissioned by the TRC, “Practicing Reconciliation: A Collaborative Study of Aboriginal Art, Resistance and Cultural Politics,” was based on the findings of a one-year research project. Working with Survivors, artists, and curators, a multi-disciplinary team of researchers examined the general question of how artistic practice contributes to the reconciliation process. The research was done through a series of interviews, workshops, artist residencies, planning sessions, symposia, artistic incubations, publications, and online learning platforms. The report reveals the depth and potential of arts-based approaches to reconciliation.
We should begin by echoing what many of our interview and artist subjects have repeatedly said: that the act of reconciliation is itself deeply complicated, and that success should not be measured by achieving a putative [commonly accepted or supposed] reconciliation, but by movement towards these lofty goals. Indeed, it could be proposed that full reconciliation is both mercurial and impossible, and that the efforts of theorists, artists, survivors, and the various publics engaged in this difficult process are best focused on working collaboratively for better understanding our histories, our traumas, and ourselves.59
These various projects indicate that the arts and artistic practices may serve to shape public memory in ways that are potentially transformative for individuals, communities, and national history.
Commemoration should not put closure to the history and legacy of the residential schools. Rather, it must invite citizens into a dialogue about a contentious past and why this history still matters today. Commemorations and memorials at former school sites and cemeteries are visible reminders of Canada’s shame and church complicity. They bear witness to the suffering and loss that generations of Aboriginal peoples have endured and overcome. The process of remembering the past together is an emotional journey of contradictory feelings: loss and resilience, anger and acceptance, denial and remorse, shame and pride, despair and hope.
The Settlement Agreement identified the historic importance and reconciliation potential of such remembering by establishing a special fund for projects that would commemorate the residential school experience, and by assigning a role in the approval of these projects to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
Twenty million dollars was set aside for Aboriginal communities and various partners and organizations to undertake community-based, regional or national projects. The Commission evaluated and made recommendations to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, which was responsible for administering the funding for the commemoration projects.
The Settlement Agreement commemoration policy set out specific project criteria. Commemoration projects were to:
• Assist in honouring and validating the healing and reconciliation of former students and their families through commemoration initiatives that address their residential school experience;
• Provide support towards efforts to improve and enhance Aboriginal relationships and between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people;
• Provide an opportunity for former students and their families to support one another and to recognize and take pride in their strengths, courage, resiliency, and achievements;
• Contribute to a sense of identity, unity and belonging;
• Promote Aboriginal languages, cultures, and traditional and spiritual values;
• Ensure that the legacy of residential schools and former students’ and their families’ experiences and needs are affirmed; and
• Memorialize in a tangible and permanent way the residential school experience.60
Unlike more conventional state commemorations, which have tended to reinforce Canada’s story as told through colonial eyes, residential school commemorative projects challenged and recast public memory and national history. Many First Nations, Inuit, and Métis communities partnered with regional or national Aboriginal organizations, and involved local churches, governments, and their non-Aboriginal neighbours. The scope, breadth, and creativity of the projects were truly impressive.
Projects included traditional and virtual quilts, monuments and memorials, traditional medicine gardens, totem pole and canoe carving, oral history, community ceremonies and feasts, land-based culture and language camps, cemetery restoration, film and digital storytelling, commemorative walking trails, and theatre or dance productions.61
The Commission, advised by the TRC Survivor Committee, identified three elements of the commemoration process that were seen as being essential to supporting long-term reconciliation. First, the projects were to be Survivor-driven; that is, their success was contingent upon the advice, recommendations, and active participation of Survivors. Second, commemoration projects would forge new connections that linked Aboriginal family and community memory to Canada’s public memory and national history. Third, incorporating Indigenous oral history and memory practices into commemoration projects would ensure that the processes of remembering places, reclaiming identity, and revitalizing cultures were consistent with the principle of self-determination.
Commemorating the life stories of Survivors strengthens the bonds of family and community memory that have been disrupted but not destroyed. Families grieve for all that was lost and can never be recovered. The act of commemoration remembers and honours those who are no longer living and comforts those for whom a history of injustice and oppression is still very much alive. Commemorations can also symbolize hope, signifying cultural revitalization and the reclaiming of history and identity. Even as they grieve, families envision a better future for children and youth and for generations yet unborn.
The collective memory of Aboriginal peoples lives in places: in their traditional homelands and in the actual physical locations where residential schools once stood.62 On March 24, 2014, the Grand Council of Treaty 3 brought together Survivors, Elders, and others in Kenora, Ontario, for a final ceremony to mark commemorations that were held earlier at each site of the five residential schools that were located in the territory. Monuments had been placed at each of the sites. Richard Green, who coordinated the two-year memorial project, said, “This is a commemoration for all the sites together. This meeting is about honouring all the children and is part of remembering the legacy. Lest we forget, as they say. We can probably forgive, but we can never forget our history.” He explained that the monuments “have been a big success with plenty of positive feedback. Now we have a physical place where people can go and commemorate.”63
The story of a small collection of children’s art created at the Alberni Residential School demonstrates how recognizing and respecting Indigenous protocols and practices of ceremony, testimony, and witnessing can breathe life, healing, and transformation into public memory making through dialogue, the arts, and commemoration. The story has deep roots within the family histories of the Survivors and in the oral history and community memory of the Nuu-chah-nulth peoples.
The paintings from the Alberni Residential School are part of a larger collection of Indigenous children’s art donated to the University of Victoria in 2009 by the late artist Robert Aller. As a resident of Port Alberni, British Columbia, Aller initially volunteered his time to teach art classes to selected students outside of the regular curriculum at the residential school. He was hired by Indian Affairs to teach art between 1956 and 1987 at the Alberni school, and also at the McKay Residential School in Dauphin, Manitoba, as well as in Aboriginal communities in several other provinces.
There are over 750 paintings in the collection, including 36 paintings from the Alberni Residential School. Aller also donated to the university his private papers, and hundreds of photographs, slides, and archival documents that detail his teaching philosophy and approach to art. Aller did not agree with the philosophy behind the residential schools. He saw art as a way to free students from their everyday environment and as a way for them to express their creativity, either through traditionally inspired works or through paintings that used the theories and ideas of the contemporary art world. The paintings from the Alberni Residential School portray images of landscapes, people, animals, masks, and traditional stories, as well as some images of the school itself. Most of the artists signed their paintings, putting their age next to their name. In this sense, the children stand out; the anonymity that depersonalizes so much of the residential school history is removed.
In 2010, the University of Victoria’s Dr. Andrea Walsh, who was in the early stages of a research project on the art collection, met with the Commissioners, and we urged her to begin her research with ceremony. She turned to two Elders from the First Peoples House at the university to guide her in this process: Tousilum (Ron George), who is a residential school Survivor; and Sulsa’meeth (Deb George), his wife. They helped her to reach out to Survivors, Elders, and chiefs in Port Alberni in Nuu-chah-nulth territory when the group travelled there with the paintings. As community members leafed through the paintings drawn by children’s hands so many years ago, memories were shared about the artists, the school, and the parents and communities they had left behind.
Working under the direction of these community members, and in collaboration with her colleague Qwul’sih’yah’maht (Dr. Robina Anne Thomas) and TRC staff, Walsh began preparations to bring the artwork to the Learning Place at the TRC’s Victoria Regional Event in April 2012. In a powerfully moving ceremony, Nuu-chah-nulth Elders, Survivors, and Hereditary Chiefs drummed, sang, and danced the art into the Learning Place. In this way, each painting, carried with respect and love by a Nuu-chah-nulth woman dressed in button blanket regalia, was brought out to be shared with others.
After being inducted as a TRC Honorary Witness at the Victoria Regional Event, Dr. Walsh spoke about her journey with the children’s paintings. She explained that she had come to understand the children’s paintings as a living archive and that as witnesses to the marks of the children, we agree to take responsibility for the personal knowledge they contain. From her perspective, we must not simply see the works of art; we must bear witness to the child.
These paintings done by the children of the Alberni school all tell stories; however, what I witnessed, what I saw, went beyond the Alberni school. These paintings moved Survivors from other schools to share their stories of making art, and the images depicted in the paintings prompted non-art stories, and memories of the schools. I heard stories of horrible trauma, fear, hurt, abuse, addiction, hate, pain, starvation. I watched tears fall in front of the paintings. I saw shoulders shaking from the memories emerging. The paintings are that powerful. . . .
I witnessed something else, though, around the paintings. It was pride, it was strength, it was pleasure, and it was a profound sense of truth. I’ve come to think of these paintings as direct connections to the children who created them. They are the children, and as Chief Ed John said, the truth is in the Survivors. And against all odds, these paintings too have survived. They are not small things forgotten. Survivors, Elders, their families, and communities have worked together to bring these paintings to us in a good way. Through their work, they’ve ensured that the children’s art, their stories, their lives lived, will be forever great things remembered.64
The community later received commemoration project funding to hold a traditional feast on March 30, 2013, in Port Alberni in order to reunite artists and their families with the paintings. Robert Aller’s family members were also invited to attend. They were visibly moved when they heard the stories of the paintings, and said that Aller would have been happy that the paintings were being returned. Paintings were returned to those who wished to have them; the remaining art was loaned to the University of Victoria, where it will be housed, cared for, and exhibited based on agreed-upon protocols with Survivors and their families.65
In a media interview, Survivor and Hereditary Chief Lewis George said that the art classes probably saved him from being sexually abused by convicted pedophile Arthur Plint, who had taught at the Alberni Residential School. He remembered the kindness shown to him by Aller as being in stark contrast to the harsh realities of life at the school, and he said, “I want my story kept alive.” Wally Samuel, another Survivor of the Alberni school who helped coordinate the project, said everyone reacted differently when told about the paintings. “Some got really quiet and others looked forward to seeing them . . . but they all remembered being in art class.”66
In May 2013, the Alberni Residential School paintings were displayed in a special exhibit, To Reunite, To Honour, To Witness, at the Legacy Art Gallery at the University of Victoria. Survivors, Elders, and community members continue to work with Walsh and Qwul’sih’yah’maht in order to document the story of the creation and return of the children’s paintings as part of reconnecting individual, family, and community memory, and educating the public about a previously unknown part of the history and legacy of the residential schools.
In September 2013, the paintings returned once again to the Learning Place at the TRC’s British Columbia National Event in Vancouver, and the group made an expression of reconciliation by providing copies of the artwork to the Commission’s Bentwood Box, where it has become part of the permanent record of the Commission’s work.
The Commission takes note of the federal government’s own national commemoration initiative, which was described as an “expression of reconciliation” when it was publicly announced at the Atlantic National Event in 2011. It is a specially commissioned stained-glass window entitled Giniigaaniimenaaning (Looking Ahead), designed by Métis artist Christi Belcourt. Its two-sided imagery depicts the history of the residential schools, the cultural resilience of Aboriginal peoples, and hope for the future.
The window was permanently installed in the Centre Block of the federal Parliament Buildings, and unveiled in a dedication ceremony on November 26, 2012.67 Putting this window in such a prominent public place helps to make the history and legacy of the residential schools more visible to the Canadian public and the world at large, while also acknowledging the federal government’s responsibility in establishing the residential school system.
At the dedication ceremony, artist Christi Belcourt said that her inspiration for the window’s design came from Survivors themselves.
The stories of residential school students were never told in this building, so I’m going to tell you one now. . . . I asked Lucille [Kelly-Davis] who is a residential school survivor what she wanted to see on the window. I had assisted her through the residential school settlement process, and like so many survivors, her story is horrific. . . . Despite her childhood, she married, had four children, and now has many grandchildren. She is a pipe carrier, attends traditional ceremonies, and helps younger people learn the traditions. She’s a powerful Anishnabeg grandmother who is generous, loving and caring, and gives all she can to her community and her family. She is not a victim, but a survivor. When I asked her what to put on the window, she said, “Tell our side of the story.” . . . She said, “Make it about hope.” . . . It’s about looking ahead, as the name of the window says, “giniigaaniimenaaning,” looking to the future for those yet unborn. . . .
Because she told me to make it about hope, what I’ve tried to show in the design is all the positive things I’ve seen in my life. Despite residential schools, children, adults, and Elders dance in full regalia in celebration of who they are as Indigenous people. We see Métis youth learning fiddling and jigging with pride across the country. We see arenas full of Inuk Elders drum dancing, with little kids running around, speaking Inuktitut. We see whole communities come together in times of joy and in times of great grief. The lodges are growing, the traditional songs are being sung, the ceremonies are being taught, and the ceremonies are still practiced.
I wish I could show the government that reconciliation has the potential to be so much more. I wish I could convince them that reconciliation is not an unattainable goal, if there’s the will and the courage to discard old paternalistic ways of thinking and of behaviour. We need action, and where we need action, don’t meet us with silence. Where we need support, don’t accuse us of being a burden. . . . I wish I could speak to the hearts of mps [members of Parliament], whether Conservative, or NDP [New Democratic Party], or Liberal, and let them know that renewal and reconciliation can be found between Aboriginal peoples and the rest of Canada through the sustained wellness of generations of Aboriginal people to come.68
At Commission hearings, we heard from many Survivors about windows. We heard from those who looked out from the school windows, waiting and hoping to see their parents come for them; those who cried when no one came for them, especially when it was Christmas or another holiday. We heard from those who were told, sometimes while being pulled away from the window by the hair, to “get away from that window,” or “your parents are not coming for you anyway.” We heard from those who simply looked out into the dark or into the distance, crying because they were so lonesome and homesick. Windows were also a beacon of hope. Survivors told us how they smiled and laughed and could not contain their tears of joy when they looked out the window and saw their parents or grandparents coming to visit them or take them away from the school.69 The windows of the residential schools evoked both good and bad memories for Survivors. Thus a commemorative window seems a fitting monument to remember and honour the children who went to residential schools.
Commemorations in highly visible public spaces such as the Parliament Buildings create openings for dialogue about what happened, why, and what can be learned from this history. Through dialogue, citizens can strengthen their ability to “accommodate difference, acknowledge injustice, and demonstrate a willingness to share authority over the past.”70 In the context of national reconciliation, ongoing public commemoration has the potential to contribute to human rights education in the broadest sense.
Although Canada’s commemorative window was a significant gesture of reconciliation, the Commission believes that the federal government must do more to ensure that national commemoration of the history and legacy of the residential schools becomes an integral part of Canadian heritage and national history. Under the Historic Sites and Monuments Act (1985), the minister responsible for Parks Canada has the authority to designate historic sites of national significance and approve commemorative monuments or plaques.71 The minister is advised by the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada “on the commemoration of nationally significant aspects of Canada’s past, including the designation of national historic sites, persons and events.”72 The board reviews and makes recommendations on submissions received from Canadian citizens who make nominations through the National Program of Historical Commemoration.73
Heritage sites, monuments, and plaques that celebrate Canada’s past are common, but commemorating those aspects of our national history that reveal cultural genocide, human rights violations, racism, and injustice are more problematic.
As we noted earlier, at the international level, the Joinet-Orentlicher Principles adopted by the United Nations have established that states have a responsibility to take measures to ensure that collective violence against a targeted group of people does not reoccur. In addition to providing compensation, making apologies, and undertaking educational reform, states also have a duty “to remember.” Under Principle 2,
A people’s knowledge of the history of its oppression is part of its heritage and, as such, must be preserved by appropriate measures in fulfillment of the State’s duty to remember. . . . On a collective basis, symbolic measures intended to provide moral reparation, such as formal public recognition by the State of its responsibility, or official declarations aimed at restoring victims’ dignity, commemorative ceremonies, naming of public thoroughfares or the erection of monuments, help to discharge the duty of remembrance.74
In 2014, the UN Special Rapporteur in the Field of Cultural Rights, Farida Shaheed, issued a report on memorialization processes in countries where victims and their families, working collaboratively with artists and various civic society groups, have commemorated their experiences in unofficial ways that may run counter to state-sanctioned versions of national history.75 Shaheed observed that the commemorations of Indigenous peoples’ experience—both their oppression and their positive contributions to society—that have occurred in many countries, including Canada, have not been state-driven initiatives. Rather, they have been initiated by Indigenous peoples themselves.
In Canada, a memorial to indigenous veterans from the First World War was built at the request of indigenous peoples, integrating many elements of indigenous cultures. This recognition took place at a later stage in history, however, and in a different venue to the main memorial established for other Canadian soldiers. Commemoration projects are also taking place . . . regarding the history of Indian residential schools.76
The report concluded that state authorities have a key role to play in the commemoration process. The state is responsible for managing public space and has the capacity to maintain monuments and develop long-term national commemoration policies and strategies.77
The Special Rapporteur further concluded that states should ensure that
memorial policies contribute to, in particular . . . providing symbolic reparation and public recognition to the victims in ways that respond to the needs of all victims oppressed in a recent or distant past and contribute to their healing . . . the development of reconciliation policies between groups . . . [and] promoting civic engagement, critical thinking and stimulating discussions on the representation of the past, as well as contemporary challenges of exclusion and violence.78
The report recommended that states and relevant stakeholders
promote critical thinking on past events by ensuring that memorialisation processes are complemented by measures fostering historical awareness and support the implementation and outreach of high-quality research projects, cultural interventions that encourage people’s direct engagement and educational activities. . . . States should ensure the availability of public spaces for a diversity of narratives conveyed in artistic expressions and multiply opportunities for such narratives to engage with each other. . . . [States must also] take into consideration the cultural dimension of memorial processes, including where repression has targeted indigenous peoples.79
The Commission concurs with these conclusions and recommendations. They are consistent with our own findings on the residential schools commemoration projects. These Survivor-driven, community-based initiatives revealed the importance of integrating Indigenous knowledge and revitalizing Indigenous memory practices in commemorating the history and legacy of the residential schools. They demonstrated the critical role that artists play in healing and commemoration.
The Commission believes that Canada’s national heritage network also has a vital role to play in reconciliation. Our views were further confirmed in a study of residential school commemorations in the context of Canada’s national heritage and commemoration policy. The research documented the Assembly of First Nations and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s national commemoration project to create a heritage plaque program in order to place commemorative markers at all residential school sites across the country.80 Faced with logistical challenges and based on input from Survivors and communities, “the project transformed from what ostensibly had been an IRS [Indian residential school] site heritage plaque program to a community-oriented public monumental art project.”81 The commemorative markers were not placed at residential school sites, many of which are in remote locations or otherwise inaccessible. Instead, they were placed in Aboriginal communities where Survivors and their families could access them more easily, where ceremonies and community events could be held, and where there were opportunities for ongoing healing, commemoration, and education.82
The study revealed the fundamental tensions that exist between the goals of Aboriginal peoples and those of Canada with regard to the commemoration of the residential schools. Under the existing policies of the National Program of Historical Commemoration, as overseen by Parks Canada’s Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada, residential school sites do not meet the program criteria for heritage designation, which is based on the Western heritage values of conservation and preservation.83
For Survivors, their families, and their communities, commemorating their residential school experiences does not necessarily involve preserving the school buildings, but is intended instead to contribute to individual and collective healing. For example, a residential school located in Port Alberni, British Columbia, was demolished by Survivors and their families, who burned sage and cedar in ceremonies in order to “cleanse and allow the trapped spirits to finally be freed.”84 Commemoration activities involving the destruction of a residential school structure are in direct conflict with Canadian heritage goals.85
Ultimately, reconciliation requires a paradigm shift in Canada’s national heritage values, policies, and practices, which focus on conservation and continue to exclude Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices, which prioritize healing and the reclaiming of culture in public commemoration.86 For this shift to happen, Parks Canada’s heritage and commemoration policies and programs must change.
By shaping commemoration projects to meet their own needs, Survivors, their families, and their communities have provided a wealth of information and best practices for commemorating the history and legacy of the residential school system. These contributions can inform and enrich the National Program of Historical Commemoration and the work of the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada to ensure that Canada’s heritage and commemoration legislation, programs, policies, and practices contribute constructively to the reconciliation process in the years ahead.
79) We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal organizations, and the arts community, to develop a reconciliation framework for Canadian heritage and commemoration. This would include, but not be limited to:
i. Amending the Historic Sites and Monuments Act to include First Nations, Inuit, and Métis representation on the Historic Sites and Monuments Board of Canada and its Secretariat.
ii. Revising the policies, criteria, and practices of the National Program of Historical Commemoration to integrate Indigenous history, heritage values, and memory practices into Canada’s national heritage and history.
iii. Developing and implementing a national heritage plan and strategy for commemorating residential school sites, the history and legacy of residential schools, and the contributions of Aboriginal peoples to Canada’s history.
80) We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, to establish, as a statutory holiday, a National Day for Truth and Reconciliation to honour Survivors, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains a vital component of the reconciliation process.
81) We call upon the federal government, in collaboration with Survivors and their organizations, and other parties to the Settlement Agreement, to commission and install a publicly accessible, highly visible, Residential Schools National Monument in the city of Ottawa to honour Survivors and all the children who were lost to their families and communities.
82) We call upon provincial and territorial governments, in collaboration with Survivors and their organizations, and other parties to the Settlement Agreement, to commission and install a publicly accessible, highly visible, Residential Schools Monument in each capital city to honour Survivors and all the children who were lost to their families and communities.
83) We call upon the Canada Council for the Arts to establish, as a funding priority, a strategy for Indigenous and non-Indigenous artists to undertake collaborative projects and produce works that contribute to the reconciliation process.