Canada's Resounding Failure to Fully Embrace the Truth of Residential Schools | The Walrus

"For six years, starting in 2007, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission travelled throughout the country, hearing testimonies from over 6,500 people who'd endured Canada's residential school system. Six thousand and five hundred people, believing in the mandate of the commission, courageously testified, thinking that, finally, they would be heard and amends would be made. It's difficult to imagine what that must have been like-reliving the abuses and indignities of what can only be described as internment facilities following a mandate of indoctrination set by the state and implemented by the Church."

"There is no doubt that residential schools were what's known as "total institutions"-institutions that function in a manner that physically and socially separates those held there from the outside world. One need only consider the words of Bishop Vital-Justin Grandin, a powerful advocate for the mandatory attendance of Indigenous children at these internment facilities, who, in 1875, reportedly stated: "We instil in them a pronounced distaste for the native life so that they will be humiliated when reminded of their origins."

From 2007 for six years the Truth and Reconciliation Commission travelled nationwide gathering testimonies from over 6,500 residential school survivors. Those survivors recounted abuses and indignities endured within institutions designed to separate Indigenous children physically and socially from their communities. Church and state policies sought to instill contempt for Indigenous identity and to erase cultural origins, facilitating the exploitation of Indigenous lands and resources. Survivors emerged deeply injured but resilient, providing testimony to establish truth about the origins and intent of residential schools. Truth-finding enabled identification of necessary actions to right past wrongs and to build safeguards against institutionalized systems rooted in racism.

Read at The Walrus