Context
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada documented the history of the residential school system in Canada, investigating its legacy and the ongoing impact it has had on survivors, their families and communities.
The TRC was established through a legal settlement between residential school survivors, the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit representatives, and the parties responsible for creating and running the residential school system (the Canadian government, and Roman Catholic, Anglican, Presbyterian, and United churches).
The commission’s mandate was to bring the residential school system to light so all Canadians would understand what happened. The TRC travelled the country, documenting the experiences of more than 7,000 residential school survivors. It also recorded interviews with family members of survivors, as well as former school employees and government officials. In 2015, the commission published its report, the result of more than six years of extensive research.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found the establishment and operation of the residential school system amounted to a “cultural genocide.”
The residential school system separated Indigenous children from their families. Children as young as three were forced to attend schools where they were forbidden from speaking their own language through the use of psychological or physical punishment. There are thousands of documented cases of sexual abuse of children by priests in power at the schools. The conditions of many schools were unsafe and unsanitary, and thousands of children died from malnutrition, disease or suicide. When children were returned home, they were disconnected from their families, their traditional ways of life, their languages, and their communities.
The Northwest Territories was home to 14 residential schools.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report included 94 Calls to Actions needed to repair the damage caused by the residential school system and to advance the process of reconciliation in Canada.
The Calls to Action are directed to governments, religious institutions, media organizations, schools and universities, and the business community. It calls on Canadians to recognize the impact of the residential school system on survivors, their families, and their communities. It also calls on Canadian governments of all levels to adopt and implement all 46 articles from the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.
The TRC’s Call to Action 47, in particular, calls upon “federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to repudiate concepts used to justify European sovereignty over Indigenous peoples and lands, such as the Doctrine of Discovery and terra nullius, and to reform those laws, government policies, and litigation strategies that continue to rely on such concepts.”
Both the federal government and the Government of the Northwest Territories have committed to amended their policies in response to the Calls to Action. According to a 2022 analysis, the federal government had only followed through on 13 of the 94 Calls to Action.
