10 years after the TRC’s final report, are we making space for Truth?

“I don’t think the whole truth has come up, they’ve barely scratched the surface,” says Bob Overvold, who is a Residential School Survivor and co-founder of the group, We Always Remember (WAR).

Overvold is working with a group of Elders who are Survivors living in the North, recording their stories and finding spaces where their stories can be remembered by current and future generations.

This week, Dec. 15 marked the 10 year anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s release of their Final Report. Back then, Senator Murray Sinclair, then-Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, acknowledged that the Survivors were given a tremendously difficult task, but one that was critically important because most Canadians did not know about residential schools. And as Senator Sinclair pointed out, those who were aware of the so-called ‘schools,’ knew little about what happened there.

Since the report’s release, as leaders and community members across the territory have affirmed, the truth-telling of Survivors has changed the country.

Calls to Action #69 and #70

Overvold says that the process of naming and speaking the Truth is ongoing. “I don’t think the full truth has come out, what had really happened in those schools particularly in their early days.” Talking about the bigger picture of Truth and Reconciliation, Overvold says he doesn’t think the full Truth has come out as yet.

“What had really happened in those schools particularly, the early days ones, the ones that were established in the 1800s and early 1900s”

Most of the people who attended the schools during that period are no longer able to share their stories, explained Overvold. He is working with a group of eight Elders who are Surviviors and are now in their mid to 80s to early 90s, who attended residential schools in the North during the early 1940s.

“Some of them were brought there as four-year-olds and didn’t leave until seven years later.”

Overvold explained his work with fellow Survivors is a way to get the Truth out as to what this, what Canada’s residential school system was, which was a policy of genocide.

“That’s the part that I’m more interested in on exploring and working on and trying to bring it up to the forefront and in the headlights of Canadian society,” said Overvold.

The so-called ‘schools’ were designed as part of a colonial system. It was Canada’s first prime minister, John A Macdonald, who initiated the residential school system with the intention of cultural genocide.

Between the 1830s and 1990s more than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were stolen from their families and forced to attend residential schools.

The children who attended the schools struggled with conditions of extreme neglect, exposure to disease and malnutrition, physical, sexual and emotional abuse. They were denied the ability to learn or practise their cultures and traditions. Many Indigenous children did not make it home.

When it comes to Reconciliation, Overvold said that’s something Survivors and Indigenous people should not be tasked with.

“I don’t believe Survivors should spend much time on trying to figure out how to do Reconciliation. On the other hand, I think they should spend a fair amount of time, trying to understand what the real Truth is, particularly the younger Intergenerational Survivors. I think that a lot of them don’t really understand what the residential school experience was and why the federal government came forth with a policy on that and what was the intention of that policy,” said Overvold

“I don’t think it’s our job to figure out how Reconciliation should proceed. We could react to acts of reconciliation that come from the rest of Canada and from governments, but I don’t think we should be proposing, ‘this is what you should be doing to reconcile,’ that’s the job of governments and the job of the broader Canadian society, not the Indigenous members of society.”

Overvold said that while progress has been made with the school curriculums being changed and the residential school experience being talked about in the schools here in the North, it’s unclear how it fits with broader efforts.

“The policy of residential schools, the objection of them was to brainwash kids, to make them forget that they were Indigenous, that they had their own culture, they had their own language,” said Overvold.

“The policy of the residential schools was that wasn’t important, they didn’t need their language, they needed to go to school and learn English. To me, that’s a policy of genocide,” added Overvold.

Indigenous culture and language programs could be at the forefront, instead of being treated as supplementary within the GNWT education system. This is one way governments and schools could promote Reconciliation.

“I went to residential school one week after I turned nine years old. And I spent three years in there in Aklavik, not going home in the summers,” reflected Overvold.

Years later, Overvold reconnected with Elders in Fort Good Hope, who are about seven to eight years older than him but who went to the same residential schools in the early 40s.

“They’re the ones who know the Truth of how that experience, not only affected them, how it affected their families, and how it affected them as Indigenous people,” said Overvold.

“The Truth of exactly what that experience was and what happened during that period of time when people went into residential school, I think most people I talk to realize that the further back you go, the more terrible the experience was,” he said.

He would like to see the recorded testimonies of Survivors shared in spaces like the arts centre, proposed to be built at the site of a former residential school in Yellowknife.

Survivors are working with organizers to have a resource centre within the arts centre so that younger and future generations will know the Truth of what happened.

By hearing the truth telling of Survivors, this is how the Truth can come forward, said Overvold.

Making space for Truth

The TRC’s Call to Action #82, has yet to happen across much of the country, including in the North.

In the city of Winnipeg, a Residential School monument has been built near the Canadian Museum for Human Rights and in the city of Whitehorse a monument was completed in October 2018 while a Spirit Garden monument just opened this year in Toronto. Edmonton is in the process of building a monument and in 2021 Saskatchewan announced their plans to build one.

“Monuments in each capital city, that’s taking time, we’re still working on one here,” said Overvold.

“So the work on the action plan, that came out from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has been slow in terms of implementation,” Overvold pointed out.

TRC’s Call to Action #81, to build a Residential Schools National Monument in the capital city of Ottawa, while in the works, is also yet to built.

“The fact that 10 years have passed, maybe some think that a lot of progress has been made, but personally I don’t see it. I still see more work having to be brought forward to really explain and understand what the Truth was,” Overvold said.

Calls to Action #69 and #70 and UN Joinet-Orentlicher Principles

A legal petition has begun to prevent Survivors’ testimonies heard by the courts, before the time of the TRC, under something called the Independent Assessment Process.

Under the IAP, Survivors who attended residential schools across the country testified of personal experiences of physical, sexual and emotional abuse as well as extreme neglect.

In 2017, the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a decision that the records would be destroyed. Survivors who would like their records to be preserved are being asked to contact the NCRT before Sept. 19, 2027. But even if Survivors request their records to be preserved, some components of the records will not be preserved.

The Anishinabek Mukwa Dodem and Tiana Vrbanik began filing a petition this year to call on the federal government to preserve the records.

Kimberly Murray, previous executive director of the Truth and Reconciliation and independent special interlocuter for Missing children and unmarked graves, has spoken with thousands of Survivors across the country. Survivors have testified of witnessing deaths and being ordered to help dig graves. Since 2023, Murray has called for the records to be reexamined for information, including the names of children who died, as an untold number of children who did not make it home have yet to be identified and named.

Many of the Survivors who provided their testimonies have passed away. Murray said the court’s decision did not consider the importance of preserving the records as evidence and failed to take into consideration the rights of the Survivors’ families and communities.

Murray said the court’s decision did not consider the importance of preserving the records as evidence and failed to take into consideration the rights of the Survivors’ families and communities.

“A review of the Supreme Court of Canada’s decision indicates that the court failed to address the NCTR’s arguments, as laid out in its court materials, that urged the court to adopt the UN Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, the UN Declaration, and the many reports that highlighted the importance of preserving the records of mass human rights violations and making them accessible to victims, families, and communities. The IAP records are important historical evidence of the systemic abuse and injustices perpetrated against Indigenous children and communities within the Indian Residential School System and the UN Special Rapporteur on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples called for Canada to pass legislation and take other measures necessary to preserve these records.”

A crisis line is available for Survivors, Intergenerational Survivors and those affected by residential schools 24-hours a day, seven days a week at 1-866-925-4419. A counselling and crisis support is helpline is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week  at 1-855-242-3310 or at www.hopeforwellness.ca.