Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

“There is no reconciliation without truth. We must all be willing to look honestly at what has happened in our past and sit in the discomfort of that reality. Without this knowledge, we cannot repair the broken relationships that exist between colonial powers and Indigenous Peoples.”

Shila LeBlanc, founder of Restorative Approach

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was created through a legal settlement between Residential Schools Survivors, the Assembly of First Nations, Inuit representatives, and the parties responsible for the creation and operation of the schools: the federal government and the church bodies.

• The TRC’s mandate was to inform all Canadians about what happened in residential schools and document the truth of anyone personally affected by the residential school experience. This included First Nations, Inuit and Métis former residential school students, their families, communities, the churches, former school employees, government officials, and other Canadians.
• The TRC concluded its mandate in 2015 and transferred its records to the safekeeping of National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR). The TRC Commissioners The Honourable Murray Sinclair, Chief Wilton Littlechild, and Dr. Marie Wilson are honorary patrons of the NCTR.

Key learnings

Below, you can find some excerpts from TRC’s What We Have Learned. Principles of Truth and Reconciliation report with some of the key learning from their work. As you will read, these learnings are closely connected to the concept of structural racism.

• For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments, ignore Aboriginal rights, terminate the Treaties, and through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada.
• The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.”  Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group.
• States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next. In its dealings with Aboriginal people, Canada did all these things.
• These measures were part of a coherent policy to eliminate Aboriginal people as distinct peoples and to assimilate them into the Canadian mainstream against their will. The Canadian government pursued this policy of cultural genocide because it wished to divest itself of its legal and financial obligations to Aboriginal people and gain control over their land and resources.
• Despite the coercive measures that the government adopted, it failed to achieve its policy goals. Although Aboriginal peoples and cultures have been badly damaged, they continue to exist. Aboriginal people have refused to surrender their identity.

You can read the full TRC’s report from What We Have Learned: Principles of Truth and Reconciliation.