Content note
This lesson discusses residential schools and violence against Indigenous women and girls. If it brings up difficult feelings, support is available at any hour. Hope for Wellness Help Line, 1-855-242-3310 (24/7). National Indian Residential School Crisis Line, 1-866-925-4419 (24/7). Taking a break from the material is always a reasonable choice.
Reconciliation is a word that gets used loosely, sometimes as if it were a mood or a finished event. The national reports that define it in Canada are much more concrete. They are long, carefully documented texts built on the testimony of thousands of people, and they end in numbered, specific demands addressed to named institutions. Reading them as texts — asking who is speaking, to whom, and what they ask for — is the first skill of this unit, because every essay you write about reconciliation will stand or fall on whether you represent these documents accurately.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada
- Why it existed. The Commission was created under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the settlement reached with Survivors of the residential school system. Its job was to document what happened in the schools and to recommend what must change.
- What the schools were. A system of church-run, government-funded schools that operated for well over a century. More than 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children attended them, and the last federally run school closed in 1996.
- How it worked. The Commission was established in 2008 and, led from 2009 by Chair Justice Murray Sinclair, heard from more than 6,000 witnesses, most of them Survivors who had lived in the schools as children.
- What it found. The Commission concluded that the residential school system was part of a policy that amounted to cultural genocide — an attempt to eliminate Indigenous peoples as distinct peoples by severing children from their families, languages and cultures.
- What it published. A summary of its findings, together with the 94 Calls to Action, was released in June 2015. The complete multi-volume final report followed in December 2015.
- Where the record lives. The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba holds the statements and documents the Commission gathered. The full text of the Calls to Action can be read on its website.
How the 94 Calls to Action are organized
| Part | Calls | Examples of what the section addresses |
|---|---|---|
| Legacy | 1 to 42 | Child welfare (1 to 5), education (6 to 12), language and culture (13 to 17), health (18 to 24), and justice (25 to 42) — the areas where the harm of the schools continues |
| Reconciliation | 43 to 94 | The UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, church apologies, education for reconciliation (62 to 65), museums and archives, missing children and burial information, commemoration, media (84 to 86), sports, business, and newcomers to Canada |
Read the Call, not a summary of it
Each Call to Action is short, but it is precise about who must act and what they must do. When you write about one, find it in the original document, give its number, paraphrase it in your own words, and name the institution it is addressed to. For example, Call 80 asks the federal government, working with Indigenous peoples, to create a statutory holiday honouring Survivors, their families and communities. A sentence that says only 'the TRC wants a holiday' has lost who asked, who was asked, and why.
The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls
- Its purpose. The National Inquiry was launched in 2016 to examine the systemic causes of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA people in Canada.
- Its report. The final report, Reclaiming Power and Place, was released in June 2019. It concluded that this violence amounts to genocide.
- Its 231 Calls for Justice. Like the TRC, the Inquiry ended in specific demands. They are called Calls for Justice rather than recommendations, and they are directed at governments, police services, health and social service providers, media, industries — and, in a dedicated section, at all Canadians.
- Families and survivors at the centre. The Inquiry's findings were built on the truths shared by family members and survivors, which is why the report treats their testimony as evidence and not as background colour.
September 30: the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a federal statutory holiday held on September 30. Parliament created it in 2021 in response to Call to Action 80, and the first one was observed that September. The date is shared with Orange Shirt Day, which began in 2013 from the story of Phyllis Webstad, a Survivor from British Columbia whose new orange shirt was taken from her on her first day at residential school. The phrase 'Every Child Matters' is associated with the day. Late September was chosen because it is the time of year children were taken from their homes to the schools. Wearing orange is a starting point; the day asks for learning, listening to Survivors, and following what the Calls to Action ask of each institution.
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Why Survivors' testimony matters
- It is the evidence. Much of what happened in the schools was never written into official records, or was recorded only from the point of view of those running them. Survivors' statements are the primary source that corrects that record.
- It reverses who gets to speak. Residential schools tried to silence children's languages and voices. A national process built on those same people speaking, and being believed, is part of the repair — not a side feature of it.
- The capital S is deliberate. The Commission and many communities capitalize Survivors to recognize the people who lived through the schools, and intergenerational Survivors for families who carry the effects.
- Testimony belongs to the person who gave it. Quote published testimony accurately, keep the speaker's name and nation or community when the source provides them, and never stitch fragments together to make a more dramatic line.
- Do not use testimony as decoration. A painful quotation dropped into an introduction for shock value treats a person's experience as a writing device. Use it only where your analysis genuinely needs that evidence, and explain what it shows.