Justice in Conflict

Andrea Russell joins JiC this week for a timely post on the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which is examining the impact and legacy of the Indian Residential Schools system in Canada. Andrea recently attended one of the TRC’s national events in Montreal and offers an insider perspective into its work and the challenges ahead. 

(Photo: speakingmytruth.ca)

Even the greatest of transitional justice fans might be excused for not knowing what atrocities Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission seeks to address. In fact, until recently, the atrocities in question were sadly unknown even to most Canadians. Thus, in an address on Friday evening to the TRC national event, ‘Honorary TRC Witness’ and former Prime Minister of Canada Paul Martin voiced the question that many Canadians have not had the courage to ask: Why were Canadians so long unaware that their government had, for a period of over 100 years, compelled 150,000 Aboriginal, Métis and Inuit children to attend residential schools, where they lost their identities, their culture, and their language, and were subjected to physical, sexual, and psychological assaults of the most appalling nature?

Canada’s ‘Indian’ Residential Schools are, as Martin and current Prime Minister Harper have acknowledged, a deeply shameful part of the country’s past. And yet few knew of the schools’ existence, let alone the colossally destructive impact that they had on Canada’s first peoples, until very recently, when in 2006, class action lawsuits launched by survivors of the school systems were settled by the Federal government and the churches that operated the schools. The $1.9 billion settlement agreement entered into by the federal government and the churches mandated the creation not only of the TRC, but also an independent assessment process and a common payment claims process wherein former students could receive direct financial compensation for their experiences at the schools.

At the Montreal TRC event, former Prime Minister Martin, a strong advocate for Aboriginal rights and education, did not hold back in employing legal concepts to describe the effects of the schools. This forced assimilation of Aboriginal children and youth, he said in a well-publicized address to survivors, entailed “cultural genocide”.

Some may counter that while Raphael Lemkin did indeed formulate the concept of cultural genocide, the Genocide Convention that he inspired did not ultimately include this concept; later attempts to enshrine the idea into indigenous rights conventions were similarly defeated. The intent to destroy ethnic and racial groups lies of course at the heart of the Genocide Convention. Few who attend Canada’s TRC hearings would deny that evidence of the destructive impact of the policy on Aboriginal groups—if not necessarily evidence of a government intent to destroy– is being systematically documented by the TRC.

A hockey team from a residential school in Maliotenam, Quebec, in 1950 (Photo: Archives Canada / PA-212964)

Government planes flew into remote Aboriginal villages without notice and departed mere minutes later with all of the village children on board, heading to new lives at the residential schools. Children as young as five were severely beaten for speaking their native language at the schools, or for refusing to eat food that was completely foreign to them. Students taken from their parents and who returned home up to twelve years later were completely changed and unable to communicate with their families. Many other children never returned at all, with at least 3,000 of them dying of disease or during ill-fated escapes through wintry northern landscapes. Young people grew up in the schools without ever receiving a hug or words of love or kindness from a parental figure. The underfunded system of ‘schools’ was staffed by unscreened and untrained teachers and guardians, a frightening number of whom regularly sexually molested and physically assaulted the children. Corporal punishment and sexual abuse in the schools was so horrific that it drove many former students to alcohol and drug abuse and, in many, cases suicide.

Variations on these personal narratives were tearfully recounted by dozens of witnesses at the TRC’s latest hearings. Some now elderly former students were publicly telling their story for the first time in their lives. Most had learned to repress memories of their years at the schools, and many had never shared their horrific pasts—even with their own family members. Continue reading →