Truth and Reconciliation Commission (Canada)

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was a truth and reconciliation commission organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement. The commission was part of a holistic and comprehensive response to the abuse inflicted on Indigenous peoples through the Indian residential school system, and the harmful legacy of those institutions. The Commission was officially established on June 2, 2008, and was completed in December 2015.

Aboriginal men and women who had attended a residential school brought serious concerns about the IRS system into the public consciousness and onto the public agenda. Their work resulted in the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, which stipulated a residential school Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada be conducted. The commission concluded that the Canadian residential school system was established for the purpose of separating children from their families. According to the commission, this was done with the intention to minimize the family's ability to pass along their cultural heritage to their children. The commission spent six years traveling to different parts of Canada to hear the testimony of approximately six thousand Aboriginal people who were taken away from their families and placed in residential schools as children.

After the closing of the Indian residential schools, which operated from the 1870s to 1996 and enrolled some 150,000 aboriginal children over the decades, some former students made allegations of physical, psychological, and sexual abuse and neglect. The commission studied records and took testimony for evidence of activities alleged to have occurred at residential schools, as well as the negative effects resulting from the schools' stated aim to assimilate First Nations children into the majority culture. The matter of student deaths at these institutions and the burial of deceased students in unmarked graves without the notification or consent of the parents was an additional item on the agenda.

In March 2008, Indigenous leaders and church officials embarked on a multi-city 'Remembering the Children' tour to promote activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. On January 21–22, 2008, the King's University College of Edmonton, Alberta, held an interdisciplinary studies conference on the subject of the Truth and Reconciliation Committee. On June 11 of the same year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper apologized for the role of past governments in administration of the residential schools.

...
Wikipedia