FINAL TRC REPORT IS JUST THE BEGINNING
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission may have submitted its final report, but now the real work begins say educators and survivors.
On Tuesday, the TRC released a detailed report on the known deaths of children in Canada’s Indian residential schools. The recorded figure is 3,201 but the actual number could be much higher because of incomplete records, and the commission notes the death rate was much higher than among children in Canada’s general population.
Elder Noel Starblanket was only six when he was taken to live with strangers. He spent the next 11 years in the residential school located in Lebret.
“They were mean,” said Starblanket. “I don’t know what it was, but they were just mean. They weren’t kind. I found that very disheartening.”
However, he refuses to let the negative experience dictate his present or his future because it has taken too much work to find peace.
Starblanket said the time has come for reconciliation not only with the government, but on a personal level.
He views the final report as an opportunity to make positive change for future generations.
Sitting in his small corner office at Scott Collegiate Community High School — where he serves as a resident elder — the former First Nation politician believes he has finally found his calling as an educator.
As an elder, he shares what he knows with any aboriginal or nonaboriginal person who is willing to listen.
“Education is the key in all of this,” said Starblanket. “As I say to people, ‘It’s history. You may not like it but it is what it is.’”
Shauneen Pete, executive lead of indigenization at the University of Regina and associate professor for the faculty of education, also believes education plays an important role in reconciliation.
She said every Canadian needs to acknowledge this part of history and not only remember the survivors, but all those children that never made it home.
Pete believes the number of those who died while in care, at Indian Residential Schools, is likely two to three times higher than the 3,200 recorded deaths and that needs to be acknowledged.
“Because of that, families have these gaps and communities have these larger gaps and that story has to be fully told,” she said.
Despite the dark history of residential schools, she sees a light at the end of tunnel.
“I think for a number of us who are educators, people working in the academy, people who work in schools and those types of things, it’s a beginning point — now comes the truth telling into the curriculum and what we teach at the universities,” said Pete. “I am hoping it will take on a new life of its own. There are too many people in Canada who simply do not know this story and they need to be reminded again and again that it wasn’t that long ago.”
Both Starblanket and Pete believe the reports and documents were needed because it helps form the foundation for a new kind of education system in Canada that includes indigenous people and their experiences.
“To not explore these stories in public institutions is to continue on with the denial that it was an issue, the denial that it was systemic and it was purposefully designed by government and it was sustained for a very, very long period of time,” said Pete.