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	Residential School Survivor Says Trcc Is "Useless" By Rob Swystun Daily Graphic August 11 2010 http://www.portagedailygraphic.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?e=2708112 A local residential school survivor has slammed the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, saying with no legal teeth, it serves no purpose. "I think at the end of the day this is going to be a useless experience for our people," said Peter Yellowquill, a former chief of Long Plain First Nation and a residential school survivor who attended schools in Brandon and Portage la Prairie for 11 years. Yellowquill said because the commission has no legal mandate to try and catch offenders who abused children while they were in the residential school system, it doesn't serve any purpose except to get people to relive their pain without any consequences for the people who caused that pain. The commission's mandate is mainly one of educating people about residential schools and discourages survivors who tell their stories from naming people who they claim had abused them while in the residential school system. The commission will ultimately prepare a comprehensive historical record on the policies and operations of the schools and produce a report that will include recommendations to the Government of Canada concerning the residential school system and its legacy. "It just becomes an experience where we go there, we measure our pain and that's it," Yellowquill said. Because representatives of the various churches that ran many of Canada's residential schools did not actively participate in the commission, it's also missing representation from the side in the tragedy that was the Canadian Indian residential schools, Yellowquill said. "How can you reconcile? There were no people to reconcile with anyway," the former Long Plain chief said. While church representatives did not participate in the commission's events, Anglican, Catholic, United and Presbyterian churches, which ran residential schools, have worked with the federal government in the past to design a compensation plan and have either apologized officially or unofficially for their part in the residential school system. But all the compensation and apologies still don't bring the perpetrators to justice, Yellowquill said. He wants to see the commission shut down, its finances investigated by the auditor general and a new commission started, one with the power to drag people involved with abuses at the residential schools into court so they can face the justice system. But the commission's mandate was agreed to by representatives of residential school survivors, government and church organizations, said Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada executive director executive director Kimberly Murray. When the commission's mandate was being decided, she said, those representatives looked at similar commissions in other countries that both had legal powers and ones that didn't have legal powers and it was decided that the best way to bring about reconciliation for survivors would be to go with the latter format. And while the complaint of the commission's lack of legal power does come up, it doesn't come up often. "I wouldn't say it's common but it was something that was discussed at the negotiations," Murray said. "I don't think they came to that decision lightly."
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