Stiff Competition Expected for Residential School Archive, by Alexandra Paul, Edmonton Journal, January 20, 2011

Stiff Competition Expected for Residential School Archive

By Alexandra Paul
Edmonton Journal
January 20, 2011

http://www.edmontonjournal.com/news/canada/Stiff+competition+expected+residential+school+archive/4137465/story.html

St. Mary's Indian Residential School boys' dormitory in B.C., 1950.

WINNIPEG — The University of Manitoba will make a bid for a national research centre on residential schools that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission must establish before it wraps up its work.

The commission is gathering a permanent record of the chapter in Canadian history and the research centre will serve as a public custodian of the stories of abuse.

"The University of Manitoba will be bidding on it. We've told the TRC and it's not a secret," Karen Busby, the U of M's director of its centre on human rights research, said Wednesday.

But the U of M is expected to have plenty of rivals.

Justice Murray Sinclair, TRC chairman, said he's heard from universities across Canada looking to land what clearly will be an academic jewel.

One of those expressions of interest likely will come from the U of M's cross-town rival.

"The U of W (University of Winnipeg) is very interested and so representatives will be attending the national research forum in Vancouver," said Dan Hurley, the U of W's associate vice-president.

That forum — entitled Sharing Truth, Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools — will be held March 1-3.

While little is being said now on the shape of the coming research centre, a few aspects of it are coming into view.

"The one thing I think it is safe to say is it would not do for us to house a national research centre on this question in a government entity because of the role of government in this whole process," Sinclair said.

"It has to be an entity independent from government and it has to have the capacity to meet the research centre's ultimate objective, which is to be a place for research."

Contact: alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca