By Sarah Rogers
Nunatsiaq Online
March 14, 2011
http://www.nunatsiaqonline.ca/stories/article/14556_truth_and_reconciliation_commission_launches_its_northern_tour/
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| Children from the western Arctic gather outside a residential school in this undated file photo. Former residential school students in the eastern Arctic will get a chance to speak out starting March 14 in Inukjuak, where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is launching its northern tour. (FLEMMING/NWT ARCHIVES: N-1979-050-0101) |
Former residential school students will get a chance to tell their stories March 14 as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission launches its northern tour in Inukjuak’s community hall.
The commission launches its tour today in Inukjuak — one of two stops in Nunavik — as part of efforts to gather statements from northern and Inuit school survivors and their families.
The tour stops in Kuujjuaq March 15 and March 16 before heading to Nunavut March 21.
“The northern hearings are an opportunity for residential school survivors, who might not otherwise be able to come to us, to speak up, be heard and inform the commission and Canadians of the unique experiences of children who attended residential schools in Canada’s North,” said chair Justice Murray Sinclair in a March 14 release.
This is the first time all three commissioners — Sinclair, along with Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild — will visit Nunavik together.
They will be accompanied by the body’s two-person Inuit sub-commission, who will make sure Inuit are fully included in the process.
The sub-commission includes Jennifer Hunt-Poitras of Yellowknife and her co-chair, Robert Watt of Ottawa.
The commission flows from the 2007 Indian residential schools settlement agreement, which called for an independent commission to hear from survivors and contribute to the healing process.
Statements gathered during the northern tour will be used to create a collective memory of Canada’s residential school legacy, which will be archived in a national research centre.
People may speak out publicly during the scheduled hearings, but they may also request to make a private statement, recorded by hand, audio or video.
Speakers will be accompanied by an interviewer and a health support worker.
Family members may also give statements or accompany a former student to support them while they give their account.
Survivors can also submit a written account or work of art in lieu of a spoken statement — a song, poem, and so on — which reflects their experience.
And Inuit who live outside the communities included in the northen tour can also request to have the sub-commission come visit their community or arrange to make a statement by telephone, Hunt-Poitras told Nunatsiaq News earlier this year.
A telephone line based out of Winnipeg is also being set up to collect statements by phone.
The sub-commission also plans to visit Inuit health boarding homes in major cities like Ottawa, Montreal and Winnipeg to gather statements.
But Hunt-Poitras has encouraged Inuit to be aware of the process before they decide to give their statements.
She said many confuse the process of making a statement for a claim, the Individual Assessment Process or Common Experience Payments, with the statements that will be collected as part of the upcoming hearings.
The claims process functions separately from the commission and the statements collected during the hearings will not be used for legal recourse.
Instead, the statements gathered will be archived in a national research centre.
Statements will also be used in the commissions’s final report, although speakers can sign a form in advance to indicates if a statement should be made public or not.
The commissions starts up in Inukjuak’s community hall today at 1:30 p.m.
On March 15, the commission then sits at Kuujjuaq’s Kaittitavik town hall starting at 12:00 p.m. and again at 9:00 a.m. on March 16.
The hearings move to Nunavut March 21 where they’ll visit Rankin Inlet, Chesterfield Inlet, Igloolik, Iqaluit, Cambridge Bay and Kugluktuk.
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