CANADA
Toronto Star
Editorial
They are survivors of Canada’s notorious residential schools. As First Nations children, many suffered psychological, cultural, physical and sexual abuse at the hands of a racist system designed to “take the Indian out of the child.” Many fought back heroically.
The heart-wrenching testimony that many of them gave about their years of privation and worse in the schools — part of a process in which Ottawa and church groups have paid out $5 billion in compensation to 80,000 survivors — is sacred evidence, and a sacred trust.
It is only fitting that Ontario’s highest court has just upheld the right of 38,000 survivors who sought specific compensation for sexual and other abuse through a special assessment process to decide individually over the next 15 years whether to preserve their stories in an archive. Otherwise the records will be destroyed.
Granted, there is a compelling argument for preserving as much of the testimony as possible in the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation archive as an indelible indictment of a shameful chapter in our collective history. The Star hopes that many survivors will agree, and deposit their records with the centre. The truth, in all its searing specificity, should not be lost to future generations.
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