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Truth commission kicks off in Yk
Kira Curtis Northern News Services Published Friday, January 14, 2011
As Dettah Chief Ed Sangris prepared to drum and give the opening prayer, seating ran out and people spilling into the room perched on tables and knelt on the floor. The main reason for the open house was to hear about the activities the commission has planned for the Yellowknife office and a series of 19 community visits this spring. Marie Wilson, a resident and one of three commission-ers on the commission, has both professional and personal experience with residential schools, as her husband, former premier Stephen Kakfwi, went to one. She acknowledged any survivors among the crowd. "We are all here because of you, and we are all here for you. That's the purpose of our work and the purpose of our calling," she said. Wilson explained the Yellowknife office is a place where survivors, or people affected by residential schools, can gather, share and seek culturally sensitive support. "It gives us a space where it gives us the potential to do things," she said. "Whether, for example, we are able in some regular way to hold sharing circles here or use it as a workspace for filing activities that would include the broader city." The facility is not for drop-in, but by appointment people can come and record their story of being a residential student, as well as meeting with health care workers or connect with others who were affected. There is a private room set up for statement gathering and the facility is meant to be accessible to all the peoples and languages of the North. As well as documenting the oral history of residential school survivors, one of Wilson's missions is to educate people who didn't attend these government-funded schools. "While our work is very, very important for the survivors of the residential schools, it's also very important to reach out to the non-aboriginal community," Wilson said. The Truth and Reconcilliation Commission of Canada was created following Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology to residential school survivors on June 11, 2008. She said people in larger cities in Canada will often pass by First Nations on the street and not stop to think about how they got there. "People who walk by that have, most often, no idea what the cause or link is, what the connection is between the state of that person's current life and the addictions they may be struggling with, and the factors that lead to that." Wilson explained, "whether it was their own experiences in school and displacement of language and culture and being told who you are, your identity, has no value. Or being physically punished and in cases where there was a lot of isolation, people being ripe to abuse by deviants and being sexually abused." She said she wants everyone to understand these stories, and how recent some still are. Commissioner Chief Wilton Littlechild spent 14 years in residential schools. He spoke to the crowd of how he is now proud to be part of the healing process and how impressed he is with the strength of the aboriginal people of the North. "As a survivor, one of the things that really, really impresses me about the North is your resilience," said Littlechild, who was born on the Ermineskin Cree Reserve near Hobbema, Alberta. "Not withstanding what happened to you in the residential schools, you have been able to hold on to the languages, the many languages you have here, and also the culture." The commission will visit 19 communities in the Yukon, NWT, Nunavut and the Nunavik region of Quebec this spring leading up to a national event being held in Inuvik June 28 to July 1.
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