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Commissioners to visit Nunavut communities
Jeanne Gagnon Northern News Services Published Monday, January 17, 2011
Residential school survivors will get the chance to share their stories and experiences with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when it visits six Nunavut communities in March and April.
March 22 - Rankin Inlet
March 23 and 24 - Chesterfield Inlet
March 25 - Iglulik
March 28 - Iqaluit
April 12 - Cambridge Bay
April 13 - Kugluktuk
The visits are part of a larger northern tour of 19 communities in all three territories and northern Quebec to provide an opportunity for residential school survivors to be heard by the commission and have their statements recorded, said chairman Justice Murray Sinclair.
"We believe it's important we come away from the northern hearings schedule with a better understanding of the lingering impacts of residential schools in those northern communities," he said. "(This is necessary) to lay the groundwork that will help us to move beyond the truth-telling experience to gestures of reconciliation."
The commissioners will also listen to statements in private, if survivors are not comfortable speaking in public.
"There is truth in the fact that not everybody is at the same place. We know that," said commissioner Marie Wilson. "Some people will not feel ready and that's why it's important to understand this is not a one-shot opportunity, either."
Communities were selected on the need for regional and cultural representation and to focus on areas of the North where there is a high concentration of survivors, explained Sinclair. Smaller communities with historic significance in the residential school experience were also added.
"I'm hoping it will put kind of an end to some of the problems people have, like put the lid on it a little bit more (for) some survivors," said Rankin Inlet deputy mayor Harry Towtongie. "Maybe it will be a good closure of the whole ordeal."
The commission will visit Rankin Inlet on March 22.
Three days later, the commissioners will be in Iglulik.
"We are looking forward to it," said Iglulik Mayor Lucasie Ivvalu.
And on March 28, they will be in Iqaluit.
"There are residents who attended residential school and it's good that the commission is travelling here so that those survivors and their families will be able to provide testimony, share their stories and experiences with the commission," said Mayor Madeleine Redfern.
The commission was established as a result of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
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