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NUNAVUT - The Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission has replaced its interim management with a new acting executive director.

Aideen Nabigon, who has worked with Service Canada and Health Canada to provide support and services to survivors, has replaced Bob Watts, the interim executive director for the TRC Secretariat.

Previously the director general for policy, partnerships and communications with Indian and Northern Affairs Canada, Nabigon has also served as the director general for the Common Experience Payment at the former Office of Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada.

According to Kimberly Phillips, spokesperson for TRC, Watts was hired specifically to assist with the first phase of the TRC with the understanding that he would be replaced once the commission was off the ground.

"The overall role and responsibility of the interim executive director was to assist in the initial start-up of the TRC and not to be continued beyond that," she said. "It had always been the intention to run the executive director position in a competitive process."

Nabigon, while holding treaty status, is not aboriginal, unlike her predecessor, who is from the Mohawk and Ojibway Nations in Ontario.

The composition of the commission has been a contentious issue in Nunavut, where survivors of residential schools have been lobbying the TRC for Inuit representation.

One such advocate, residential school survivor and former Nunavut commissioner Peter Irniq, said he couldn't comment on Watts' replacement because when it comes to changes within the TRC and Secretariat, Inuit have been left out of the loop.

"It's like we don't even exist as survivors of residential school," he said last week. "Nobody talked to us from TRC, so what do we say? We have nothing to say whatsoever because we don't know about these people whatsoever."

Irniq is part of a group of survivors who attended the Bishop Turquetil Hall and Sir Joseph Bernier Federal Day School between 1950 and 1969.

He said he has tried to correspond with both the interim and new executive director, expressing a willingness to work with the TRC to keep Inuit survivors informed of its activities, but has not received a reply.

"Because we have no Inuit commissioner on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, we don't know what's going on," said Irniq. "We have been quite vocal in the past ... trying to get contact with the TRC, particularly (Justice Harry) LaForme, but they're not returning our calls, so we're completely kept in the dark by the organization."

He added the survivors will continue to advocate for Inuit representation on the TRC and would like to see an Inuk commissioner appointed following the federal election on Oct. 14.