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INUVIK - The Truth and Reconciliation Commission in Canada is one of more than 15 truth commissions currently ongoing around the world and other countries are watching what's going on here.

Joanna Rice, truth and memory program associate for the International Centre for Transitional Justice, says truth commissions like the one that just happened in Inuvik are crucial for people to move on. - Samantha Stokell/NNSL photo

During the Northern national event in Inuvik, representatives from other countries visited to watch the statement gatherings and attempts of the government and churches to reconcile with the indigenous people of Canada.

The commission, a result of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, has a responsibility to tell Canadians what happened in those schools, to honour the lives of former students and families and to create a permanent record of the residential school legacy.

Those mandates however, were not the start of truth commissions. Originally, truth commissions looked at crimes committed by the state against its own people, with the first one being in Argentina in 1983. Its mandate was to investigate the disappearances of people since a military coup in 1976 and uncover the facts, including the locations of bodies.

One of the most well-known commissions was the investigation into the apartheid regime in South Africa, where violence and human rights abuses affected all sides during the white majority government.

Truth commissions have changed a bit from the early ones to include any situations where wide-scale oppression and human rights violations have occurred. Canada's 140-year history of residential schools falls under that category with its mandate to "kill the Indian in the child."

"In every region of the world the victims are indigenous people," said Joanna Rice, truth and memory program associate for the International Centre for Transitional Justice (ICTJ), a non-profit organization dedicated to pursuing accountability for mass atrocity and human rights abuse through transitional justice mechanisms, such as truth commissions.

"A truth commission is a good mechanism to strengthen indigenous rights. The global movement of indigenous rights is very locked into this."

Part of ICTJ's work with the TRC involves the intergenerational aspect. They have facilitated a dialogue between aboriginal and non-aboriginal youth and elders in an effort to educate younger generations and to deter racism and discrimination.

"For aboriginal youth it meant a lot to understand the systematic problems they see around them everyday," Rice said. "For non-aboriginal youth it was clearly mind-blowing for them to learn about the magnitude of what happened and how much sense it makes in context of the life around them. The connection is really obvious."

Honorary witness of the TRC, Robbie Waisman believes the key to reconciliation also sits with the youth. Waisman, one of 324 children who survived Buchenwald concentration camp, hoped to spread a message of forgiveness and strength that will inoculate youth and residential school survivors against hatred, discrimination and racism.

Waisman became involved with the struggle of residential school survivors after a chief in Saskatchewan made anti-semitic remarks.

Through a series of incidences, he met with survivors and was asked to make a presentation about his experiences of overcoming the horrors he suffered in the Buchenwald concentration camp.

"One heals better through sharing the pain with others because you encounter others. When you suffer, it's in your mind and no one shares the suffering," Waisman said. "But I discovered the resilience of human spirit. (The children of Buchenwald) were written off, but we did it. Why can't you? This is where I get angry. Are you going to let them win?"

When Waisman and his fellow children were liberated from the concentration camp, care workers declared them savages and unable to be rehabilitated because of the atrocities they'd been through.

"I had to relearn how to have normal emotions," Waisman said.

"How am I going to trust people? I didn't know how to cry. I didn't know how to love. I had to relearn how to cry and to love."

But a few caregivers refused to give up on the Holocaust survivors and now the men Waisman knew in the camp have survived and thrived, becoming a Nobel Peace Prize winning author, Chief Rabbi of Israel, doctors, lawyers and physicists.

Waisman wants his story to inspire residential school survivors and their children to succeed in life and not let the perpetrators of their abuse succeed.

"The Holocaust was a powerful lesson against racism and hatred," Waisman said. "It can translate into residential schools as a remembrance of horrible events we need to make sure never happen again."

While residential school students may not have suffered the horrors within a concentration camp, they did endure human rights abuses, which Rice says is not inconsequential.

"People switch to call it a cultural genocide, but I don't think there's such a thing as cultural genocide. You can't have a soft genocide," Rice said. "If it's a question of international crime against humanity and the policies explicitly stated, then it is a genocide under international law."

As for Waisman, the attempted genocide of his people has become an impetus for him to inspire other survivors of whatever catastrophe has befallen them to live their lives the best and most successful way they can.

"I survived. I have a sacred duty and obligation to inspire other lives, like the residential school survivors," Waisman said.

"If I can change their life, I have honoured the one and a half million (Jewish) children."

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