SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE
Marie Wilson is now ready to start writing.

Marie Wilson, a commissioner with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, listens to a statement during a community hearing on the Hay River Reserve in March of 2012. - NNSL file photo

Wilson of Yellowknife is one of three commissioners with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which for several years has been travelling the country to hear stories about the infamous residential school system.

The commission wrapped up the public hearing phase of its work late last month with a large national event in Edmonton.

"Everything that has to do with public hearings is now finished," said Wilson, although she noted the commission may make arrangements for more people to give statements. "It won't be through the commission in a public hearing kind of way."

One of the thousands of participants at the final event in Edmonton was Diane Hrstic, a resolution health support worker with the Healing Drum Society in Yellowknife.

Hrstic said such national gatherings – she has attended four of them – and smaller hearings help residential school survivors realize they are not alone and their experiences were not their fault.

"The biggest thing is by telling the world their stories of what happened in residential schools is to say do not let this happen again and it should not have happened," she said.

Hrstic noted the Healing Drum Society brought eight elders from all over the NWT to the gathering in Edmonton.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission visited about 300 communities across Canada, including for seven large national events, and other places for various commemoration activities, learning forums and healing gatherings.

It collected more than 6,000 statements.

That is a massive amount of information, but the commission will not be starting from scratch in writing its report.

"We've been sorting and vetting as we go. We've been taking notes as we go. We certainly have a very good sense of what the overall storylines are, and we have been paying attention to organize our work through a data management system so that everything can be cross-referenced," Wilson said, adding it will also be accessible by future generations.

"But what we need to do now is sit together," she said of the work ahead for the three commissioners. "We've been scattered all over the country in different directions, each of us trying to respond to all the demands. We need to come together and draw shared conclusions."

Their report is due by June 2015, and the commission will also hold a closing event in Ottawa.

Wilson said there were many things that she heard during the hearings that she had not expected.

The commissioner said all those involved in the process – residential school survivors, support people, government officials and representatives of churches – were surprised at the extent to which the abuse was so wide-reaching.

She pointed to the almost 80,000 former residential school students who registered for common experience payments, noting almost 50 per cent of that number – about 40,000 people – also registered for abuse claims with a current acceptance rate of about 90 per cent.

If that acceptance rate continues, it would mean almost half of the children who were in residential schools experienced some form of severe physical, sexual and/or psychological abuse, she said. "That just tells you how pervasive it was, and that's a lot of people who are still in our midst today."

Another surprise and concern was the frequency of student-on-student abuse in residential schools.

"I think no one was prepared for the extent to which children themselves harmed other children, the older children who abused younger children," Wilson said. "We heard many instances of that. That's the reason I think that's a concern that we have to name and be honest about, because in the case of those situations many of those people are sharing a community and, as adults, have to find ways to live harmoniously with each other knowing that in a way they were all victims as children. But the things that they did to hurt each other in some communities can be blocks to having harmony in those communities today."

Wilson said two things also particularly stand out from hearings in the North.

"One is the incredibly long distances that children went to school, and how long they were away from home, because most of them were very far away from home, and many of them did not have road access to return home, and families could not come and visit them," she said.

She explained the other thing is many Northern children were taken from a very traditional land-based lifestyle.

"Many children talked about seeing buildings for the very first time or seeing trees for the very first time," she said. "It was a dramatic change for them. It was for all the children, but it was just exaggerated for the Northern children."

Along with a national event in Inuvik, hearings were held in numerous communities in the NWT, Wilson noted. "We had more hearings per capita in the North than we did anywhere else in the country."