The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) is a place of learning and dialogue where the truths of Residential School Survivors, families and communities are honoured and kept safe for future generations.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) was established as part of a legal settlement, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, between Survivors, the Government of Canada, the Assembly of First Nations and Inuit representatives, and the church bodies that had run residential schools. As part of that Agreement, the TRC was mandated to inform all Canadians about the residential school system and its legacy.
The NCTR was created through an agreement between the TRC and the University of Manitoba shortly before the conclusion of the TRC’s mandate. The Survivors’ statements, documents, and other materials collected through the TRC now form the heart of the NCTR.
Five of the TRC’s Calls to Action (Calls to Action, 65, 71, 72, 77 and 78) refer to the NCTR and its role as steward of these truths.
It is our responsibility to share these truths in a respectful way and work with Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators, researchers, communities, decision-makers and the general public to support the ongoing work of truth, reconciliation and healing across Canada and beyond
Find the reports on the NCTR website: nctr.ca/records/reports
Resources
Where are the Children? is a project that was launched at the National Archives of Canada. Dedicated to the service of the nation’s identity, the Archives gathers what has been as an endowment to what will be. This project is an attempt to tell the true and painful story of a national institution committed, not to the preservation of a people, but to their forced assimilation. It acknowledges that the era of silence is over. The resilience of Aboriginal people is evident in efforts to address the effects of unresolved trauma, thereby conferring upon future generations a renewed legacy of peace, strength, and well-being.
The Fallen Feather: Indian Industrial Residential Schools & Canadian Confederation is a 93 minute documentary that presents a description and analysis of the creation and development of the residential school system and the difficult, and painful legacy the people of this system left for First Nation’s generations.
Witnesses: Art and Canada’s Indian Residential Schools is an exhibition catalogue from the Morris and Helen Belkin Art Gallery (September 6-December 1, 2013). With writing by Scott Watson, Geoffrey Carr and Chief Robert Joseph; edited by Scott Watson, Keith Wallace and Jana Tyner.
Speaking My Truth: Reflections on Reconciliation & Residential School is a selection of readings from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s Truth and Reconciliation Series: Vol. 1 From Truth to Reconciliation; Vol 2. Response, Responsibility, and Renewal; and
Vol 3. Cultivating Canada. Shelagh Rogers writes in the foreword that “this collection of essays returns us to the proper work of dialogue, answering some questions but inevitably, and necessarily, provoking more.”
A Knock on the Door, The Essential History of Residential Schools from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, gathers material from the several reports the TRC has produced to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools in a concise and accessible package that includes new materials to help inform and contextualize the journey to reconciliation that Canadians are now embarked upon.
In Unsettling the Settler Within, Paulette Regan, a former residential schools claims manager, argues that in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation, non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization. They must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. With former students offering their stories as part of the truth and reconciliation processes, Regan advocates for an ethos that learns from the past, making space for an Indigenous historical counter-narrative to avoid perpetuating a colonial relationship between Aboriginal and settler peoples.
Reconciliation & the Way Forward: Collected Essays & Personal Reflections builds on the leadership of Survivors by providing insight into how individuals from across the fields of health care, education, justice, visual arts, and literature take up the healing path and their thoughts on creating a shared, transformative vision of Canada.
The Kuper Island podcast, hosted by Duncan McCue, is an 8-part series that tells the stories of four students: three who survived and one who didn’t. They attended one of Canada’s most notorious residential schools – where unsolved deaths, abuse, and lies haunt the community and the survivors to this day.