TRC Calls to Action for Education
In an earlier post, we discussed why Reconciliation is necessary in education. To read more about that, click here.
In this post I will discuss how the TRC Calls to Action were created. Further posts will explain and examine each of the seven individual Calls to Action for Education, explaining what each call to action is looking for, the progress made, and what can be done to fulfill them.
How were they created?
In June 2009, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created, with Justice Murray Sinclair, Marie Wilson, and Chief Wilton Littlechild appointed as the commissioners. They spent five years investigating and collecting statements from Residential School survivors as well as families, and communities affected by Residential Schools. Nearly seven-thousand statements were collected, this shows the depth and magnitude of this investigation. The commission looked to learn about the lived experience of Residential Schools for those affected by them.
The Final Report
The TRC released their final report in 2015, outlining Canada’s brutal past with Indigenous peoples and exposing statistics about Residential Schools. You can read a summary of their final report here.
They found that from 1883, when the first Residential School was created, to 1996, when the last Residential School closed (in Punnichy, Saskatchewan), over 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their families and placed in these institutions. As well, they estimated that over six-thousand children died in these schools from unsanitary conditions that spread diseases as well as neglect, malnutrition, and various forms of abuse. You can read the stories of the survivors and read about their experiences in detail here.