Imagining a National Research Centre: Decolonization, Commemoration, and Institutional Space

A Thesis Submitted to the Committee on Graduate Studies in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty of Arts and Science

TRENT UNIVERSITY Peterborough, Ontario, Canada (c) Copyright by Megan Kathleen Hull 2015 Canadian Studies and Indigenous Studies M.A. Graduate Program May 2015

ABSTRACT

Imagining a National Research Centre: Decolonization, Commemoration, and Institutional Space Megan Kathleen Hull

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) convened in 2008 and focused on the impact of the residential school on Indigenous people in Canada. It was intended to initiate healing in Indigenous communities while contributing to new understandings between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians. In 2015, the TRC’s mandate must be completed, and its final task is creating a National Research Centre

(NRC) at the University of Manitoba that will hold all of the documentation generated and collected throughout the TRC’s tenure. In this thesis I examine many of the challenges the NRC faces, such as lack of funding, institutional oversight, and the enormity of balancing the needs of Indigenous survivors and their communities against building an accessible archive. At a broader level, questions remain about how successful the TRC has been in achieving reconciliation between Indigenous and non-

Indigenous Canadians, and how the NRC can work to fulfill this goal.

KEYWORDS Indigenous; Canada; truth and reconciliation; residential schools; museums; archives; memorial centres

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This thesis was a project interrupted by the birth of my daughter, and I would like to thank my supervisor, Julia Harrison, for her patience and support as I dealt with all the challenges of motherhood and writing a thesis part time. Thanks for sticking with me,

Julia. Thank you to my committee, Michael Eamon and John Milloy for their time providing thoughtful insight and direction. I would also like to thank my external examiner, Cara Krmpotich, for her insightful thoughts on my thesis. I was part of an inspiring cohort at Trent, and learned so much from my fellow students. I will always be grateful for the experience of learning with each of them.

I gratefully acknowledge the financial support I received for this thesis from the Social

Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada in the form of the Joseph-Armand

Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship.

My family and friends were instrumental in the completion of this project. My partner

Brandon Vickerd and our daughter Beatrice have been immeasurably supportive and patient with my work on this project. Thank you to my parents, Mel and Judy Hull, and my sister, Stephanie Hull, and my best friend, Sam Docherty, for their support. Thank you all so much.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ...... ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ...... iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... vi CHAPTER ONE ...... 1 Introduction ...... 1 Methodology ...... 13 CHAPTER TWO ...... 20 Colonialism in Canada ...... 20 Residential Schools in Canada ...... 25 Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada ...... 30 Transitional Justice ...... 32 Truth and Reconciliation Commissions ...... 34 The National Research Centre ...... 46 CHAPTER THREE ...... 50 Decolonizing Museums and Archives ...... 50 Museums in Canada ...... 51 Archives in Canada ...... 63 Indigenous Museums ...... 70 Memorial Centres...... 73 Thoughts on the National Research Centre ...... 75 CHAPTER FOUR ...... 78 The National Research Centre ...... 78 The National Research Forum ...... 79 Building the National Research Centre...... 83 Name and Funding ...... 84 Location ...... 87 Electronic Accessibility ...... 90 Privacy Act...... 91 Education ...... 93 The Trust Deed and Administrative Agreement ...... 94 CHAPTER FIVE ...... 98 Conclusion ...... 98 The Goal of Reconciliation ...... 99

Decolonization ...... 104 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...... 118 APPENDIX A ...... 130 APPENDIX B ...... 132 APPENDIX C ...... 144 APPENDIX D ...... 158

LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS

All abbreviations refer to Canadian institutions, organizations, acts, etc., unless otherwise noted. AHF Aboriginal Healing Foundation CMC Canadian Museum of Civilization CEP Common Experience Payment CMHR Canadian Museum of Human Rights FIPPA Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Manitoba) GSC Geological Survey of the Province of Canada HREOC Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (Australia) HRV Human Rights Violations Committee (South Africa) IAP Independent Assessment Process IRSSA Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement IRSSC Indian Residential School Survivor Committee LAC Library and Archives Canada NRC National Research Centre NMC National Museums of Canada NWAC Native Women’s Association of Canada RCAP Royal Commission on Aboriginal People SNAP Systemic National Acquisition Program SAS State Archives Service (South Africa) TRC Indian Residential School Truth and Reconciliation Commission U of M University of Manitoba

CHAPTER ONE

Introduction

A cornerstone of the Indian Settlement Agreement is the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This Commission presents a unique opportunity to educate all Canadians on the Indian Residential Schools system. It will be a positive step in forging a new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and other Canadians, a relationship based on the knowledge of our shared history, a respect for each other and a desire to move forward with a renewed understanding that strong families, strong communities and vibrant cultures and traditions will contribute to a stronger Canada for all of us.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper Statement of Apology to Survivors of Indian Residential Schools June 11, 2008 In 2008, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, on behalf of both the Canadian government and the nation’s citizens, offered a formal apology to Indigenous survivors of the residential school system. Harper made his statement facing a group of Indigenous leaders and survivors who were seated in a circle on the floor of the House of Commons, a placement which was unprecedented and spoke to the gravity and earnestness this apology was meant to convey. In his statement, he acknowledged the “profoundly negative” effects of the residential school system on Indigenous people, and noted that

“the legacy of Indian Residential Schools has contributed to social problems that continue to exist in many communities today.”1 This apology was issued almost one year after the

Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement (IRSSA)2 was signed in 2007. The

IRSSA was signed by legal counsel for residential schools survivors, the Assembly of

First Nations3, various church entities, and the Canadian government. The IRSSA put

1 “Statement of Apology,” last modified September 15, 2010, http://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649. 2 A list of abbreviations used throughout this thesis can be found on Page V. 3 The Assembly of First Nations is an organization of Indigenous leaders that has been working for more than forty decades to bring attention to Indigenous issues such as residential schools and unresolved

2 into place a number of processes that were meant to address the legacy of residential schools, including a Common Experience Payment (CEP) that provided monetary compensation to residential school survivors and an Independent Assessment Process

(IAP) that addressed particular cases of abuse. In conjunction with CEP and IAP, the

IRSSA also created the mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

(TRC), which Harper spoke of in his apology as an opportunity for building new relationships between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadians.

The residential school system in Canada removed thousands of Indigenous children from their parents and communities from the late 1800s until the late 1900s.

These children were placed in schools that were run by a partnership of the Canadian government and various churches. The goal of the program was the assimilation of

Indigenous peoples into “civilized” settler society, an aim that was in keeping with other

Canadian colonial policies of the time. The institutional mindset that maintained this objective remained in place well into the mid 1900s when it was no longer possible for the Canadian government to ignore the multigenerational impact of the system on

Indigenous communities – socially, culturally and economically. Historian John Milloy has described residential schools as “part of the contagion of colonization,” responsible for the physical, emotional, spiritual, psychological, and sexual abuse suffered by many of the students.4 The years of abuse suffered by Indigenous children left them battered both physically and emotionally, and this destructive legacy left them unprepared to return to their life in their homes and communities. In 1951 amendments to the Indian

Act established a new underlying principle for educating Indigenous children: treaties. See the Charter of the Assembly of First Nations for further information, accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.afn.ca/index.php/en/about-afn/charter-of-the-assembly-of-first-nations. 4 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 295.

3 integration, which would eventually see these children moved out of residential schools and into the mainstream school system.5 The dismantling of the residential school system finished in the 1980s; however, the negative impact on Indigenous people and communities continues to resonate across generations and throughout Canada.

The TRC has specific mandated goals. These include: recognizing residential school experiences and their lasting impact; creating safe places for survivors and their families who come forward to the TRC; witnessing and facilitating truth and reconciliation events; educating the Canadian public about the history and legacy of residential schools; building an accurate historic record of the residential school system; writing a comprehensive report of the TRC findings; and commemorating residential school survivors and their families.6 The goals of the TRC support reconciliation, described in the IRSSA as an “ongoing individual and collective process [that] will require commitment from all those affected including First Nations, Inuit and Métis former residential school students, their families, communities, religious entities, former school employees, government and the people of Canada. Reconciliation may occur between any of the above groups.”7 In its mandate, the TRC, under the guidance of its commissioners, was given the responsibility to hold national and community events, collect testimony and amass historical documentation, hold a closing ceremony, and build a National Research Centre (NRC). These requirements, meant to facilitate the various goals of the TRC, have been mostly fulfilled.

5 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 189-190. 6 Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf. 7 Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf.

The final piece of the TRC mandate is to be the construction of the NRC. On

June 21, 2013 an agreement was signed in Winnipeg between the TRC and the University of Manitoba, the institution chosen to host the NRC. The NRC will archive the records of the testimony of Indigenous residential school survivors collected as part of the work of the TRC; house copies of all government and church documentation regarding residential schools, bringing these historical records together into one place for the first time; and serve as a memorial to the residential school experience. To fulfill its mandate the NRC will be a space in Canada’s cultural landscape where truths about this dark story in Canadian history will not be ignored. To achieve its goals, the NRC must be a post- colonial museum/archival/memorial institution and space, forging new practices and policies suited to its specific purpose. Indigenous people will take a leading role in determining how the NRC will be operated, managed, and make accessible the material and memories that the NRC will curate and exhibit for the purpose of educating the public about the truth about residential schools.

I would argue that while the TRC has made an important contribution to

Indigenous communities by creating a space for survivors to speak about their experiences and raising public awareness about the residential school system, it has been less successful in building a solid foundation for reconciliation in Canada. In fact, I agree with Indigenous scholar Taiaiake Alfred’s skepticism about “the vision of reconciliation that is currently embraced by Canadians” which implies that making apologies and monetary reparations is sufficient to atone for the residential school system.8 In reality, reconciliation in the vision that Alfred describes only pays lip service the realities and impact of residential schools on past, current and future generations of Indigenous

8 Alfred, foreword to Unsettling the Settler Within by Paulette Regan (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), xi.

Canadians. The legacy of the residential school system cannot be reconciled so neatly.

Any true reconciliation must be addressed within the larger colonial history of Canada and its ongoing role in the social, political, and economic inequalities faced today by

Indigenous people in Canada. With the end of the TRC mandate drawing ever nearer, the

NRC will bear the burden of continuing both the symbolic and concrete work of the

TRC; however, the responsibility of acknowledging the legacy of the residential school system must be equally shared by the Canadian government and all Canadian citizens,

Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike.

My thesis focuses on the NRC, its mandates, its challenges, its role as part of the

TRC, and its context within Canada as an institution intended to fulfill complex role as a museum, archive and memorial to Indigenous survivors of residential schools. I begin with a brief overview of the history and the colonial underpinnings of the Canadian residential school system. To understand the NRC as a part of the goal of achieving reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada, I make the link between TRC and transitional justice as a global movement. In its role as a memorial centre, the NRC must incorporate Indigenous values and knowledge into its space, while still making an impact on non-Indigenous visitors. It will also have to incorporate characteristics of both museums and archives, and must contend with the connections these institutions have with colonialism within Canada. I offer an overview of the history of these institutions in Canada, and look at some of the ways in which curators and archivists are working with Indigenous communities to decolonize these spaces by including, if not privileging, Indigenous voices. I argue that the realization of the difficult and tenuous goal of reconciliation can be facilitated by a successful NRC, but

6 that the NRC will only achieve the goal of a decolonized space of remembrance, resistance and survival if Indigenous people are permitted to use their own voices to tell their life experiences.

TRC Chair Justice Murray Sinclair explained that achieving reconciliation in the context of the TRC will be a long term goal dependant on the public education system for its success.9 The NRC has the potential to be an important contributor to achieving this long term goal in Canada, both through contributing to changes in public school curriculums and educating the public outside of classrooms through outreach and media campaigns. The NRC must be a space where Indigenous people feel safe and Indigenous voices are heard but it must also encourage participation and dialogue with non-

Indigenous Canadians in order to foster new relationships. As the centre is built and it begins operation, it has the potential to be a lens for a deeper understanding about the relationship between Indigenous people in Canada and the Canadian government, as well as non-Indigenous Canadians. In order to explore the structure of the NRC it is necessary to examine it within a context of museum and archive practices in Canada, many of which contribute to the decolonization of these institutions. It is also an opportunity to understand memorial centres within Canada, while contributing to a growing body of scholarship regarding memorialization across the globe.

My thesis is informed by ideas and processes of post-colonialism and decolonization, taking into account the changes in how museums and archives are thought about (and think about themselves) in Canada today. In a report on

9 “Reconciliation...towards a new relationship,” accessed May 15, 2014, http://www.trc.ca/websites/reconciliation/index.php?p=312.

7 decolonization for Canada’s former Aboriginal Healing Foundation,10 Linda Archibald defined decolonization as “to free from colonial status.”11 Decolonization requires the questioning of colonial practices and mindsets. It takes into account more than the structures of colonialism that Canada’s political, social, cultural and economic fabric is woven upon, and necessitates a deeper exploration of the philosophies that underpin

European thinking. Indigenous scholar Linda Tuhiwai Smith has written that “what counts as Western research draws from an ‘archive’ of knowledge and systems, rules and values which stretch beyond the boundaries of Western science to the system now referred to as the West.”12 As a non-Indigenous woman writing a thesis that deals with the traumatic history of Indigenous people, it was important for me to question my own preconceptions and ways of thinking that draw from this ‘archive,’ often with little thought of where they were learned or why I cling to them.

Defining post-colonialism is complex and difficult; the use of the word “post” can be misleading, offering the tantalizing belief that something is now over – in this case, colonization. I use the term post-colonialism to mean the change in the way that scholars

– both Indigenous and non-Indigenous – understand and question power relationships that remain today in the context of many of the ongoing structures and legacies of colonial practices. It would, however, be naive and erroneous to think of Canada as

“post-colonial” in that there are no longer colonial practices that maintain systems that uphold an imbalance of power between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous

10 The Aboriginal Healing Foundation is an “an Aboriginal-managed, national, Ottawa-based, not-for-profit private corporation established March 31, 1998 and provided with a one-time grant of $350 million dollars by the federal government of Canada as part of Gathering Strength – Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan. Its mandate was finished in March 2009, although the foundation continues to have a web presence. “FAQS,” accessed April 25, 2014, http://www.ahf.ca/faqs. 11 Archibald, “Definitions,” in Decolonization and Healing (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006), i. 12 Tuhiwai Smith, Decolonizing Methodologies (Dundedin: University of Otaga Press, 1999), 42.

Canadians. While Canada has begun to come to terms with its colonial past and is attempting to address the impact that colonial legacies have had on Indigenous peoples, it is still at its essence a colonizing nation. The concept of post-colonialism is important in discussions regarding the nation-state of Canada and its relationship to First Nations as scholars, politicians, and Indigenous people attempt to position themselves in new paradigms that strengthen Indigenous identities and build positive futures. Post- colonialism also challenges non-Indigenous Canadians to re-examine Canada’s history in order to challenge the colonial mechanisms of power that operate today in Canadian society.

Post-colonialism demands that attention be paid to questions of hegemony, language choice, and historical abuses of power. Scholars have begun to challenge accepted understandings about how power is produced and maintained,13 considering closely how they speak, who they speak for, and the language they use. Words themselves become something to be careful of – part of what Foucault has called “the risky world of discourse.”14 These challenges led to what was called a “crisis of representation” in the social sciences in the latter half of the twentieth century. The work of anthropologists such as Clifford Geertz and James Clifford, theorists such as George

Marcus and Michael Fisher, and feminist scholars such as Donna Haraway pushed scholars to think closely about representation and to pay attention to what gets said and how it is expressed.15

13 See Michel Foucault, “Orders of Discourse,” Social Science Information 10, no. 2 (1971): 7-30, Michel Foucault, “Two Lectures,” in Power/Knowledge, ed. Colin Gordon,78-108 (New York: Pantheon Books, 1980), and Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon Books, 1978). 14 Foucault, “Orders of Discourse,” Social Science Information 10, no. 2 (1971): 7-8. 15 See Clifford Geertz, The Interpretation of Cultures (New York: Basic Books, 1977), James Clifford and George E. Marcus, eds., Writing Culture (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural Critique, 2nd ed., (Chicago: University of

The crisis of representation contributed to “the realization of the problematic nature of the historical inheritance of ethnographic collections” in museums in the

Western world.16 Museums and archives are products of the colonial era of expansion and acquisition that occurred in Europe in the seventeenth century, continuing through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.17 The private “curiosity cabinets” of this era fulfilled a number of purposes for their collectors such as “the storing and dissemination of knowledge, the display of princely and aristocratic power, [and] the advancement of reputation and careers.”18 As private collections were moved into public institutions, museums were put into service for political and nationalistic goals.19 In Canada, many museum collections were originally the repository of collections amassed through the practices of “salvage anthropology” – the belief that Indigenous material culture should be collected as a means of preserving cultures believed to be disappearing.20 Salvage anthropology influenced the relationship between museums and the source communities they represented, creating a museum culture in which objects and artefacts were considered the property of museums that assigned both meaning and value to the objects.21 For decades, little attention was paid to what the original makers and users of these artefacts believed or understood about the use or value of an object, its meaning to its users, and whether it was appropriate for exhibition.

Chicago Press, 1999), and Donna Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3 (1988): 575-599. 16 Merriman, “The Crisis of Representation in Archaeological Museums,” in Cultural Resource Management in Contemporary Society, edited by Francis P. McManamon and Alf Hatton (London: Routledge, 2000), 302. 17 See Michael Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1995), and Archie Key, Beyond Four Walls (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1973). 18 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1995), 73. 19 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1995), 76. 20 See Douglas Cole, Captured Heritage (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1995). 21 McLoughlin, “Of Boundaries and Borders,” Canadian Journal of Communication 18, no. 3 (1993).

In the late twentieth century, museums faced a number of controversies that forever changed how they relate to their collections and the people to whom they once belonged, a change that Laura Peers and Alison Brown called “one of the most important developments in the history of museums.”22 In particular, The Spirit Sings: Artistic

Traditions of Canada’s first Peoples, an exhibit at the Glenbow Museum in 1988 that coincided with the XV Olympic Winter Games held in Calgary, was a significant moment for Canadian curators and museums.23 The Spirit Sings was a focal point for the political activism of the Lubicon Lake Nation who called for a boycott of the exhibit because of unresolved land claims, issues with corporate sponsorship of the exhibit, as well as “other, more general issues of Indigenous voices and power in the representation of their own cultures.”24 The protests surrounding The Spirit Sings resulted in the “Task

Force on Museums and First Peoples,” which was mandated to examine the wide range of problems that the boycott had brought to light.”25 These events have caused twenty- first century museums to confront complicated and problematic histories while learning to work with Indigenous communities in an ongoing process that sees artefacts either repatriated or at least treated with new understanding and sensitivity.26 This shift in perspective has been titanic, and “brings new perspectives to bear on the transformative

22 Peers and Brown, “Museums and Source Communities,” in Museums and Their Communities, ed. Sheila Watson (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 519. 23 See Ruth Phillips, Museum Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), Karen Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), Julia Harrison, “Shaping Collaboration,” Museum Management and Curatorship 20 (2005), 195-212, Michael Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), and Moira McLoughlin, Museums and the Representation of Native Canadians (New York: Garland Publishing Ltd., 1999). 24 Phillips, Museum Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 49. 25 Phillips, Museum Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 12. 26 See Susan Sleeper-Smith, ed., Contesting Knowledge (Lincoln, NE:University of Nebraska Press, 2009), Karen Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), Julia Harrison, “Shaping Collaboration,” Museum Management and Curatorship 20 (2005), 195-212, Michael Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), and Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers, This is Our Life (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013).

11 impact of colonial encounters on the ways objects are understood.”27 Museum curators are working with Indigenous people to transform museum policies with the recognition that many artefacts that were considered representative of old ways of life are in fact important tools of vibrant, living cultures. I will discuss other important Canadian examples in Chapter Three.

Many archival practices were originally shaped during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries when vast numbers of documents were produced as part of the management of colonies such as Canada.28 Generally, early archival institutions contained both the documents of bureaucracy as well as collections of personal records that were donated by individuals, and both sets of documents were an expression of a

European bias for a male, upper class perspective that privileges written history as factual while questioning the legitimacy of oral histories.29 This privilege has had a resounding impact on Indigenous struggles over legitimizing land claims or clarifying treaties.30

Many Canadian archival collections are the repositories of the history of the colonization of Indigenous peoples – but not necessarily Indigenous history.31 In recent years, the relationship between archives and Indigenous people in Canada has changed for many of the same reason that museums have changed policies and practices regarding Indigenous collections. The sacred and traumatic material held in archives led archivists to approach

27Edwards, Gosden and Phillips, Introduction to Sensible Objects, eds. Elizabeth Edwards, Christ Gosden and Ruth B. Phillips (Berg: Oxford, 2006): 16. 28 See Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009) and Thomas Richards, The Imperial Archive (London: Verso, 1993). 29 See Dara Culhane, The Pleasure of the Crown (Burnaby: Talonbooks, 1998). 30 For example Delgamuukw versus the Queen, in which the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en First Nations claimed aboriginal title to their lands using oral histories. The reluctance of Judge McEachern in the first judgment to rely on oral history and rule against their claim, and the consequent judgment of the Supreme Court of Canada to uphold his decision, has had many implications for Indigenous land claims in Canada. See Dara Culhane, The Pleasure of the Crown (Burnaby: Talonbooks, 1998) for an indepth examination of this court case, and see the Supreme Court’s ruling at https://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc- csc/en/item/1569/index.do. 31 See Matthew Kurtz, “A Postcolonial Archive?” Archivaria 61 (2006): 63-90.

Indigenous communities with offers of information and requests for help in dealing with collections appropriately.32

This thesis is concerned with public memory, which “increasingly preoccupies scholars across the humanities and social sciences.”33 Unlike more individual forms of memory, public memory is subject to the forces, desires, and agendas of the present.34

Public memory is the common understanding of the past, a shared history which can lead to a sense of shared identity.35 Cultural theorist Mieke Bal has noted that the cultural memorialization of the past is an act “in which the past is continuously modified and redescribed even as it continues to shape the future.”36

Truth and reconciliation commissions are a way in which societies attempt to reshape public memory. One of their central premises is that giving testimony is part of a compact that requires another party to act as witness in order for the commission’s purpose to be realized.37 Anthropologist John Borneman has called witnessing “a kind of cultivated listening...especially important in initiating the healing of the wounds left by a

32 See Krisztina Laszlo, “Ethnographic Archival Records and Cultural Property,” Archivaria 61 (2006): 299-307. 33 Blair, Dickinson and Ott, “Introduction: Rhetoric/Memory/Place,” in Places of Public Memory, eds. Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010), 2. 34 See Edward Casey, “Public Memory in Place and Time,” in Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips, 17-44 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004) and Carole Blair, Greg Dickinson and Brian L. Ott, “Introduction: Rhetoric/Memory/Place,” in Places of Public Memory: The Rhetoric of Museums and Memorials, eds. Greg Dickinson, Carole Blair, and Brian L. Ott, 1-56 (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2010). 35 See Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer, eds., Acts of Memory: Cultural Recall in the Past (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), Kimberly Rae Lanegran, “Truth Commissions, Human Rights Trials and the Politics of Memory,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, no. 1 (2005): 111-121, and John R. Gillis, editor, Commemorations (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994). 36 Bal, Introduction to Acts of Memory, eds. Mieke Bal, Jonathan Crewe and Leo Spitzer (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1999), vii. 37 See John Borneman, “Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing,” Public Culture 14, no. 2 (2002): 281-304, Kimberly Rae Lanegran, “Truth Commissions, Human Rights Trials and the Politics of Memory,” Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East 25, no. 1 (2005): 111-121, and Gillian Whitlock, “In the Second Person,” Biography 24, no. 1 (2001): 197-214.

13 violent process such as ethnic cleansing.”38 Survivors can find solace in relating their experience, when historically their voices have been silenced.39 Witnessing, when approached in the cultivated manner espoused by Borneman, can become a political and social tool that has the potential to reshape public memory. Reshaping the public memory of Canada in regard to the history of Indigenous people, and particularly residential schools, is a necessary part of the TRC. The work required to change the

Canadian public’s understanding of this history will continue after the TRC’s mandate ends, and it will fall to the NRC to see that this work continues. The burden on the NRC is heavy and complicated by the history of colonialism in Canada that continues to impact the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians.

Methodology

The TRC held a public forum titled Sharing Truth – Creating a National

Research Centre on Residential Schools in Vancouver, BC from March 1 to 3, 2011.

This forum was an opportunity for the TRC commissioners, the Indian Residential

School Survivor Committee (IRSSC)40 and other concerned parties and individuals to hear ideas and suggestions from international and national authorities in the areas of truth and reconciliation commissions, institutions commemorating human rights violations, and indigenous museums and archives that could inform the development of the NRC.

The objective of the forum was to “significantly contribute to fulfilling the creation of an

38 Borneman, “Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing,” Public Culture 14, no. 2 (2002): 289. 39 See John Borneman, “Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing,” Public Culture 14, no. 2 (2002): 281-304, Roseanne Kennedy, “The Affective Work of Stolen Generations Testimony,” Biography 27, no. 1 (2004): 48-77, and Roseanne Kennedy, “Subversive Witnessing,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1/2 (2008): 58-75. 40 In accordance with the TRC’s mandate, the Indian Residential School Survivor Committee (IRSSC) is “composed of 10 representatives drawn from various Aboriginal organizations and survivor groups,” most of whom are residential school survivors. The IRSSC assists and provides advice to the commissioners on a number of issues. See Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013, http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf.

14 institution that is broadly accessible to all, committed to meeting survivor needs and actively promotes education and learning of the residential school experience and legacy.”41

The speakers at the forum came from a range of international and national museums, archives, memorial centres and organizations such as the Museum of Memory and Human Rights (Chile), the Shoah Foundation and the Seneca Nation Archives

(United States), the Kigali Memorial Centre (Rwanda), and the Liberation War Museum

(Bangladesh). Representatives from Canadian institutions such the National Nikkei

Museum and Heritage Centre, the Haida Heritage Centre, the Vancouver Holocaust

Education Centre, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights also spoke. Archivists who catalogue and memorialize human rights violations, such as the International Centre for Transitional Justice, the International Coalition for Sites of Conscience, and

WITNESS were included.42 All who were on the programme had experience with the intricacies and tensions of recording, storing and managing the testimony of survivors of traumatic events such as war, genocide and apartheid.

The three day forum was digitally recorded and made available on the internet through the TRC website, first as a live feed and currently as embedded video. I used this online archive as the basis for my analysis of the issues that were raised at this conference. I was seeking to understand the nuanced and varied issues that surround the concept of the TRC’s National Research Centre. My approach to working through this material started with listening twice to the entire body of the conference; once, with an ear to the material, and next, slowly transcribing the bulk of each presentation. I then

41 “About the National Research Centre Forum,” accessed November 18, 2014, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=132. 42 Please see Appendix A for a complete list of participants and the institutions they represented.

15 concentrated on the transcriptions themselves, working through my data to do a content analysis of the entire three days of the NRC forum. My content analysis is a qualitative, rather than quantitative, approach emphasizing the importance of interpreting the

“meaning of texts.”43 Coding my data allowed me to identify the common points that were woven through the three days: transitional justice, testimony, physical space, digitization, and accessibility and education, and I situated these findings within historical and scholarly literature about the history of museums and archives in Canada.

The following chapters discuss these topics in greater depth, drawing on research and literature that is pertinent and timely to the challenges that the TRC faces with the development of the NRC.

The proceedings of the conference are in the public domain, and as such there is no ethical barrier to the use of the presentations in this thesis. However, addressing my ethical position to this material is essential. I am a non-Aboriginal Caucasian woman interested in Indigenous issues, and this interest is an expression and result of my personal history growing up in a small town on Vancouver Island. The T’Sou-ke Nation is located in Sooke, and the Pacheedaht Nation is nearby in Port Renfrew. There was widespread prejudice in my town. This racism was expressed in the language and stereotypes that were used to discuss Indigenous people, and often focussed on anger over issues such as fishing rights and land use. The education that I received in the local public schools did little to dispel the racism I was frequently exposed to in my small town.

In his closing remarks at the NRC forum, TRC Chair Justice Murray Sinclair noted that the public school system has historically failed to present an honest and clear

43 O’Reilly, Ethnographic Methods (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2005), 172.

16 account of Indigenous people, saying that Canadian students “were led to believe that our cultures and our races were inferior.”44 This historical misrepresentation was a part of my education in the 1970s and 1980s in my local public schools, when the only the only reference to Indigenous people in my social studies classes were brief and colourful stories that portrayed the relationship between explorers and Indigenous people as peaceful and co-operative relationships, ignoring many of the realities of Indigenous- settler relations such as the decimation of Indigenous populations through disease, the loss of territories and the removal of children from their homes. On the west coast, the story of the settlement of Vancouver Island was the meeting between James Cook and the

Mowachaht Nation45 in the 1700s, as well as “Manuel Quimper Days” which celebrated

Manuel Quimper as the first European man to “discover” my hometown, which he named

Puerta de Revillagigedo in 1790.

In 2008, as I was finishing my undergraduate degree in anthropology and considering undertaking a master’s degree, I happened to be listening to a woman speaking about the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada on a local radio news program. The woman being interviewed was coming to the end of her discussion on the TRC when I began listening. Her closing statement (and I am paraphrasing) was that the TRC was an important opportunity for Indigenous peoples in Canada to speak about their experiences in the residential school system. What was also important, she went on to say, was that non-Indigenous Canadians pay attention to the TRC and what

44 Sinclair, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (17.35), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. Please note: references to “Sharing Truth: Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools” have been simplified to include the conference speaker, the day on which they spoke, and the time at which the quoted material can be heard on the recorded video. All conference recording were last accessed on November 18, 2014 for the purposes of this thesis. 45 James Cook first encountered the Mowachaht Nation (members of the Nuu-chah-nulth), on the coast of Vancouver Island in 1778, and “named” them Nootka based on a misunderstanding of their language.

17 was being said. In other words, the TRC itself was not going to be enough, in and of itself, to create a meaningful change in the relationship between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadians; non-Indigenous Canadians had an important role to play in a positive outcome for the TRC and Indigenous people.

Her comments left a lasting impression on me. Throughout my undergraduate degree, my understanding of the relationship between Indigenous people and non-

Indigenous Canadians had begun to change fundamentally. My perception of my country and my place in it as a non-Indigenous Canadian changed forever. Many of my fellow anthropology students were focussed on political and social issues taking place in Africa and South America, but I became focussed on the inequalities and racism that were rampant in Canadian society. I became aware of the systematic inequality that is part of government policies, inequalities that are supportable only when we continue to ignore history. I wanted to be one of the Canadians that refused to turn a deaf ear to the survivors who would speak at the TRC. News stories such as the one I heard that day made it impossible for me to ignore the role that residential schooling had in the experiences of Indigenous people living in this country – experiences that include higher rates of substance abuse, domestic violence, and incarceration than non-Indigenous

Canadians.

When writing about the TRC, its successes, and failures in the future, non-

Indigenous scholars must seek a balance approached to issues that have had such traumatic consequences for Indigenous communities, being careful not to claim to speak for Indigenous people. Eugene Arcand, a member of the IRSSC, declared that “we don’t

18 want people to become experts on the residential school era.”46 His point is an important reminder that while survivor experiences will become part of public record, it will be necessary for scholars to proceed with caution when accessing these records for the purpose of research. Indigenous points of view and insights are important to my thesis; however, instead of focusing on residential school experiences in this thesis, I am concentrating on the National Research Centre, and its potential to contribute to the

TRC’s goal of reconciliation.

In Chapter Two I provide a brief history of colonization and residential schooling in Canada and look at the impact of residential schools in Indigenous people and communities and how this is being addressed by the Canadian government through the

Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement. I discuss the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission of Canada and its mandate, situating it within global discussions of transitional justice, a “broad heading” that describes practices such as truth and reconciliation commission that address violence and other violations of human rights that have taken place within communities and nations.47 This comparison will highlight the challenges that the TRC will face in realizing its goal of reconciliation. I conclude with an introduction into the mandate of the National Research Centre.

Chapter Three offers a brief history of archives and museums in Canada, highlighting the profound shift in the relationship between these institutions and

Indigenous people in Canada that took place in the latter half of the twentieth century. I discuss memorial centres, which are often a hybrid of the museum and the archive.

Memorial centres are a common part of transitional justice, and are used to promote

46 Arcand, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (5.47), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 47 Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2008): 96.

19 healing, educate the public, and mark historic events for future generations. This last purpose is in service of cultural memory, but is also considered preventative – if the people of the future see the truth about an atrocity, there is hope that it will not be repeated. I examine national and international examples of centres that can be instructive in envisioning the NRC. Museums and archives, as well as memorial centres, have an important role to play in national consciousness; this chapter will consider what role the

NRC will have in this respect.

Chapter Four discusses the challenges that the NRC will face. The planning of the NRC will require careful consideration regarding the final name of the centre, its physical space, accessibility, privacy, and education. Using my analysis of forum transcripts, I discuss the challenges and the solutions others found as discussed at the

NRC forum. I also examine if the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Trust Deed and the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement, signed by the TRC and the University of Manitoba (U of M), provide a framework for facing these challenges. Finally, I analyze the Administrative Agreement and Trust Deed as documents that lay the groundwork for the relationship between the NRC and the U of M and ask whether this preliminary agreement holds the potential to make the NRC truly a decolonized institution.

Finally, the last chapter discusses how the NRC can contribute to the goal of reconciliation in Canada, taking over the reins of this important task from the TRC as it concludes its mandate. I will reflect on the contributions this thesis makes to a broader theoretical body of post-colonial theory, with specific reference to museums and archives, as well as new research on memorialization.

CHAPTER TWO

Colonialism in Canada

The impact of colonialism and residential schools has had an immense and tragic impact on Canada, both historically and currently. In this chapter I provide a brief overview of this history in order to establish the connections between colonialism and the residential school system that inform my subsequent discussion about the Truth and Reconciliation

Commission of Canada and the National Research Centre. The TRC is a part of a global movement that seeks to address past physical and structural violence through forms of transitional justice. As legal scholar Jula Hughes noted “Canada is applying a transitional-justice framework in the context of a more politically stable nation-state” through the TRC.48 Situating the TRC within this movement allows for an examination of the successes and challenges faced by such commissions elsewhere, most notably the highly publicized and analyzed South African TRC. I conclude with a brief introduction to the National Research Centre, and a discussion about how the TRC and the NRC can contribute to reconciliation.

Canada’s complex and problematic history of colonialism informs its relationship with Indigenous peoples in Canada in the present. Scholars have defined colonialism as the establishment of “institutions premised on dominating geographic, material, economic, cultural, psychological, and spiritual existences of the original inhabitants of a place,” eventually transitioning from a practice of physical forms of oppression to practices of “more legalistic and bureaucratized forms of dominance.”49 Colonialism was the set of policies and structures used by imperial governments to subjugate and rule

48 Hughes, “Instructive Past” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27, no. 1 (2012): 102. 49 Irlbacher-Fox, Finding Dahshaa (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 60.

21 occupied people and lands; it was the governing force that sustained imperial expansion, but it was also an expression of imperial values and desires to expand borders and material assets. Expansion was driven by a desire for more resources and more land; however, it was also “associated with ideas of national greatness, competiveness, and survival of the fittest”50 and facilitated by a belief in cultural and racial hierarchies. In other words, empire building was a competitive process that had wealth and prestige as its reward. European colonizers had an inherent belief in their superiority over the

Indigenous people they encountered across the globe, a belief that would influence each future interaction between the groups.

Europeans came to what was to become Canada in the search of resources such as fish and furs to meet demands at home. In the 1600s and 1700s, France’s flourishing fur trade relied heavily on the expertise and skills of Indigenous people. Historian Arthur

Ray has noted that until the 1870s, the fur trade “operated as an integrating force between

Indians and Europeans,” creating necessary – but unequal – working relationships.51

Eventually, after Britain gained dominion over Canada when it signed the Treaty of Paris in 1763 with France, the relationship between the Crown and Indigenous people inexorably changed, and in the early 1800s the government began to employ policies aimed at assimilating Indigenous people. These policies attempted to eradicate

Indigenous culture by disrupting the teaching of traditional ways of life, banning cultural practices such as the potlatch on the West Coast and the sun dance on the Prairies, and curtailing hunting and fishing rights. Early practices of colonial physical and structural

50 Louis, Ends of British Imperialism (London: I.B. Tauris and Co. Ltd., 2006), 35. 51 Ray, Indians in the Fur Trade, 2nd ed. (Toronto: University Toronto Press Incorporated, 1998), xxxiii.

22 domination became embedded in the last century as entrenched forms of bureaucratic subjugation.52

The signing of treaties between the Crown and Indigenous people served to secure vast areas of land, as well as their resources, for the British and then the Canadian government. Treaties were signed with the Crown as early as 1701, with the last numbered treaty signed in 1921. These treaties were influenced heavily by imperialistic ideas of superiority. Political scientist David Abernethy has written that “Europeans had a special sense of possessiveness about the New World. Their characterization of the hemisphere as new suggests they considered it untouched whose destiny went unfulfilled until Europeans reached it and transformed a vast, hitherto unknown territory into productive, commercially valuable property.”53 The belief in their superiority and the erroneous view of North America as uncivilized gave European faith in their duty and right to dominion over the Indigenous people who lived across the North American continent. In return for the rights to small reserves, and limited traditional rights to hunt or fish, Indigenous people relinquished title to their traditional land in the opinion of the

Crown, often doing so without understanding the consequences of the agreements that they signed. The forced relocation of Indigenous nations to reserves curtailed traditional ways of life, particularly subsistence activities such as hunting and gathering. The government embraced policies that actively sought to assimilate Indigenous people,

52 There are many texts that discuss the ongoing systemic violence faced by Indigenous people in Canada. See, for example, Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox, Finding Dahshaa: Self-Government, Social Suffering, and Aboriginal Policy in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009); L.J. O’Connor and Morgan O-Neal, Dark Legacy: Systemic Discrimination against Canada’s First Peoples (Vancouver: Totem Pole Books, 2010; Dian Million, Therapeutic Nations: Healing in an Age of Indigenous Human Rights (Tucson, AZ: University of Arizona Press, 2013); and Paulette Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010). 53 Abernethy, The Dynamics of Global Dominance (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 47.

23 which continued after confederation with An Act for the Gradual Enfranchisement of

Indians in 1869 and the Indian Act of 1876. Historian John Milloy writes that these acts gave the government “the power to mould, unilaterally, every aspect of life on the reserve and to create whatever infrastructure it deemed necessary to achieve the desired end – assimilation through enfranchisement and, as a consequence, the eventual disappearance of First Nations.”54

Assimilation was an aggressive objective, but in the final assessment it was not wholly successful. While Indigenous people have experienced some loss of their cultural history – as many as half of Indigenous people living on reserves learn to speak only

English, for example55 – the latter half of the twentieth century saw a reclamation of

Indigenous culture and identity, as well as a growing movement of Indigenous political action. In Canada, Harold Cardinal made an important contribution to this movement with The Unjust Society in 1969 in which he wrote “the Canadian society, self- righteously proclaiming itself just and civilized, has not extended equality to the Indian over the past century, and there is no reason to believe, expect or hope that it will change its spots over the next century if the Indian stays weak.”56 The displacement and degree of devastation that Indigenous people suffered during the colonization of Canada has been acknowledged by some scholars as a holocaust, or an act of genocide. Andrew

Woolford and Jasmine Thomas have drawn this conclusion, pointing to acts of physical war, residential schools, and the “legislation of a uniform and calculable ‘Indian’ identity

54 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 21. 55 “A Statistical Profile on the Health of First Nations in Canada: Determinants of Health, 1999-2003,” last modified February 12, 2009, http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/pubs/aborig-autoch/2009-stats- profil/index-eng.php. 56 Cardinal, The Unjust Society (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999 (1969)), 141.

24 that could be targeted and policed through state policy”57 as examples of genocidal acts, which also include the introduction of diseases to Indigenous populations and the decimation of natural resources such as buffalo.

Today, Indigenous people in Canada continue to live within a colonial system of government. Indigenous people are often faced with systemic prejudice and violence, and many Indigenous communities are struggling to overcome deplorable standards of living that are a consequence of living on underfunded and remote reserves. As a population, Indigenous people are overrepresented in the Canadian correctional system across the provinces, a statistic that is particularly true for Indigenous women - a staggering 41% of adult women in custody in 2010/2011 were Indigenous.58 The Native

Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) states that Indigenous women are more likely to experience domestic violence, and are more likely to be the victim of a homicide, than other women in Canada.59 However, the resilience and tenacity of Indigenous people is impressive. Indigenous people within Canada have stood up for treaty rights increasingly over the years, resulting in such event as the Oka Crisis in 199060, the Ipperwash Crisis in

199561, and more recently in protests surrounding the development of land in Caledonia,

Ontario and the logging of land on Vancouver Island, British Columbia. Within the last

57 Woolford and Thomas, “Genocide of Canadian First Nations,” in Genocide of Indigenous Peoples, eds. Samuel Totten and Robert K. Hitchcock (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2011), 63. 58 “Adult correctional statistics in Canada, 2010/2011,” last modified May 31, 2013, http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11715-eng.htm#a7. 59 “Fact Sheet: Violence Against Aboriginal Women,” accessed March 6, 2014, http://www.nwac.ca/files/download/NWAC_3E_Toolkit_e.pdf. 60 In 1990, the town of Oka, Québec was the site of a 78 day standoff between members of the Mohawk Nation and the Sûreté du Québec (SQ), the RCMP and the Canadian Armed Forces. The Mohawk Nation was determined to halt development on land that was sacred and contained a burial site. The protests saw violence from both sides and SQ Marcel Lemay was killed. The protests ended, and the land in question was bought by the federal government and remains undeveloped. 61 In 1995, Indigenous protestors occupied Ipperwash Provincial Park in Ontario as a way to draw attention to unresolved treaty issues. The protests escalated in violence, culminating in the killing of Ojibway Nation member Dudley George.

25 year there has been a significant uprising in the form of Idle No More, a movement that calls on the Canadian government to honour land treaties. Idle No More’s manifesto is a call for all Canadians to refuse to take part in colonial systems that negate the status of

Indigenous nations as a way to continue accessing and harvesting resources on

Indigenous land.62 Even more recently, the Elsipogtog Nation in New Brunswick has engaged in a volatile protest against the incursion of shale gas exploration into their traditional lands. Both Idle No More and the Elsipogtog demonstrators have positioned themselves as protectors of their land – a position which has begun to garner support from outside Indigenous communities. It is clear that Indigenous voices have a loud and clear message for Canadians and all levels of Canadian government.

Residential Schools in Canada

In the late 1800s and early 1900s, Canadian colonial policies in were very effective in restricting and in some cases extinguishing the ability of Indigenous people to practice traditional ways of life while not, on the other hand, permitting full participation in Canadian civil or social life. The residential school system is a particularly viscous example of these colonial policies. In the late nineteenth century the residential school system was established on the premise that Indigenous children needed proper education in Western language, religion and culture in order to be contributing members of

Canadian society. The residential school system assumed the guardianship of Indigenous children with the intent of assimilating them into non-Indigenous Canadian society.

Children were removed from their homes, alienated from their families and cultures with the intention of teaching them a new way of life. As Milloy has observed “one culture

62 “The Manifesto,” accessed March 6, 2014, http://www.idlenomore.ca/manifesto.

26 was to be replaced by another through the work of the surrogate parent, the teacher.”63

Instead of providing any of the safety or support of home, residential schools would prove to be places where children were frequently subjected to physical, psychological, emotional and sexual abuse and neglect that led to malnourishment, disease and, tragically, sometimes death.

The Canadian government was responsible for the funding and oversight of the residential school systems, which were run by various churches including the Roman

Catholic, the Anglican, and the United churches. The partnership between the federal government and the churches was practical, as both parties wanted Indigenous children to be converted to settler ways of life. For the churches, this meant a religious conversion; for the Canadian government it meant the obliteration of culture and language, replaced with learning of skills that had perceived value in settler life. The Indian Residential

School Settlement Agreement recognizes 139 residential schools, although the TRC acknowledges that this may not be representative of all residential schools that operated, in particular schools that were funded entirely by churches.64 Schools operated across

Canada, with the exception of much of the Atlantic region where there was only one school in Nova Scotia. While it is impossible to know accurately how many students attended residential schools, according to the virtual exhibition Where are the Children? more than 80,000 residential school survivors are alive today.65

63 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 33. 64 “Residential School Locations,” accessed October 27, 2013, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=12. The TRC notes that the IRSSA excludes schools that were run by religious entities and missionaries, with no connection to the Canadian government. 65 “Reclaiming History: The Residential School System in Canada,” accessed November 16, 2014, http://wherearethechildren.ca/timeline/research/.

Residential schools were intended to isolate Indigenous children from their families. Day schools run by missionaries began in the early nineteenth century were built on reserves. The residential schools built in the early 1900s and onward were situated in remote locations that ensured children would find it difficult to run away to return to their homes.66 The reports of neglect and mistreatment in residential schools began to surface almost as soon as the schools began operation. Several factors contributed to the devastating conditions in many of these institutions including underfunding, overcrowding, unsafe and poorly maintained infrastructure, untrained staff, and lack of meaningful oversight.67 Many children were subjected to unimaginable abuse.

They were not given the basic necessities of life: adequate clothing, food, safe and clean spaces to live. Many children died from disease, malnutrition, and neglect, and tragically an exact accounting of children that died in residential schools has not been made. In

2013, the Globe and Mail reported that at least 3 000 children died in residential schools68, while Milloy has stated that death rates in the schools were “of tragic proportions” – as high as forty percent by some accounts.69 What is certain is that it will be difficult to discover the fate of many Indigenous children who perished in the residential school system – many records related to residential schools were purged from

66 Kirkness, First Nations and Schools (Toronto: Canadian Education Association, 1992), 7. 67 Milloy, A National Crime. Milloy discusses many of these issues throughout his text, but specifically in the chapters “The Parenting Presumption: Neglect and Abuse” and “The failure of Guardianship: Neglect and Abuse, 1946 to 1986.” He identifies key issues, such as the per-capita system of funding, in the chapter “Disease and Death, 1879-1946.” 68 Perkel, “At Least 3 000 Native Children Died in Residential Schools,” The Globe and Mail, February 18, 2013, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/education/at-least-3000-native-children-died-in- residential-schools-research/article8786118/. 69 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 93-101.

28 federal archives for many reasons, such as freeing up storage or as a response to a paper shortage during World War II.70

Indigenous scholar Linda Archibald has observed that “the physical and sexual abuse suffered by many of these children – along with the imposed alienation from families, communities and culture – left scars that have been passed on from generation to generation.”71 The goal of residential schools to fully assimilate Indigenous children into settler ways of life failed; furthermore, those who survived the system had not learned the necessary life skills to thrive in their own communities as they had been taken from their homes at a young age. The TRC report Residential School History documents that as the residential school system became an intergenerational experience its impact began to have a devastating impact on Indigenous communities. Students came home looking for solace and healing, but were often faced with an entirely different reality, as described in the TRC’s report “They Came for the Children”:

The impacts began to cascade through generations, as former students – damaged by emotional neglect and often abuse in the schools – themselves became parents. Family and individual dysfunction grew, until eventually the legacy of the schools became joblessness, poverty, family violence, drug and alcohol abuse, family breakdown, sexual abuse, prostitution, homelessness, high rates of imprisonment, and early death.72

Not all survivors experienced residential schools as an entirely negative experience;73 however, the collective effect of the residential school system that has spread through

70 Barrera, “Ottawa fears admission it purposely destroyed Indian residential school files would lead to court fights,” APTN News, May 1, 2013, http://aptn.ca/new/2013/05/01/ottawa-fears-admission-it- purposely-destroyed-Indian-residential-school-files-would-lead-to-court-fights-documents/. 71 Archibald, “Definitions,” in Decolonization and Healing (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2006), i. 72 Truth and Reconciliation Commission, “They Came for the Children,” 2012, 77-78. 73 For example, in her remarks at the NRC forum, TRC Survivor Rebekah Uqi Williams who described her experience as “very positive.” “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (1.12), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

29 generations of Indigenous people, affecting its survivors as well as their children and having a profound impact of the health and welfare of their communities.

The Canadian government ignored for decades the devastation that Indigenous people suffered through residential schools. Finally, in the 1940s firsthand accounts and other evidence the government prompted a slow change. Revisions to the Indian Act in

1951 ensured that “Department efforts and resources were redirected from the residential system and devoted to a new policy – the creation of a day-school system and, more significantly, to integration.”74 Integration would see students moved from residential schools under federal supervision and into the provincial school system. The slow closing of residential schools was a process impeded by churches reluctant to relinquish control and “the consequences...of its own assimilative policies: broken communities dysfunctional families, and their ‘neglected’ children.”75 It took until 1996 for the last residential school to close,76 the same year that the Royal Commission on Aboriginal

People (RCAP) published a five volume report that lay the groundwork for future reparations to be made for the consequences of residential schools. RCAP, established in

1991, “responded to an acute crisis in Aboriginal-settler society relations precipitated by a land dispute...which became known as the Oka crisis.”77 Over a four year period, the commission travelled across Canada and heard testimony from Indigenous people about various aspects of their lives. The focus of RCAP was on “self-government and self- determination;”78 however, the final report recognized the lasting impact of residential

74 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 189-190. 75 Milloy, A National Crime (Winnipeg: University of Manitoba Press, 1999), 190. 76 “Residential School Locations,” accessed October 27, 2013, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=12. 77Hughes, “Instructive Past” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27, no. 1 (2012): 101. 78 Hughes, “Instructive Past” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27, no. 1 (2012): 105.

30 schools in Indigenous communities and called for a public inquiry and reparations to be made. 79

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada

The RCAP report initiated a number of events that began to change how the

Canadian government treated the history of residential schools. In 1998, the Canadian government issued a formal Statement of Reconciliation as part of Gathering Strength:

Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, a plan that was “designed to renew the relationship with the Aboriginal people of Canada”80 and articulated many of the goals and recommendations of RCAP. This statement was the first official acknowledgment of

Canada’s role in the tragic history of residential schools. With government funding, the

Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was created in order “to support Indigenous healing processes that address the legacy of sexual, physical, mental, spiritual, and cultural abuse.”81 However, these efforts fell short of actually addressing the past damage done to Indigenous people, and the government did not set in motion the public inquiry called for by RCAP. In 2003, the government was faced with “thousands of civil claims” in regard to residential schools, and attempted to resolve these through an alternative dispute resolution strategy that proved unsuccessful. Finally, in 2005 the government agreed to negotiate with survivors, and in September 2007 the Indian Residential Schools

79 The Royal Commission on Aboriginal People, in its published report, recognized the lasting impact of residential schools in Indigenous communities and called for a public inquiry and reparations to be made. “Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 1,” last modified February 8, 2006, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071124130216/http://www.ainc- inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sgm10_e.html. 80 Gathering Strength: Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan, accessed November 1, 2014, http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/gathering-strength.pdf. 81 Nagy and Sehdev, “Introduction: Residential Schools and Decolonization,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27, no. 1 (2012): 68.

Settlement Agreement (IRSSA) was signed as an out of court settlement.82 The IRSSA put into motion steps to officially address the wrongs visited upon Indigenous people through the residential school system. The IRSSA laid the framework and funding for a number of processes: a Common Experience Payment; an Independent Assessment

Process; a Truth and Reconciliation Commission; a fund for commemoration on a number of societal levels; and additional measures that would support long term healing in Indigenous communities. The Common Experience Payment (CEP) was a payment to survivors of residential schools, while the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) put into place an official channel for survivors to pursue claims of physical and sexual abuse.

Survivors were given the choice to opt out of the settlement agreement if they wanted to pursue restitution individually; those who opted out were not eligible for CEP or IAP monies.83

To signify the importance of the signing of the IRSSA and Canada’s hope for reconciliation with Indigenous peoples, a formal apology was finally made in 2008 by

Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Standing in the House of Commons, the Prime Minister acknowledged that the assimilative program of residential schools had a “profoundly negative” impact on Indigenous peoples, destroying Indigenous cultures while subjecting children to abuse and neglect.84 The Prime Minister spoke about the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission and his expectations the TRC would provide a space for healing and would ultimately allow Indigenous peoples and Canadians to forge new,

82 Nagy and Sehdev, “Introduction: Residential Schools and Decolonization,” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27, no. 1 (2012): 68. 83 According to Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada, 1,074 people chose to opt out of the IRSSA by the August 20, 2007 deadline. “Indian Residential Schools Frequently Asked Questions,” last modified April 22, 2014, http://www.aadnc-aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015798/1100100015799#CEP-AP-1. 84 Statement of Apology, Prime Minister Stephen Harper, http://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649

32 healthy relationships that would create a stronger nation. The TRC has many of the characteristics of other truth and reconciliation commissions that have been undertaken across the globe to respond to human rights violations. Such international examples are instructive for my analysis as they exemplify the challenges, successes and failures of such commissions. As I discuss in the next section, truth and reconciliation commissions rely on the principles of transitional justice to shape their proceedings and outcomes.

Transitional Justice

Political scientist Bronwyn Leebaw has observed that “durable peace requires countries to address past violence.”85 El Salvador, Morocco, and Sri Lanka, for example, are grappling with the legacies of civil war and neighbour-on-neighbour violence. In recent decades, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand and Canada have initiated processes of transitional justice intended to acknowledge and make reparations for their histories of colonialism, subjugation, and systemic racism and violence.86 Transitional justice has been defined as justice that “formulates a relationship between political transition and the law” and has often been cited as more constructive in cases of human rights violations than traditional forms of justice – perhaps because it also “addresses the unique challenges that history of state-sponsored atrocity presents to the law.”87 The mechanisms of transitional justice can be tailored to fit the particular needs of survivors and/or nations, and can include truth commissions, amnesties, national or international

85 Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly, 30, no. 1 (2008): 96. 86 Transitional justice can also be referred to as restorative justice or alternative justice. I prefer the term transitional justice, because it speaks to the dynamic set of circumstances it is operating within, and the fact that societies that implement transitional justice procedures are seeking a movement from the status quo. The term restorative justice makes an implicit promise for a restorative result that transitional justice does not always fulfill. For the sake of simplicity and continuity, I will continue to refer to transitional justice. 87 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 168.

33 trials, and forms of commemoration. These tools allow countries to (hopefully) find the fine balance between acknowledging the state’s role in past atrocities without exacting retribution on those involved in that role.

Advocates of transitional justice maintain that it is a useful tool when

“establishing the basis for a shared future requires coming to terms with the past.”88 In his keynote address at the NRC forum, Stephen Smith of the University of Southern

California’s Shoah Foundation – The Institute for Visual History and Education stated that:

In the absence of true justice, there still needs to be a process by which we can restore through memory: through finding ways to work together and listen together; by acknowledging [loss] through compensation and through the courts …; by trying to create through education a way forward; that what happened was wrong and in whatever way we can we will restore something of that past.89

Transitional justice can play a vital role when the perpetrators of atrocities are too numerous to be tried in traditional courts, when the history of atrocities stretches into a distant past, or when state-sanctioned violence occurred under a former regime and perpetrators continue to have membership in victimized communities – or what Fletcher and Weinstein call “neighbor-on-neighbor violence.”90 The goal of transitional justice is not prosecution or punishment in the traditional sense. Instead, it is reconciliation for the purpose of strengthening societies, and preventing further atrocities by officially recognizing that crimes against humanity were committed in the past. As Deena Rymhs has observed, “in the last twenty years, forgiveness and reconciliation have become part

88 Chapman and Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2001): 2. 89 Smith, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (17.07), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188. 90 Fletcher and Weinstein, “Violence and Social Repair,” Human Rights Quarterly 24, no. 3 (2002): 576.

34 of an international discourse.”91 However, reconciliation is a slippery goal that may be even more difficult to attain that it is to define. Borneman has defined reconciliation simply as “departure from violence [emphasis in the original].”92 Yet even such a straightforward definition leaves questions that are difficult to answer – such as, who is responsible for the departure? Who ensures there is no longer any violence? It is a lofty aspiration, indeed, in societies where internal conflicts have raged over long period of times, the victims have been numerous, the violence still reverberates, and there seems to be very little hope for simple answers to complicated struggles but truth commissions are one process that can address some of these issues.

Truth and Reconciliation Commissions

Truth and reconciliation commissions, also known as truth commissions, are a common transitional justice mechanism and have been used with varying degrees of success around the globe in recent decades. Gillian Whitlock has observed that

“discourses of reconciliation have emerged in the past decade as one of the most powerful scripts” for nations which “struggle with the legacies of Eurocolonialism.”93

Truth commissions address particular political and social situations and act as “temporary bodies, usually with official status, set up to investigate a past history of human rights violations that took place within a country during a specified period of time.”94 They normally do not have legislative powers to impose traditional forms of justice on perpetrators; instead, they are concerned with “establishing a historical record of

91 Rymhs, “Appropriating Guilt,” English Studies in Canada 32, no. 1 (2006), 105. 92Borneman, “Reconciliation after Ethnic Cleansing,” Public Culture 14, no. 2 (2002): 282. 93 Whitlock, “In the Second Person,” Biography 24, no. 1 (2001): 210. 94 Chapman and Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2001): 2.

35 abuses.”95 They act as forums for survivors to tell of their experiences, but “usually have narrowly defined and enforced mandates that limit testimony to a specific kind of rights abuse, demarcated in terms of action, institution, time, and place.”96 Testimony is collected with the intention of making written records, historical and testimonial, accessible.

There are many kinds of truth that can be sought by a truth and reconciliation commission: forensic, narrative, social, and restorative.97 Forensic truth is that presented by facts and written records, while narrative and social truths are found within individual and collective experiences. Perhaps restorative truth is the ultimate goal of truth commissions – “truth that comes from putting facts in their contexts: in political context of power between social actors, in historical context of the sequence of contingent events, and in the ideological context in which contending visions of the social world compete.”98 Truth commissions operate uniquely in particular circumstances; however, the goal of the proceedings is to bring clarity and transparency to what has previously been hidden or obfuscated.

Canada can draw on the experiences the truth commissions of other nations which have had the opportunity to look critically on their process and the lasting impacts. Very relevant and valuable precedents are the South African TRC and the Australia’s National

Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from their

Families, led by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission (HREOC).

95 Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2008): 107. 96 Niezen, Truth and Indignation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013): 72. 97 Chapman and Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2001): 10- 11. 98 Chapman and Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2001): 11.

Parallels can be drawn between histories of colonization, subjugation, and removal of children from their homes in both of these countries. Each of these entities dealt with complex relationships over long periods of time, and both placed a strong emphasis on providing survivors with an opportunity to speak of their experiences in appropriate fora.

In South Africa, the TRC addressed years of systemic violence under the official apartheid system. South African apartheid was dismantled in the 1990s, and the South

African TRC spent almost a decade collecting testimony in “the most public and publicized truth commission the world had seen.”99 While the final report was published in 2003, it was the testimony itself, given in a “visibly and accessibly” manner, that had the most impact on the South African public.100 Two committees held hearings: the

Amnesty Committee which dealt with perpetrators, and the Human Rights Violations

Committee (HRV) that focused on survivors relating their experiences. The Amnesty

Committee was granted the power to grant amnesty to perpetrators, and scholar Catherine

Cole has remarked that this meant that “something was at stake judicially, and profoundly so.”101 The HRV, however, was only given the power to make recommendations that would identify survivors as “victims” and offer input on which of the 21,000 survivors would be given to opportunity to speak publicly. Ultimately, this lack of judicial power made the HRV hearings what Cole described as “performative events.”102 An imbalance within the South African TRC is obvious: perpetrators were encouraged to speak at the

TRC with a concrete promise of amnesty as a reward, while survivors who gave testimony were not assured of any reparations or constructive outcome at all. This

99 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 172. 100 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 172. 101 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 174. 102 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 174.

37 disparity points to the troubling fact that TRCs are not impartial constructs but are themselves subject to “their official mandates, the perceptions and priorities of their commissioners,” as well as other factors such as resources and methodology.103 In other words, TRCs themselves are social constructs, influenced by the social and political fabric of the times in which they operate.

The reconciliation process in Australia has also been complicated. A first important step occurred in 1992 when the High Court “rewrote the legal as well as social and political history of Australia” when it handed down the Mabo decision which

“upheld the communal native title” of Murray Islanders.104 The Mabo decision acknowledged Aboriginal title to land “based upon prior Indigenous ownership,”105 an important distinction when many colonial states have refused to recognize that

Indigenous people have any inherent rights to the land that was appropriated during colonization. In 1997, Aboriginal issues in Australia gained national attention when the

HREOC led a national inquiry “in response to increasing concern among key Indigenous agencies and communities that the general public's ignorance of the history of forcible removal was hindering the recognition of the needs of its victims and their families and the provision of services.”106 In the first half of the 1900s Australia attempted to assimilate Aboriginal people by taking Aboriginal children and children of mixed heritage from their families and placing them in orphanages, boarding schools, and with white adoptive parents. The ultimate goal of removal programs was to “educate

103 Chapman and Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2001): 4. 104 Hill, “Blackfellas and Whitefellas,” Human Rights Quarterly 17, no. 2 (1995): 307. 105 Patton, “Sovereignty, Law and Difference in Australia,” Alternatives: Global, Local, Political 21, no. 2 (1996): 150. 106 Australian Human Rights Commission, Bringing them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families, Australian Commonwealth (1997), accessed November 7, 2014, https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-report-1997.

38 indigenous people to become useful to their new conquerors” through assimilation, attempting to obliterate Aboriginal culture and ways of life.107 The testimony taken by

HREOC was “taken in private from Indigenous people affected by forcible removal and from adoptive and foster parents,” and public testimony and written statements were taken from other involved parties, including Indigenous groups, government representatives and church officials.108 While not an official truth and reconciliation commission, the HREOC’s inquiry shared common attributes with truth commissions in its emphasis on survivor experiences, and was part of “a global trend in which claims of historical injustice are articulated through personal stories of suffering.”109

The HREOC report Bringing Them Home (1997) addressed what would become known as the Australian Stolen Generations. The report had a powerful impact on

Australian society, thus achieving one of the goals of truth commissions – to make historical facts a part of the national consciousness. In this regard, it must be considered, at least in part, a success. This “seven hundred page report was the best-selling government publication ever [in Australia], with some twelve thousand copies sold.”110

Instead of producing a highly edited document that would have had limited public consumption, Bringing Them Home included survivor testimony verbatim, heightening the emotional impact of the report that has been called the “cornerstone of the pursuit of reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.”111

107 Jacobs, “Indian Boarding Schools in Comparative Perspective,” in Boarding School Blues, eds. Clifford E. Trafzer, Jean A. Keller and Lorene Sisquoc (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2006), 209-210. 108 HREOC, Bringing them Home: Report of the National Inquiry into the Separation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Children from Their Families (1997), https://www.humanrights.gov.au/publications/bringing-them-home-report-1997 109 Kennedy, “Subversive Witnessing,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1/2 (2008): 58. 110 Whitlock, “In the Second Person,” Biography 24, no. 1 (2001): 198. 111 Whitlock, “In the Second Person,” Biography 24, no. 1 (2001): 198.

However, it remains difficult to measure how TRCs contribute to reconciliation in the long term, on either the national or individual level. TRCs are short-lived bodies with specific mandates, and attaining true reconciliation in the aftermath of long term and/or intensive conflict within such a limited timeframe is simply not possible. Regarding the

South African TRC, Chapman and Ball observe that atrocities “were treated more as the product of individuals’ decisions and actions than the outcome of the dynamics of the apartheid system.”112 Individualization, they suggest, makes it possible for citizens to attribute the systemic violence to the actions of individual politicians or officials, without accepting responsibility as members of the society who accepted, or even supported, the pre-existing system. The danger of individualization is inherent in the balancing act that

Canada has undertaken. The residential school system must not become a relic that people from the past were responsible for; instead it must be recognized as an element of the ongoing practices that treat Indigenous people as unequal members of Canadian society.

Roseanne Kennedy has noted that “semijudicial processes such as truth commissions...tend to take a dialogic approach” in which the reliability of witnesses is not ascertained by “an adversarial process of cross examination”113 in a courtroom. The

“passive” role that victims are forced to take in courtrooms is avoided in truth commissions.114 However this shift does not mean that survivors who testify at commissions are safe from being adversely affected by the process of giving testimony.

As Leebaw observes, truth commissions can be “at odds with dominant local strategies”

112 Chapman and Ball, “The Truth of Truth Commissions,” Human Rights Quarterly 23, no. 1 (2001): 14. 113 Kennedy, “Subversive Witnessing,” Women’s Studies Quarterly 36, no. 1/2 (2008): 59. 114 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 170.

40 that have dealt with atrocities through a process of “social forgetting.”115 Speaking out can cause survivors to feel “stigmatized” or “shunned,” and some survivors have described their response to the process as “initial feelings of relief followed by anguish, confusion, and frustration.”116 These processes are clearly not without its risks to those who participate, and this has been addressed by making counselling available to participants who experience trauma or difficulty in testifying. However, whether the risks to individual survivors are outweighed by the benefit of giving testimony, both to the individual and to post-conflict societies, is a question that needs further examination.117

The Canadian TRC established in June of 2008 was given a period of five years to fulfill its mandate, paralleling the timeframe of other TRCs around the world. The bulk of the TRC’s work is the collection of testimony given by survivors and persons who have been involved in or have been impacted by the residential school system. Statements will continue to be received even after the five years through the work of the National

Research Centre.118 How this work will take place has not yet been determined; perhaps it will take the form of a small group which travels to individual survivors wanting to make statements, or by ensuring that equipped personnel are on hand at all times to record statements at the centre. Testimony can be taken in a number of different ways: publicly or privately, by video recording or in writing. It will be archived and made available to the public anonymously; however, survivors can choose to withdraw their

115 Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2008): 115. 116 Leebaw, “The Irreconcilable Goals of Transitional Justice,” Human Rights Quarterly 30, no. 1 (2008): 115. 117 Mendeloff, “Trauma and Vengeance,” Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2009): 619. 118 Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf.

41 testimony at any time. The final act of the TRC will be to create the National Research

Centre (NRC). The NRC will be a structure that houses the testimony, documentation and other objects gathered by the TRC; it will also continue to collect testimony and work within Indigenous communities, and create programming that educates a wider

Canadian population about the residential school system and other Indigenous issues.

It is important to note that there is no mechanism in place for the TRC to seek legal redress for the violations and violence committed against Indigenous people by the

Canadian government and third parties through the residential school system. The TRC is strictly a means for gathering testimony and documentation of Indigenous experiences in residential schools. The TRC must operate as an open, public forum while ensuring that it does not overstep the guidelines laid out by the IRSSA that state that it will not

“hold formal hearings, nor act as a public inquiry, nor conduct a formal legal process.”119

The TRC adopted two mechanisms intended to support healing and the building of new relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians, with the eventual goal of fostering reconciliation and healing. The first were the National Events, mandated to be held within the first two years of the TRC’s mandate. These seven events were intended to act as “a mechanism through which the truth and reconciliation process will engage the Canadian public and provide education about the IRS system, the experience of former students and their families, and the ongoing legacies of the institutions.”120 National events were held in Winnipeg (2010), Inuvik (2011), Halifax

(2011), Saskatoon (2012), Montreal (2013), Vancouver (2013), and Edmonton (2014).

119 Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf. 120Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf.

The general public was invited and encouraged to attend these events. They received national and global attention, and thus it could be said that they achieved a certain measure of success. The Atlantic National Event held in Halifax, for example, attracted up to 2000 visitors for each of its four days.121 These events were an opportunity for the gathering of survivor statements, as well as community building and education. For example, the British Columbia Event held in Vancouver included sharing circles, churches listening circles, discussion panels, films and concerts.122 Survivors travelled long distances to speak at these events, such as the 1000 survivors who made the journey to Inuvik to be at the Northern National Event.123 These events were an opportunity for the gathering of survivor statements, as well as community building and education. By the end of the five year mandate, the TRC is also to have held an additional series of similar community events, meant to be smaller events organized with input from individual communities and have a focus on statement gathering. They are intended to

“provide an opportunity for communities to collectively contribute to the truth and reconciliation process.”124

It can be argued that the TRC and its mandate have set the stage for reconciliation to begin; however, in such a limited time period and with curtailed powers it is impossible to fully achieve such a lofty goal. Within Indigenous communities, questions have been raised about whether reconciliation is attainable at all, and some fear that the

121 “TRC Concludes Atlantic National Event in Halifax,” accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=509. 122 The program for the British Columbia Event provides a detailed list of daily events. “British Columbia National Event: Program,” accessed December 12, 2013, http://www.trc.ca/websites/vancouver/File/TRC- 073.06%20BCNE%20program-web.pdf. 123 “TRC Wraps up Northern National Event in Inuvik, NWT,” accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/736191/trc-wraps-up-northern-national-event-in-inuvik-nwt. 124 “Community Event Criteria Guide,” accessed November 25, 2013, http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/TRC_Comm_Events%20Guide_en_mar10. pdf.

Canadian government is simply paying lip service to the residential school issue with the

TRC. Indigenous scholars Roland Chrisjohn and Tanya Wasacase have written that they

“find it troubling that so many people have embraced the government’s own characterization of [the government’s] words (‘truth,’ ‘reconciliation,’ ‘apology,’ and so on) and deeds (‘mistakes,’ ‘forging a new partnership,’ et cetera) at face value,”125 implying that the government’s use such words glibly and they can lose depth of meaning as they become defined by bureaucracy. Inuk activist John Amagoalik has asked if reconciliation is the correct word to use for the TRC’s goals; it may be more correct to work towards conciliation – forging a relationship built on mutual trust and respect, where no such relationship existed before.126 If the TRC proves to have no lasting impact on the relationship between Canadians and non-Indigenous people, it will instead become one more attempt on Canada’s part to ignore the true impact that residential schools have had on Indigenous nations.

Non-Indigenous Canadians working with Indigenous communities have also expressed concerns about the TRC’s potential for success. Assistant Crown Attorney

Rupert Ross, who has worked with Indigenous communities for many years, is concerned that pinning all hope for national reconciliation on the work of the TRC neglects many other matters that need to be addressed. The TRC’s mandate, for Ross, is too narrowly focused on residential schools. For Ross, the goal of reconciliation would be better served if the TRC concerned itself with “replacing the myth of cultural inferiority with the truth of cultural richness and diversity which, while severely damaged by every

125 Chrisjohn and Wasacase, “Half Truths and Whole Lies” in Response, Responsibility and Renewal, eds. Gregory Younging, Jonathan Dewar and Mike DeGagné Gregory Younging, Jonathan Dewar and Mike DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2009), 219. 126 Amagoalik, “Reconciliation or Conciliation,” in From Truth to Reconciliation, eds. Marlene Brant Castellano, Linda Archibald, and Mike DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 94.

44 strategy of colonization, retain a sophisticated validity in today’s world.”127 Like

Amagoalik, lawyer Kim Stanton has questioned the wording used in this process, suggesting that “the term ‘reconciliation’ implies that the parties were once whole, experienced a rift, and now must be made whole again. In colonial settings, however, there are at least two entities involved that were never “whole” to begin with. The relationship between Indigenous and settler people in Canada was one of nations encountering nations, where one gradually oppressed and marginalized the other.”128 The

Canadian government may be implying that it is earnestly seeking reconciliation (or conciliation), but its history of dissembling and refusing to acknowledge the past leaves it wide open for questions about its true intent.

The TRC has also faced internal conflict that has impeded its progress. Its first

Chairperson, Justice Harry Laforme who was appointed in June of 2008, resigned before his first year was finished. He cited irreconcilable differences between himself and

Commissioners Claudette Dumont-Smith and Jane Morley for his departure.129 Dumont-

Smith and Morley subsequently resigned on June 1, 2009. The current Chairperson,

Justice Murray Sinclair, and Commissioners Dr. Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton

Littlechild were appointed on June 10, 2009. This change in leadership did affect the timely fulfillment of the TRC mandate; however, the new leadership has proven effective and progress was made to get the TRC back on track. While these internal problems have caused difficulties, the TRC has also had to face off with the Canadian government,

127 Ross, “Telling Truths and Seeking Reconciliation,” in From Truth to Reconciliation, eds. Marlene Brant Castellano, Linda Archibald, and Mike DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 158. 128 Stanton, “Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” The International Indigenous Policy Journal 2, no. 3 (2011): 12. 129 “Chairman quits troubled residential-school commission,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, October 20, 2008, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/chairman-quits-troubled-residential-school-commission- 1.704043.

45 which has proven less than accommodating about releasing documents to the TRC that pertain to the residential school system. This issue was hopefully resolved in February of

2013, when the Justice Stephen Gouge of the Ontario Supreme Court of Justice found that “documents relevant to the devastating and ongoing impact of Residential Schools on the health of survivors and communities must be produced by Canada to the TRC.”130

This judgement made is clear that the Canadian government is responsible for finding and providing all documentation to the TRC, and cannot, itself, make decisions about what is and is not applicable to the subject at hand. In its interim report published in

2012, the TRC noted that while many churches have been cooperative, it has faced some difficulties with individual churches and their archivists who have made various demands such as holding copyright on all documentation the TRC receives, as well as attempts to restrict how material is used in the future. The report notes that such tactics make it

“unlikely that the document-collection process will be completed without a significant shift in attitude on the part of Canada and those parties who have been reluctant to cooperate.”131

The path to reconciliation has been further hampered by the revelation that children in residential schools were used by the government for experiments in nutrition and health.132 The report of this history was met with censure from Indigenous communities, and the call for full disclosure, an apology from the government and other

130 “TRC Welcomes Court’s Clarification of Its Mandate,” accessed November 16, 2014, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/TRC%20NEWS%20RELEASE%20-- %20TRC%20WELCOMES%20COURT%20DECISION%2030%20jan%202013.pdf. 131 “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Interim Report,” accessed October 27, 2013, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/Interim%20report%20English%20electronic.pdf. 132 Mosby, “Administering Colonial Science,” Histoire sociale/Social History 46, no. 91 (2013): 147.

46 involved parties, as well as compensation for the survivors of experiments.133 It has also raised doubts about the Canadian government’s commitment to the sentiments expressed by the apology issued by Harper in 2008 as survivors, scholars and others question whether the government has provided all the documentation to the TRC about these experiments. Assembly of First Nations Regional Chief Bill Erasmus stated that “the government either doesn’t know what’s in its own records or that there may be an effort to actually suppress information.”134 Such additional disclosures about the history of residential schools have the potential to disrupt any progress towards reconciliation by adding to the anger and betrayal already felt by Indigenous communities. However, publicity around such issues continues to raise awareness about the truth of the school system in the non-Indigenous Canadian population which is a small step in the right direction.

The National Research Centre

A final piece of the TRC mandate is the building of a National Research Centre as set out in Schedule N of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement:

A research centre shall be established, in a manner and to the extent that the Commission’s budget makes possible. It shall be accessible to former students, their families and communities, the general public, researchers and educators who wish to include this historic material in curricula.

For the duration of the term of its mandate, the Commission shall ensure that all materials created or received pursuant to this mandate shall be preserved and archived with a purpose and tradition in keeping with the objectives and spirit of the Commission’s work.

133 Morrow, “Canada must apologize for nutritional experiments at residential school: Tseshaht,” Ha- Shilth-Sa, July 17, 2013, http://www.hashilthsa.com/news/2013-07-17/canada-must-apologize-nutritional- experiments-residential-school-tseshaht. 134 “Aboriginal children used in medical tests, Commissioner says,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, July 31, 2013, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/story/2013/07/31/medical-testing-on-aboriginals-murray- sinclair-trc.html.

The Commission shall use such methods and engage in such partnerships with experts, such as Library and Archives Canada, as are necessary to preserve and maintain the materials and documents. To the extent feasible and taking into account the relevant law and any recommendations by the Commission concerning the continued confidentiality of records, all materials collected through this process should be accessible to the public.135

In November of 2011, the TRC requested submissions of proposals by institutions interested in hosting the NRC. Each proposal had to address a list of criteria. This criteria included questions such as how the potential host institution envisioned the NRC and its place within a larger institution; whether the submission had the support of

Indigenous communities; how it proposed to incorporate Indigenous input into decision making; evidence that the institution had a history of archival experience, as well as financial stability; a plan for ensuring the NRC served a commemorative role for residential school victims and survivors; a commitment to community engagement and education; and finally, proximity to Indigenous populations.136 The University of

Manitoba has been selected as the host, and a ceremony was held on June 21, 2013 to sign an official agreement. In his remarks at this ceremony, Justice Murray Sinclair observed that the NRC will take up the work of the TRC when it has finished its mandate.137 It will be responsible for archiving historical documents, survivor testimony, and any other material pertaining to residential schools. The NRC will act as more than a repository; ultimately, it will serve as a memorial to the experiences of

135 Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf. 136 “Call for Submissions to Permanently Host a National Research Centre on Residential Schools,” accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/NRC%20- %20Call%20NOV%2016_EN_FINAL.pdf. 137 “Remarks at the National Research Centre Signing Ceremony, June 21, 2013 at the University of Manitoba,” accessed October 27, 2013, http://www.umanitoba.ca/about/media/Justice_Sinclair_remarks_at_NRC_signing_cerremony_21_June_20 13.pdf.

Indigenous people as colonized subjects of Canada and be a reminder to non-Indigenous

Canadians of the role their government in this horrific history. In fulfillment of this role lies the hope for a slow but necessary move towards reconciliation.

I have discussed the background of colonialism and residential schools in Canada and their devastating impact on Indigenous communities in this country as a way to situate my discussions about the importance of the TRC and the NRC. As part of the

IRSSA, the TRC is a response by the Canadian government to the long history of subjugation of Indigenous people through the removal of children from the safety of their homes for the purpose of assimilating them into western society. The goal of reconciliation that the TRC is working towards is part of a global movement towards transitional forms of justice in the face of human rights violations. Although the circumstances in Canada pose their own challenges to the accepted model of transitional justice and truth commissions, the TRC should still be considered a transitional justice mechanism and other truth and reconciliation commissions are useful lenses through which to examine the work of the TRC. Specifically, the South African TRC and the work done around the Stolen Generations of Australia have pertinent lessons, especially regarding the fragile and nuanced successes that transitional justice has so far achieved.

While financial reparations have been an important facet of these processes, the more influential impact has been felt through the education and engagement with the public, as was done so successfully in the Bringing Them Home report.

This discussion has emphasized that it is in the NRC that the work towards reconciliation will continue and hopefully, eventually, find a measure of success. In my next chapter I will discuss the history of museums and archives in Canada, and consider

49 the colonial legacy of these institutions. The NRC will have characteristics of traditional museums and archives – for example, exhibiting artefacts and preserving documents – but it will have to grapple with the colonial underpinnings of these institutions as it strives to become a decolonized space for Indigenous people. Ultimately, the NRC will also function as a memorial centre, thus I discuss the role memorial centres have in memorializing human rights transgressions. I will consider the potential for the NRC to play such a role, as well as the challenges that must be faced as the NRC becomes a reality.

Justice Sinclair declared that there is no “quick and easy solution” that will bring about reconciliation; instead, it is the education of future generations of Canadians –

Indigenous and non-Indigenous – that will allow for new relationships to be forged, based on equality and understanding. The success of the NRC will mean the success of the

TRC; without a successful NRC the work of the TRC will end in 2015 and will have a limited impact on the future. Success is not assured; the NRC faces many difficulties including lack of funding, as well as building an institutional character that functions independently of the University of Manitoba.

CHAPTER THREE

Decolonizing Museums and Archives

Conceptualizing the National Research Centre necessitates understanding museums and archives, as well as memorial centres, within a historical and contemporary context in Canada, and abroad. In considering these institutional lineages that will shape the NRC, it is important to engage the colonial heritage that archivists and curators navigate. Acknowledging this heritage has led museums and archives into a period of transition in the last forty years, bringing about many changes in the operating philosophies of both museums and archives. The NRC can draw on the lessons of this transitional period as it begins to lay out its foundational policies. There are also many museums and archives that were built and are managed by Indigenous people, within

Canada and across the world. There is a wealth of knowledge available to the NRC in the experiences of the Indigenous curators and archivists that run these institutions.

Memorial centres have a less loaded history to contend with; as public spaces of remembrance, memorial centres are one response to the historical abuses of colonial systems in many countries where political change has unfolded in the last twenty years.

Public education is central to all three institutions, and all must negotiate issues such as access to information and relationships with source communities. Ultimately, the very specific mandate of the NRC will be to distil the different experiences of the survivors of residential schools in one institution that serves as a place of remembrance and learning for Indigenous people in Canada, as well as reaching a wider non-Indigenous Canadian audience. In this chapter I explore the history and recent developments of archives and museums in Canada, as well as examining the growing body of literature on Indigenous museums and memorial centres, while paying attention to the lessons from these

51 institutions in Canada and other parts of the world that can be useful to the future development of the NRC.

Museums in Canada

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries European empires were acquiring dominion in territories across the globe, and Europeans became occupied with collecting specimens and artefacts as they explored their expanding empires. Anthropologist

Michael Ames has noted that “personal collections and private museums existed for centuries.”138 These early collections were “curiosity cabinets,” owned by individuals and accessible only to an elite few and part of a lineage of collecting that would eventually become the institution of the museum.139 Ordered and catalogued according to a European world view, these collections became the basis for “a knowledge-building project within the natural sciences.”140 Curiosity cabinets were the precursors of natural history museums where some of the early principles of such things as Linnean and

Darwinian classification systems were inspired. Early collections of natural history/scientific specimens and ethnographic objects eventually became the foundational collections of many Western museums.

Ethnography, or the study of human cultures, was a burgeoning science in the nineteenth century. When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, his theory of natural selection resonated in unintended ways with social theorists of the century. Ethnographers used Darwin’s ideas as a framework for understanding and describing both the physical and cultural variations in human beings. Theories of social

138 Ames, Cannibal Tours and Glass Boxes (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1992), 22. 139 Stocking, Delimiting Anthropology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 252. 140 Pratt, Imperial Eyes, 2nd ed., (New York: Routledge, 2008), 15.

52 evolution became a central tenet of the social sciences in the nineteenth century, and continued to hold sway well into the twentieth. These theories posited that human beings and their societies were subject to the same laws that Darwin described in the natural world, leading to the conclusion to that societies developed on a scale “from ‘primitive’ to ‘civilized’”141 Anthropologists such as Lewis Henry Morgan and Edward Tylor used the concept to explain the differences they observed in non-Western societies. Historian

George Stocking noted that “the tradition of cultural evolution took on a very different meaning in the Darwinian context.”142 When applied to human societies, Darwin’s ideas were warped to mean that human beings were evolving along a measurable trajectory, thus allowing Western thinkers to set their cultures above others they deemed less complex.

Ideas of social evolution and the realization the European cultures and diseases had a devastating impact on many colonized populations led to ideas of “salvage anthropology” – the belief that Indigenous societies such as those in North America would eventually succumb to the Western cultures. Peers and Brown have noted that

“ethnographic collections, in particular, were built up on the premise that the people whose material heritage was being collected were dying out, and that the remnants of their cultures should be preserved.”143 The details of how cultural objects found their way to museums are often ambiguous. Unquestionably, some were obtained under through coercion, subterfuge, bribery; others were sold to museum by Indigenous people in desperate circumstances prompted by disease epidemics, decimation of food sources,

141 Bennett, The Birth of the Museum (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 1995), 39. 142 Stocking, Delimiting Anthropology (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2001), 18. 143 Peers and Brown, “Museums and Source Communities,” in Museums and Their Communities, ed. Sheila Watson (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 519.

53 and dislocation in the path of Western settlement. One well known example of such collecting was that done by Franz Boas, an anthropologist who worked for various large institutions such as the American Museum of Natural History and Field Museum in

Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century. Boas aggressively collected the material culture of Indigenous people living on the west coast of British Columbia. He formed a profitable relationship with Indigenous collector George Hunt, and began to work on building large ethnographic collections. Douglas Cole noted that “under [Boas’s] auspices the American Museum’s Northwest Coast collection had grown to immense size...and developed a comprehensiveness that any institution might envy.”144

The development of a national museum in Canada was a long and fraught process.

Archibald Key noted that in contrast to the thriving cultural institutions of the United

States and Britain, “Canadian museums faced close to one hundred and fifty years of frustrations, poverty, and governmental apathy while dedicated individuals and idealistic societies sought to serve as guardians of Canada’s heritage.”145 In 1841 the Geological

Survey of the Province of Canada (GSC) was founded with the purpose of cataloguing and promoting the natural resources of Canada.146 Under the guidance of GSC director

William Logan, scientists travelled across the country gathering specimens of both a geological and archaeological nature.147 In due course, it was necessary to establish a museum in order to catalogue and organize the growing collections of the GSC. Such an institution opened in 1843 in Montreal.148 Over the next 170 years, the museum

144 Cole, Captured Heritage (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1995), 163. 145 Key, Beyond Four Walls (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1973), 98. 146 Key, Beyond Four Walls (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart Ltd., 1973), 123. 147 “The History of the Museum,” accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.historymuseum.ca/about- us/about-the-museum/history-of-the-museum. 148 “The History of the Museum,” accessed October 10, 2014, http://www.historymuseum.ca/about- us/about-the-museum/history-of-the-museum.

54 expanded and eventually moved to Ottawa, becoming the National Museum of Canada

(1927) and then the Canadian Museum of Civilization (1989), and eventually the

Canadian Museum of History (2013).

Until the late 1900s, collections of Indigenous cultural objects were displayed and described as the artefacts of a not so distant past because “it was not the mission of natural history museums to connect past ways of life to contemporary life.”149

Anthropologist Moira McLoughlin observed that once artefacts were “removed from circulation and daily contexts of use and exchange, the objects’ meanings are fixed and known,”150 because the institution of the museum then made itself responsible for the assignation of both meaning and value. Until the latter half the twentieth century, this meant that Indigenous artefacts were not recognized or defined as significant parts of contemporary Indigenous life and culture. As museums developed through the twentieth century, the portrayal of Indigenous people usually took the form of two tropes: that of “a scientist talking about a study subject,” or that of “settler as hero.”151 Neither of these narratives made museums hospitable or relatable experiences for Indigenous people.

Additionally museums throughout their history displayed Indigenous cultural objects as part of the collections of long-dead European explorers with very little other context provided other than the nation or the area that they had been collected from.

Missing from these exhibits was the awareness of Indigenous culture as important and vibrant contributor to contemporary life in Canada. Any current issues at the centre of the contentious relationship between the Canadian government and Indigenous people

149 Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 4. 150 McLoughlin, Museums and the Representation of Native Canadians (New York: Garland Publishing Ltd., 1999), 5. 151 Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 3.

55 were ignored, as were the many ways that the legacy of colonialism and assimilative policies still controlled many aspects of the lives of Indigenous people.

Kwakwaka’wakw Nation member and curator Gloria Cranmer Webster noted in 1990 that “it is as if Indian and Inuit art is acceptable as long as it is removed from its context.

That context is the reality of most native communities in Canada, which have the highest rates of suicide, alcoholism, and drug abuse especially among young people.”152

Moreover, for the latter half of the twentieth century museums rarely considered source communities as a potential audience for their exhibits or how they would be “perceived by and affect source community members.”153

The relationship between museums and Indigenous peoples in North America began to change in the 1970s and 1980s. This change can be situated within a global movement that was “born out of indigenous critiques of museums curation and representation, and from a growing sense of frustration by scholars and museums professionals with many of the same issues.”154 It was part of the crisis of representation that had an enduring impact on the social sciences, as I noted in Chapter One. Post- colonialism and decolonization movements that were emerging demanded that the power inherent in the person or institution involved in making any representation be taken into account. Those behind these movements recognized that, as critical theorist Donna

Haraway put it, “[h]istory is a story Western culture buffs tell each other,”155 and these stories how power implicitly embedded in them. Many of the histories told by Western

152 Cranmer Webster, “The U’Mista Cultural Centre,” Massachusetts Review 31, no. 1/2 (1990): 132. 153 Peers and Brown, “Museums and Source Communities,” in Museums and Their Communities, ed. Sheila Watson (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 519. 154 Peers and Brown, Museums and Source Communities. eds. Laura Peers and Alison K. Brown (London: Routledge, 2003), 3. 155 Haraway, “Situated Knowledges,” Feminist Studies 14, no. 3, 1988: 577.

56 authorities left out critical sides of the story – most obviously, the voices of the victims and survivors of colonialism.

In Canada, a pivotal moment in museum culture occurred in 1988 when the

Glenbow Museum opened the exhibit The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s

First Peoples, “an ambitious, multi-million dollar exhibition produced to exacting museological standards, involving six curators and requiring the loan of hundreds of artifacts from museums around the world.”156 This exhibit was timed to coincide with the 1988 Winter Olympics held in Calgary, and according to Ruth Phillips the curators intended the exhibit to be “an important vehicle to educate the Canadian people about the native heritage of their country.”157 The Spirit Sings brought back to Canadian soil many objects of Indigenous cultural heritage that had been part of far flung collections, many of which had never been exhibited.158 Instead of being heralded as the innovative exhibit as curators hoped, however, The Spirit Sings became the focal point of protest and controversy before it was even launched.

In 1986, the Lubicon Lake Nation called for a boycott of the Calgary Olympics and The Spirit Sings. This boycott was spurred by the announcement that Shell Oil would be the corporate sponsor for the exhibit, and was initiated as a way of bringing attention to the Lubicon Lake Nation’s fight for treaty rights to their traditional land.159

The corporate sponsorship of Shell Oil, a company that was drilling on Lubicon territory at the time of the exhibition, was a rallying point for the Lubicon Lake Nation’s protests; however, the exhibition “quickly attracted to itself a host of other issues that have

156 Ames, “Biculturalism in Exhibitions,” Museum Anthropology 15, no.2 (1991): 9. 157 Harrison, “The Spirit Sings and the Future of Anthropology,” Anthropology Today 4, no. 6 (1988): 6. 158 Phillips, Museums Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 48. 159 Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 22.

57 stuck...ever since.”160 These “other issues” include “the inappropriate display of ceremonial items, the retention of human remains, and claims for the return for cultural property,” as well as important questions regarding the representation of Indigenous culture and the authoritative voice of academics such as curators.161 These issues had a resounding and lasting impact on museum culture and have secured a place for The Spirit

Sings as an important exhibit in the history of Canadian museums.

The Lubicon Lake Nation’s call for a boycott impacted the relationship between

Indigenous people and museum curators and scholars, even as The Spirit Sings exhibit continued to open in most of the originally scheduled locations. During the exhibit’s sojourn in Ottawa at the Canadian Museum of Civilization (now the Canadian Museum of History), the museum, together with the Assembly of First Nations and the Canadian

Museum Association, held a conference to discuss the implications of The Spirit Sings and the issues highlighted by the actions of the Lubicon Lake Nation. This conference,

“Preserving Our Heritage: A Working Conference for Museums and First Peoples”

“opened up a new and crucial process of dialogue and revealed a collective will to find positive solutions.”162 A task force was convened as a result of the conference, and eventually the report Turning the Page: Forging New Partnerships between Museums and First Peoples was released by the task force in 1991. Turning the Page provided guiding principles as well as recommendations for representation, access, and repatriation. Coody Cooper noted that “while not all follow-up actions have occurred on

160 Phillips, Museums Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 48. 161 Phillips, Museums Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 48. 162 Phillips, Museums Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 51.

58 schedule, the increased dialogues have served to improve the way Canadian museums work with Native communities.”163

For the Canadian Museum of Civilization (CMC), the impact of Turning the Page was felt when Indigenous advisors were consulted over the long period of development of the First Peoples Hall, which opened in 2003, something that Ruth Phillips asserts

“fundamentally altered the power relations embedded in earlier consultative processes.”164 Turning the Page marked an important turning point in Canadian museum theory and practice. There were other contributing factors to the changes happening in museums both in Canada and around the globe. Movements within Indigenous communities in the 1970s and the 1980s changed the focus of international attention from

“historical monuments, archaeological sites, and natural parks to living traditions, embodied skills, and oral expressions.”165 Gradually, new understandings about the meaning of artefacts developed, as curators learned to question who owned cultural objects, and who should be allowed to define an object’s value or purpose. Even more transformative was the recognition that cultural heritage and traditional knowledge was a resource that must be protected, as was stated in the 2001 Universal Declaration on

Cultural Diversity made by United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural

Organization – and a resource that had many important contributions to make to areas such as environmental stewardship.166 In the United States, the passing of the Native

American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act in 1990 was a groundbreaking moment that gave Native Americans the right to request the repatriation of human remains and

163 Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 27. 164 Phillips, Museums Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 211. 165 Alivizatou, Intangible Heritage and the Museum (Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast Press, Inc., 2012), 15. 166 “Universal Declaration on Cultural Heritage,” accessed November 1, 2014, http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php-URL_ID=13179&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html.

59 other important cultural objects back from federally funded institutions. In Canada, the impact of these movements and changing understandings of Indigenous heritage can be seen in the CMC’s Grand Hall that opened in the late 1980s. The Grand Hall, with its exhibit of six house fronts from different Pacific coast nations, integrates both the traditional and contemporary. The interior of each house “examine contemporary issues” and have been “developed in cooperation with the Native people of the region concerned.”167 Turning the Page and pivotal moments such as The Spirit Sings were important – and even explosive; however, the first steps towards collaboration were already occurring because of the demands of Indigenous people to have input into how their cultural history is treated.

One process that has improved the relationship between Canadian museums and

Indigenous communities is collaboration, which along with “deep structural and policy change” has been identified by cultural heritage critic Susan Ashley as part of “concrete attempts to make museum practices more inclusive on both formal and substantial levels.”168 Collaboration between museums and Indigenous nations have the potential to address a number of recommendations made in Turning the Page, including the consultation with Indigenous people for the purpose of interpreting artefacts and history, ensuring that Indigenous people have access to sacred cultural artefacts, training

Indigenous people in museum studies, and supporting Indigenous cultural centres and museums. Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life, which opened in 2001, is an example of such collaboration between the Blackfoot peoples and the Glenbow Museum, one that has a

167 “Grand Hall,” accessed October 20, 2014, http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/grand/grandeng.shtml. 168 Ashley, “State Authority and the Public Sphere,” in Museums and Their Communities, ed. Sheila Watson (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 492.

60 powerful presence in a permanent gallery and as a virtual exhibit.169 There is a growing literature examining the challenges and successes of collaboration between museums and

Indigenous communities, a practice that “is not something that can be reduced to a formula.”170

Anthropologists Cara Krmpotich and Laura Peers have made an important contribution to this literature with the publication of This is Our Life: Haida Material

Heritage Changing Museum Practice (2013). The book discusses the collaboration between the Haida First Nation and the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford and the British

Museum. This is Our Life is itself a collaborative book that integrates the story of the work with by the Haida and the museum professionals and personal experiences of all of those involved. The work of Krmpotich and Peers (as well as that of Brown and Peers)171 stresses that when it is most effective, collaboration addresses the needs of Indigenous people to have access to museum collections, as well the needs of the curators to have a better understanding of the collections in their care.172 Ultimately, the reciprocal visits made during this transnational project made it clear that when museum staff approached collaboration with the intent to become allies with Indigenous people, it was possible to

“transform tense historic relationships into productive present and future relationships.”173

The artefacts that Europeans have imposed western values and definitions on are part of the living history of Indigenous people, and housing these artefacts in a museum

169 “Nitsitapiisinni: Our Way of Life,” accessed December 15, 2014, http://www.glenbow.org/blackfoot/#. 170 Harrison, “Shaping Collaboration,” Museum Management and Curatorship 20 (2005), 196. 171 See Laura Peers and Allison K. Brown, eds., Museums and Source Communities (London: Routledge, 2003). 172 Krmpotich and Peers, This is Our Life (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), 208. 173 Krmpotich and Peers, This is Our Life (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), 217.

61 can run contrary to Indigenous philosophies that consider objects to be “alive” and deserving of considerable respect.174 These objects play intrinsic roles in the cultures of

Indigenous people, sometimes in sacred ways, and the way that they are treated within a museum environment is important to Indigenous communities. An important result of the successful communication between museums and Indigenous people has been the repatriation of cultural objects. For example, cultural objects from the Nisga’a Nation were returned in 2010 by both the Royal British Columbia Museum and the Canadian

Museum of Civilization as part of the Nisga’a Treaty that was signed in 1998 and came into effect in 2000.175

Art museums in Canada have had their own problematic relationship with what curators would distinguish as Indigenous art, a term that includes both what Aldona

Jonaitis has defined as “traditional art” – “those works made for use within the community or as ‘curios’ for visitors,”176 as well as contemporary work. While

Indigenous art has found a (small) place within art museums in the United Sates and even internationally, Canadian museums have been slow to situate traditional Indigenous objects alongside exhibits of what is considered “fine art” within these institutions. The

National Gallery of Canada, for example, “mapped out a conventional narrative of the development of art in Canada from colonization to the present” that did not include

Indigenous cultural objects until the 2003 reopening of the Historical Canadian

174 Rosoff, “Integrating Native Views into Museum Procedures,” in Museums and Source Communities, eds. Laura Peers and Alison Brown (Florence, KY: Routledge, 2003), 72. 175 “Nisga’a artifacts returning home,” accessed November 12, 2014, http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/632491/nisga-a-artifacts-returning-home-september-15-2010. 176 Jonaitis, “First Nations and Art Museums,” in On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery, eds. Lynda Jessup and Shannon Bagg (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2002), 18.

Galleries,177 while the Thomson Collection of Canadian Paintings and First Nations

Objects opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario in 2008 as part of the Transformation AGO project. Indigenous art has on one hand been treated as folk art (but not fine art) and on the other hand it has been “abased” by museums that “don’t generally know much about

American Indians and their beliefs and practices.”178 Furthermore, art museums typically provide only a modicum of historical or political context for the art that they exhibit, while simultaneously elevating the stature and value of the objects displayed. Whitelaw has noted a tension that exists between “objects of Aboriginal creative expression and

Western conceptions of ‘art’” and attributes it to “a long and troubled history that is wholly intertwined with Western systems of categorization and value.”179 Cultural objects that have practical and/or spiritual uses have often been misrepresented or displayed without cultural sensitivity. Finally, contemporary Indigenous artists who do not make recognizably “traditional” art can find it difficult to break from preconceptions of what their art should look like. Jonaitis notes that putting Indigenous art “alongside other art” can recognize the artistic merit of Indigenous art, as well as the vibrant and dynamic contributions that Indigenous people make to the fabric of Canada.180

Museums in Canada have had a long relationship with Indigenous people that has transformed over the 170 years since William Logan first opened a national museum in

1843. These changes, brought about by the activism of Indigenous people and the shifting attitudes of curators, has brought about new practices of collaboration with

177 Whitelaw, “Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery,” Canadian Journal of Communication 31 (2006), 197. 178 Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 31. 179 Whitelaw, “Placing Aboriginal Art at the National Gallery,” Canadian Journal of Communication 31 (2006), 198. 180 Jonaitis, “First Nations and Art Museums,” in On Aboriginal Representation in the Gallery, eds. Lynda Jessup and Shannon Bagg (Ottawa: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2002), 22.

Indigenous communities. Collaboration has had an enormous impact on how museums showcase Indigenous collections; and yet, the transformation of the relationship between museums and Indigenous people in Canada will be ongoing as curators and museum scholars continually re-evaluate best practices in a museum setting. Practices such as collaboration will be important tools for the National Research Centre; however, the

NRC also has the opportunity to contribute to the ongoing education of curators as it sets up its own policies regarding the treatment and exhibition of its collections.

Archives in Canada

Like museums, professional archives were built on a foundation of Western ideologies and ways of understanding and ordering the world. In the Western context, archives were an important part of managing European colonies as officials produced the increasing amounts of paperwork that enabled European empires to exert control over long distances. Anthropologist Ann Laura Stoler has observed that one of the responsibilities of colonial archives “was to reconstruct historical narratives, decreeing what past events were pertinent to current issues and how they should be framed.”181

Archives, like museums, are historical entities that can only ever be partial representations of the contemporary period in which they were created, while continuing to play important roles in the present as places of research and education. Stoler considers “archiving-as-process rather than archives-as-things,”182 a reminder that archives, like museums, are continually in the process of becoming, always incomplete and never finished. Colonial Europeans did not, however, have this insight into the

181 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 29. 182 Stoler, Along the Archival Grain (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), 20.

64 partial nature of the archive. Rather, Europeans held to “a myth of a unified archive, and imperial archive holding together the vast various parts of Europe.”183

In 1872 the first public servant was appointed to oversee the Dominion Archives, founded under the direction of the Minister of Agriculture.184 The Dominion Archives would become the Public Archives of Canada in 1912 and eventually the National

Archives of Canada in 1987, before becoming part of Library and Archives Canada

(LAC) in 2004, which also holds the collections of the former National Library of

Canada.185 According to the LAC website, its collection is “the shared documentary heritage of all Canadians” and is “a national treasure of inestimable value.”186 This quote points to a number of questions to consider about archives in Canada: who are the

Canadians that LAC is referring to; whose heritage is documented by its collection; and, while the collection is undoubtedly valuable, who ultimately defines its value? In the latter half of the twentieth century, archives (and museums) have been challenged to think such questions.

There are many small regional and specialty archives in Canada that hold collections amassed by historical societies, churches, and local museums. These archives are an important part of the archival fabric of Canada, and are critically important to discussions about the TRC because the church archives’ collections that chronicle much of the residential school history. However, the NRC will be striving to take its place among the larger public archives of Canada such as the LAC and the ten provincial

183 Richards, The Imperial Archive (London: Verso, 1993), 6. 184 Lacasse and Lechasseur. The National Archives of Canada, 1872-1997. The Canadian Historical Society: Ottawa, 1997. Accessed November 18, 2014. http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/300/cha- shc/historical_booklet/H-58_en.pdf. 185 “About the Collection,” last modified November 7, 2007, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/collection/003-300-e.html. 186 “About the Collection,” last modified November 7, 2007, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/collection/003-300-e.html.

65 archives as it is these institutions that play an important role in the construction of

Canada’s national identity and the public memory of Canadians – both non-Indigenous and Indigenous.

In building its collections, Library and Archives Canada has been guided by principles that are indelibly tied to its role in preserving Canada’s national heritage. Its role was increasingly defined in the 1960s, a time in which Canadian identity was fostered by “the growth of nationalist sentiment, federal government support for cultural projects, and the general feeling that Canada was no longer a ‘colony’.”187 This era shaped Canadian public archives in more than one way. In the 1970s, “total archives” arose as a concept that “was understood by many to mean that publicly funded archival institutions – such as national archives, public archives, and city archives – would acquire, preserve, and make available for public use both government and private sector records in all media, including paper documents and visual and cartographic images, sound recordings, and in more recent years, magnetic and digital media.”188 Public archives in Canada already held both public and private collections, and to some extent, this set Canadian archives apart from archives in the United States, Britain and other

European nations where public and private records are held separately.189 Archivist

Terry Cook has stated that “the Canadian approach...reflects a wider vision of archives, one sanctioned in and reflective of society at large.”190 The early archival practices that

LAC was built on has continued to influence the policies of the archive, as evidenced by the implementation in the 1970s of the Systemic National Acquisition Program (SNAP),

187 Momryk, “‘National Significance’,” Archivaria 52 (2011): 152. 188 Millar, “Discharging Our Debt,” Archivaria 46 (1998): 104. 189 Millar, “Discharging Our Debt,” Archivaria 46 (1998): 104. 190 Cook, “What is Past is Prologue,” Archivaria 43 (1997): 34.

66 a program that saw the Public Archives of Canada begin “to acquire private papers in the fields of science, labour, medicine, sports, literature and arts, and a number of other fields outside the traditional areas of politics, religion and the military.”191 Lisa Millar has noted that the total archives concept in Canada is an “expression of public obligation for the acquisition and preservation of society’s documentary heritage, regardless of location, origins, form or medium of the record.”192 The philosophy of total archives has not only had an impact on the nature of public archival holdings Canada, as well as influencing how archivists and archives understand their role in Canadian society.

The role of public archives in Canada was further defined with the publication in

1975 of To Know Ourselves, a report written by T.H.B Symons (and often referred to simply as the Symons Report). The Symons Report “was a landmark for Canadian archivists, not least because it devoted a chapter to archives and attached great importance to them – indeed, called them the foundation of Canadian Studies.”193 In order to know and understand Canada, the documentary history of Canada was a necessary resource, and the Symons Report made it clear that archives must continue their practices of collecting both public and private documents, and emphasized that

“locating material must precede systemic collection.”194 In other words, taking care of cataloguing and preserving the collected material would have to wait until the work of identifying documents was completed. The Symons Report and its recognition of the important role public archives have in preserving Canadian history has had a lasting

191 Swift, “The Canadian Archival Scene in the 1970s,” Archivaria 15 (1982/83) : 48. 192 Millar, “The Spirit of Total Archives,” Archivaria 47 (1998): 46. 193 Beyea, “Pennies from Heaven,” in Better Off Forgetting?, eds. Cheryl Avery and Mona Holmlund (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 5. 194 Beyea, “Pennies from Heaven,” in Better Off Forgetting?, eds. Cheryl Avery and Mona Holmlund (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 5.

67 influence in how public archives operate in Canada today. As former LAC Director

Michelle Doucet noted about LAC, “our founding legislation makes it clear that our charge is not solely to provide access to information, but to increase understanding of the

Canadian experience.”195 Recognizing themselves as “co-authors” of archives, however, has meant that archivists have realized that their role in Canadian society is much more complex than simply “guardians of the documentary past.” 196 Archivists in Canada, and across the globe, are expanding their work to include advocacy for the voices that have historically been silenced within archives – for example, Indigenous peoples, members of lesbian, gay and transgendered communities.

As public institutions, archives are “deeply engaged in constructing cultural memory.”197 This seems obvious: as the keepers of the documents of public and private history, archives are where historians and other scholars turn to investigate the past and tell the stories of a nation. Difficulties arise, however, when the contents of an archive are used to portray the past without the recognition of the partial nature of the records held there. Archivist Verne Harris stated that “in any circumstances, in any country, the documentary record provides just a sliver of a window into the event.”198 Harris, working in post-apartheid South Africa, acknowledged that the State Archives Service

(SAS) was not only “moulded as an institution by apartheid,” but was also restricted in its operations by a systemic “disregard for accountability.”199 There are implications for

Canada to be found in Harris’s (and others’) work in post-colonial or post-regime

195 Doucet, “Library and Archives Canada,” RBM 8, no. 1(2007): 63. 196 Cook, “The Archive(s) Is a Foreign Country,” The Canadian Historical Review 90, no. 3 (2009): 505. 197 Cook, “The Archive(s) Is a Foreign Country,” The Canadian Historical Review 90, no. 3 (2009): 510. 198 Harris, “The Archival Sliver,” in Refiguring the Archive, ed. Carolyn Hamilton et al., (Dordrecht: Springer Science and Business Media, 2002), 135. 199 Harris, “The Archival Sliver,” in Refiguring the Archive, ed. Carolyn Hamilton et al., (Dordrecht: Springer Science and Business Media, 2002), 139-141.

68 societies. The most troubling implication for many Canadians may be the parallels between the political systems in Canada with those of South Africa. Harris describes the

SAS as an institution that was run by mostly “white, Afrikaans-speaking men,” and had in place many “systemic barriers...that ensured that most South Africans enjoyed only nominal access to public archives.”200 Many of these barriers, such as language, education and the location of public archives, exist in Canada and are only now understood as problematic contributors to a skewed Canadian cultural memory.

In Canada, archives are working to respond to the demands of a society which is struggling with post-colonial issues, especially the complexities inherent with the

Indigenous cultural materials that archives hold, some that are sensitive in nature.

Ownership of Indigenous material culture has been called into question by Indigenous peoples living in Canada. Archivist Krisztina Laszlo remarked that while “in a western tradition, property is something that is owned or belongs to some person or persons,” this is “not applicable to archival material that has First Nations’ content.”201 Records that contain the cultural material of Indigenous people in Canada may belong legally to a specific archive; however, the ethnographic or cultural ownership of this kind of property is being questioned, both by Indigenous communities and archivists. Many of these records are sensitive in nature and contain evidence of traumatic events in the early colonial period of Canadian history. Other records were made of rituals or events that are sacred in nature, and Indigenous traditions forbid the sharing of this knowledge with a general public.

200 Harris, “The Archival Sliver,” in Refiguring the Archive, ed. Carolyn Hamilton et al., (Dordrecht: Springer Science and Business Media, 2002), 139-140. 201 Laszlo, “Ethnographic Archival Records and Cultural Property,” Archivaria 61 (2006): 300.

Archives operating within a Western paradigm have traditionally treated records as objects to be owned and made accessible to researchers – without questioning what the source community felt about the appropriateness of open access to that material.

However, Indigenous communities in Canada are no longer settling for this status quo.

Records such as ethnographic photographs, films, sounds recordings and official records held in archives “offer a rich source for First Nations groups to re-connect with their traditional roots.”202 Who owns them and who can arbitrate access to them is no longer to be a privilege granted merely for the benefit of western researchers. The moral ownership of this cultural property is now being recognized as different than the physical, and institutions such as the UBC Museum of Anthropology are making this distinction and acknowledging that they do “not own the ritual or spiritual properties that objects or archival records embody, and that the people from which they came and who are represented in the material retain these rights.”203 This shift is redefining the way that

Canadian public archives operate.

The history of archives in Canada has many parallels to museums, most specifically in their colonial roots and in the substantial changes that archives have made in recent decades in recognizing the power inherent in the archival process. The NRC, operating as an archive within Canada, will contend with some legacies that are particularly Canadian in nature, such as a tradition of working within a “total archives” framework. The NRC must rely on archival theory and practices while still implementing new ways of archiving that respect the collections it holds, while also

202 Laszlo, “Ethnographic Archival Records and Cultural Property,” Archivaria 61 (2006): 300. 203 Laszlo, “Ethnographic Archival Records and Cultural Property,” Archivaria 61 (2006): 301.

70 balancing the needs of survivors and their communities who are still experiencing the legacy of residential schools.

Indigenous Museums

Since the 1980s, a growing number of museums have been opened by Indigenous nations. These centres are powerful because “the telling of American Indian Stories in museums has been, until recently, almost exclusively presented form the point of view of the non-Indian.”204 Indigenous run museums allow Indigenous people to reclaim the power to represent and define their own histories and cultures. However, these institutions must grapple with some of the same issues as traditional museums. Cobb has remarked that “for Native people there is nothing natural about natural history museums.”205 While museums have been a part of Western society for centuries,

Indigenous cultures have not traditionally relegated objects to museums to be preserved and set apart from everyday life.

One of the first instances of a First Nation creating a museum is that of the

U’Mista Cultural Centre in Alert Bay on Cormorant Island in British Columbia. The

U’Mista Cultural Centre contains part of the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation’s potlatch regalia.

These potlatch artefacts, confiscated by the Canadian government in the early 1900s, were only returned to the Kwakwaka’wakw Nation “on the condition that proper facilities be built to house them.”206 The U’Mista Cultural Centre was built with the intent that it would not be a museum because “it was clear from the beginning that our people did not want a museum, because ‘Indians don’t go to museums,’ as one of our

204 Coody Cooper, Spirited Encounters (Lanham, MD: AltaMira Press, 2008), 3. 205 Cobb, “The National Museum of the American Indian,” American Indian Quarterly 29, no. 3/4 (2005): 363. 206 Cranmer Webster, “The U’Mista Cultural Centre,” Massachusetts Review 31, no. 1/2, 1990: 135.

71 original board members said.”207 Visitors to the U’Mista Cultural Centre experience a unique hybrid of a cultural centre and museum, where media installations and some artefact cases provide context and background for the potlatch collection itself. This collection is held in a large, open room that is purposefully reminiscent of a longhouse and the potlatch masks are displayed in a carefully designed exhibit that manages to make the masks feel accessible and almost touchable while still keeping them safe and out of arms reach. The potlatch collection is not kept under glass. As visitors move through the collection, letters from community members and Indian agents regarding the fate of various potlatch artefacts give bring the contested history of these artefacts to life.

The Kwagiulth Museum on nearby Quadra Island was built at the same time as the U’Mista Cultural Centre, and contains a collection of the same potlatch artefacts. The

Kwagiulth Museum, however, has related this part of Kwakwaka’wakw history very differently than the U’Mista Cultural Centre. According to Marie Mauzé, “the Kwagiulth

Museum asserts a Kwakwaka’wakw traditional view focusing on ranking and right to privileges as the backbone of the society...while the U’Mista has engaged in a cultural and political action aimed at arousing a political awareness from a large audience.”208

This highlights what anthropologist Julia Harrison pointed out in her discussion of museums and collaboration with Indigenous peoples, that “all museums should not be seen as homogenous entities, just because they share the same historical trajectory, colonial burden, and in recent decades, a new professional mandate.”209 Museums run by

Indigenous communities each strive to fulfill the different needs, goals and perspectives of their communities while overcoming the history that the museum, as an institution, has

207 Cranmer Webster, “The U’Mista Cultural Centre,” Massachusetts Review 31, no. 1/2, 1990: 135. 208 Mauzé, “Two Kwakwaka’wakw Museums,” Ethnohistory 50, no. 3, 2003: 515-516. 209 Harrison, “Shaping Collaboration,” Museum Management and Curatorship 20 (2005), 197.

72 in Canada. The agency afforded by Indigenous run museums can make it possible for

Indigenous people in Canada to reclaim ownership of their cultural property, while continuing to forge productive partnerships the museums and archives, in Canada and around the world, that hold Indigenous collections.

I would argue that museums and archives have played a powerful role in creating the colonized subject of the Indigenous person in Canadian society. Until the late twentieth century, Canadian museums contributed to an understanding of Indigenous culture as part of the past – languages, religions, and practices that existed pre-contact with Europeans. However, the changes that have occurred in museums and archives have begun to address the inequality and structural violence that Indigenous communities contend with daily. As museums and archives began to rethink their institutional policies and practices, especially as they pertain to Indigenous people in Canada, attention began to be paid to Indigenous cultures as it plays an important and vital role in the lives contemporary Indigenous people. As McLoughlin wrote over twenty years ago, because museums are “an important player in the construction of national identity,” they are “an obvious and necessary site of political and cultural struggle” for Indigenous people.210

This was certainly true for the Lubicon Lake Nation in the case of the Glenbow

Museum’s exhibit The Spirit Sings: Artistic Traditions of Canada’s First Peoples in

1988. As sociologist Himani Bannerji has stated, “the meaning of Canada really depends on who is doing the imagining.”211

Fundamentally re-imagining national discourses requires concerted effort and a painful reckoning of the past. Memorial centres have been powerful voices in that

210 McLoughlin, Museums and the Representation of Native Canadians (New York: Garland Publishing Ltd., 1999), 49. 211 Bannerji, “On the Dark Side of the Nation,” Journal of Canadian Studies, 31, no. 3 (1996).

73 reckoning in other places in the world, and the NRC as such a place of memory has the opportunity to be an influential force in shifting Canada’s national narrative to include the missing voices and experiences of Indigenous people, thus bringing awareness to non-Indigenous Canadians the tragic truths these voices and experiences tell.

Memorial Centres

Memorial centres commemorate human rights violations in an official and structured setting. Museum scholar Paul Williams has described the memorial museum as “a specific kind of museum dedicated to a historic event commemorating mass suffering of some kind.”212 The creation of memorials is “obviously central to our political and social universe” and they often spring up spontaneously at the site of traumatic events.213 For example, spontaneous memorials were quickly created by mourners and visitors at the site of the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Building in

Oklahoma City and the 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre in New York

City. The need for commemoration is felt strongly after such events, and it can eventually find expression in permanent memorial centres. Memorial centres share commonalities with museums and archives, often collecting and exhibiting artefacts, documents and media. However, they often have an explicit mission to remember or reveal histories of oppression, acts of terror, and genocide that have been obscured or denied by the dominant society. Williams has written that “while the idea of objects

‘revealing the truth’ is an aspect of all memorial museums, it is an especially pertinent oppositional strategy in memorial museums detailing histories of harsh suppression.

212 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 8. 213 Margry and Sánchez-Carretero, “Memorializing Traumatic Death,” Anthropology Today 23, no. 3 (2007): 2.

They aim to foil what the perpetrators sought to effect: silence.”214 Giving voice to the past does not only change history, but also has the power to affect change in the present and in the future by ensuring that such tragic events are not repeated, demanding that society confront the violence, the silences and the disparities of the past.

Memorial centres can be instrumental in transforming a nation’s identity after violence, gross human rights violations or other forms of historical trauma have occurred.

Commemoration becomes a political act that highlights historical events and attaches importance to them while assuring them a place in living memory. The International

Coalition of Sites of Consciousness acknowledges this role in its mission statement: “We are sites, individuals, and initiatives activating the power of places of memory to engage the pubic in connecting the past and present in order to envision and shape a more just and humane future.”215 Memorial centres can shape public memory in particular ways.

Kendall Phillips has noted that these types of social memory require unifying and stabilizing forces in order to avoid their “inherently transitory and fragmentary nature.”216

Furthermore, memorial centres can be the keepers of histories that are often misunderstood, largely unknown, or often disputed. The artefacts and documentation that they contain are essential “not only because they give displays a powerful appeal, but also because in many cases they exist as tangible proof in the face of debate about, and even denial of, what transpired.”217 In their role as educators of the public, memorial centres are an essential part of keeping traumatic events alive in the public consciousness.

214 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 27. 215 International Coalition of Sites of Consciousness, “About Us,” http://www.sitesofconscience.org/about- us/. 216 Phillips, Introduction to Framing Public Memory, ed. Kendall R. Phillips. (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 2004), 6-8. 217 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 25.

Thoughts on the National Research Centre

How can the NRC incorporate elements of museums, archives, and memorial centres in order to recognize its purpose “to preserve historical and current records and evidence” regarding residential school as well as providing a space “for public education and engagement, commemorative ceremonies, statement gathering, dialogues of reconciliation and celebrations of Aboriginal cultures, languages and ceremonies,” while still working to “encourage and facilitate new research into residential schools”?218 This will be no small task. The NRC has many roles to fulfill, and the success of these roles is interdependent. As a memorial centre, the NRC can act as a stabilizing force for the public memory of the work done by the TRC. Yet as Williams has described, the work of memorial centres is different than that of history museums that are “concerned with interpretation, contextualization, and critique.”219 The NRC, then, will be more than a memorial centre because it must take up the role of contextualizing the residential school system and the experiences of survivors within Canada’s history. In its role as a museum, the NRC will be responsible for the curatorship of artefacts of residential schools and the creation of exhibits for the purpose of educating the public about the history of this period and the subsequent impact it has on communities today. The NRC will also be more than an archive, but it must also manage the Settled Property of the

TRC – the collection of documents, photographs, and sound and video recordings that pertain to the residential school experience – while continuing to gather documentation in the form of records and survivor statements.

218 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 219 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 8.

This chapter has considered the complicated history that the NRC will be grappling with as an institution that will be an archive, a museum and a memorial centre.

I looked at the development and changing mandates of museums and archives in Canada.

The ties between these institutions and colonialism are indisputable and enduring; however, the most important lessons to be gleaned from this history is how these institutions have changed, and continue to change, in their efforts to confront and resolve their colonial legacies. The most successful of these changes have been consultation with source communities and structural changes to internal policies, changes that continue to shape the relationship between museums and archives, and source communities.

Memorial centres have become an important way that nations address acts of violence with the intention of encouraging “historical remembrance in public space.”220 The NRC will operate to some extent for this purpose, an element to the centre that will be essential for its success. As I will discuss in the next chapter, consultation and inclusive policies are important foundations that are being used as building blocks for the NRC. Following the examples of museums and archives across Canada and around the world still leaves the NRC with work to do in how it fulfills its mandate in both Indigenous and non-

Indigenous communities. This work will be an opportunity for the NRC to break new ground in the relationship between institutions – even those run by Indigenous communities – and the Indigenous people whose cultural heritage is contained within their walls. There is an opportunity here for innovation that, if successful, could have a lasting impact on museums, archives, and memorial centres in Canada and around the globe.

220 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 182.

Operating in the role of an archive, a museum, and a memorial centre will endow the NRC with an enormous potential for initiating change in other Canadian archives and museums, as well as within the scholarly cannon regarding the role of these institutions.

One such opportunity could be in transforming how oral histories are understood when placed side by side with archival documents. The validity of oral history has been a point of contention within Canadian court systems already.221 The NRC, in treating its oral testimonies as important historical documents, could positively affect Western perceptions of the oral histories of Indigenous cultures. The manner in which the NRC handles its documents and other cultural objects, as well as the way that it interfaces with the Indigenous survivors and their communities, could provide examples for museums and archives across the country who are working to establish positive relationship with source communities. Finally, as discussed above, museums and archives, as well as memorial centres, all have a role to play in shaping national identity. The NRC has an opportunity to extend its influence into how all Canadians understand the history of this country, as well as contribute to the nation’s vision of the future.

In the next chapter I turn to the National Research Centre Forum Sharing Truth –

Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools. This forum brought together experts in the fields of museums, archives and memorial centres from around the globe. These experts shared their experiences and expertise, providing insight into some of the challenges that lie ahead for the NRC as it crafts its unique institutional identity and role in Canada.

221 For example Delgamuukw versus the Queen, in which the Gitxsan and Wet’suwet’en First Nations claimed aboriginal title to their lands using oral histories. See See Dara Culhane, The Pleasure of the Crown (Burnaby: Talonbooks, 1998) for an indepth examination of this court case.

CHAPTER FOUR

The National Research Centre

The NRC will be the culmination of the years of work of the TRC, a first step towards fulfilling the apology first made by Prime Minister Harper in 2008, and a realization of the steps that museums and archives have taken towards decolonizing their institutional spaces. As I discussed in Chapter Two, the NRC is an opportunity to continue the work of the TRC long after the Commission has closes its doors in 2015.

This extension of the TRC’s work is essential because the goal of “reconciliation” is not only difficult to define, but may prove impossible to ever truly fulfill. Transitional justice mechanisms such as truth and reconciliation commissions are an accepted way to address historical issues such as genocide and human rights violations, but it can be argued whether that has ever been done successfully in a way that makes a lasting impact on the lives of the survivors and citizens who seek compensation and resolution. While the published reports and recommendations of truth commissions provide a way to address historical inaccuracies, they are not a guarantee of that governments will follow recommendations or that any change to the political or social fabric will be permanent.

The NRC can achieve some of the intent and promises expressed in Canada’s 2008 apology for residential schools and of the TRC. As a permanent structure, it has the capacity to play a vital role in the future of debate and research regarding the relationship between Indigenous nations and the Canadian government. It will also make an important contribution to redefining the relationship between Indigenous people and non-

Indigenous Canadians.

The NRC provides an opportunity to implement many of the ideas, theories and procedures that museums and archives are utilizing as they work towards decolonizing their institutional spaces and their relationship with Indigenous people in Canada. As the planning stages of the NRC have begun, some basic questions have begun to be addressed, such as what the NRC will be named, where it will be located, and how it will be funded. However, even more complex challenges are raised by some of these answers: how will the NRC be integrated into a university setting; how can one centre be widely accessible and meaningful to so many disparate communities across the vastness of the

Canadian state; and how can the NRC respond the needs of Indigenous communities while also fulfilling its role as an archival institution? In this chapter I review the advice, information and cautions offered by the national and international experts that took part in Sharing Truth – Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools, the

National Research Centre Forum held in March 2011. The presentations made over the course of the forum considered the challenges faced by institutions around the world that work to memorialize human rights violations is post-conflict societies. Several critical issues to consider emerged from these presentations, including the naming and the funding of the NRC, the location of the forum, digitization of the archives, privacy laws and accessibility, and public education. These themes provide a framework to examine the Administrative Agreement and Trust Deed that was signed between the TRC and the

University of Manitoba (U of M) on June 21, 2013. I conclude by considering the

Administrative Agreement and its potential to contribute to a decolonized NRC.

The National Research Forum

The National Research Centre Forum, held on March 1 to 3, 2011, brought together international and national authorities and spokespeople on truth and

80 reconciliation commissions, institutions commemorating human rights violations, and indigenous museums and archives. The forum was an opportunity for the TRC commissioners, the Indian Residential School Survivor Committee (IRSSC) and other concerned parties and individuals to learn from the experiences of others. Justice Murray

Sinclair concluded his introduction to the forum with questions that he intended the forum to address: “what should our National Research Centre look like? How is it going to be established? Where is it going to be established? How is it going to be working?

How can it be accessed by those in the future that need to look back at this history, and ensure that information accurate about this history is available for future generations?”222

Over three days forum speakers spoke about the role of memorial centres in commemorating human rights violations, how survivor testimony can be instrumental in healing, establishing protocols for the storage of traumatic testimony, and the history of residential schools in Canada.

Speakers who had had the powerful experience of giving testimony and witnessing in the context of a truth and reconciliation commission emphasized what such things offer for healing individuals and communities. Stephen Smith of the Shoah

Foundation observed that restorative justice operates “in the absence of true justice” to acknowledge “that what happened was wrong” by restoring memory, building community, educating and compensating.223 Smith acknowledged with this statement that truth and reconciliation commissions do not strive towards traditional forms of justice; however, there is still the potential for healing to be found as a more complete history of traumatic events is established. As the TRC ends its mandate and Canadians

222 Sinclair, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (8:50), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188. 223 Smith, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (17.07), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188.

81 and Indigenous people move forward into what lawyer Cristian Correa called the “post truth commission scenario,” 224 the NRC will continue the work of the TRC by remaining open to new survivor testimony, actively researching and archiving historical documents, and creating outreach programs that focus on education in Indigenous and non-

Indigenous communities. Lawyer and Professor Brad Morse emphasized that the NRC must achieve more than the status of a historical record, becoming “a collection that will continue to grow; when the commission ends the truth sharing does not.”225 Such statements suggest that as well as being an archive, the NRC must also fulfill the role of a memorial centre as it continues to do the work of the TRC through outreach, education, and the collection of more testimony.

The TRC has also been responsible for collecting documents that pertain to the residential school system held in the federal archives and other entities that were responsible for running the schools, specifically various church archives. On the last day of the forum, speakers on behalf of the Parties to the Indian Residential School

Agreement discussed how they were working to fulfill to the requirements of Schedule N of the IRSSA by amassing these records. Julie Roy of the federal Department of Justice stated that “all government departments that have played a role in the Indian residential school system are currently conducting searches” for related documents.226 Archivist

Nancy Hurn noted that the Anglican Church was making “all efforts” to ensure that records pertaining to the 35 residential schools it operated were available to the TRC.227

Pierre Baribeau spoke on behalf of all 52 Catholic Church entities that signed the IRRSA,

224 Correa, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (4.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=189. 225 Morse, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (8.46), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188. 226 Roy, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (4.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 227 Hurn, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (2.20), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

82 and acknowledged that the numerous archives of the Catholic Church must ultimately be accessible to the TRC;228 however, he noted that the privacy of “former and actual religious members” must be protected, and described this as a “principle” that must be part of the foundation of the NRC.229 The fulfillment of the requirement of Schedule N by these church entities will mean that for the first time the records of the residential schools system – until now spread across government and church archives – will be located in one place. Perhaps even more importantly, the appearance of these speakers represents the inability of the churches to refuse to acknowledge the past by hiding behind privacy laws, and hopefully signifies the desire to change their relationship with

Indigenous people in Canada.

Concluding comments made at the end of the conference by TRC Commissioners summarized what they had found to be important and meaningful in the large range of topics discussed over three days. Clearly they felt that the NRC had to play a role in rewriting Canadian national history to include the truth about the residential school system – the truth as recorded in documents that are now being disclosed, but more importantly, the truth as related by residential school survivors.230 Marie Wilson articulated what she called the “how and why” of the NRC – collecting knowledge for the sake of justice and for the purpose of creating a lasting transformation in Canada’s understanding of itself as a country.231 Justice Sinclair stated that an essential purpose of the NRC as that of “discovering what they knew when they did what they did.”232 In

228 Baribeau, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (7.50), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 229 Baribeau, “Sharing Truth: Day 3”, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 230Littlechild, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (13.00), Wilson, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (3.30), and Sinclair, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (10.40), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 231 Wilson, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (5.43), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 232 Sinclair, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (7.08), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

83 other words, the architects of the residential school system had a purpose, and that purpose was the assimilation of Indigenous people into a non-Indigenous society.

Littlechild was emphatic that Canadians cannot be allowed to hide behind the belief that operators of the school system believed that they were doing what was best for

Indigenous children. The NRC will be responsible for ensuring that the documentation that tells this story is available as part of public record, so that Canadians can work towards ensuring that this will not happen again either at home, or in other parts of the world.

Building the National Research Centre

On November 22, 2011 the TRC issued a request for submissions of proposals for the hosting of the NRC, asking that proposals address the following criteria: vision; governance model; Aboriginal support; commemoration; archival excellence; education and employment plan; privacy; financial stability; technical excellence; accessibility, interactivity, and public engagement; and proximity of Aboriginal population.233 The

University of Manitoba won this bid,234 and on June 31, 2013 it signed two agreements with the TRC that pertained to the future NRC: a Trust Deed that set out a framework for the transfer of the Settled Property235 to the university, and an Administrative Agreement that established guidelines for the operation of the NRC. The signing of the agreement

233 “Call for Submissions to Permanently Host a National Research Centre on Residential Schools,” accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/NRC%20- %20Call%20NOV%2016_EN_FINAL.pdf. 234 I have been unable to ascertain how many other proposals were received from other institutions, and how the final decision to award the NRC to the U of M was made. 235 The Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Trust Deed states that “‘Settled Property’ has the meaning assigned in the recitals, and includes any other property which the TRC, the University, or any other person may subsequently donate or otherwise transfer to the Centre.” In short, the Settled Property will be the collection that the TRC bestows to the NRC at the end of its mandate as well as any future contributions that are made. “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Trust Deed,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-TrustDeed.pdf.

84 between the TRC and the University of Manitoba and the TRC was an important step, as was the announcement on February 3, 2014 that Ry Moran, a member of the Métis

Nation has been appointed Director of the NRC. Moran, who took on the role of the

TRC’s Director of Statement Gathering in 2010, will bring his experience of working with the traumatic testimony collected from survivors to draw on in his role at the NRC.

The Administrative Agreement signed with the U of M names a number of institutions as Partners to the agreement, including University of British Columbia,

Lakehead University, University of Winnipeg, University College of the North,

Université de Saint- Boniface, Red River College, Legacy of Hope Foundation, National

Association of Friendship Centres, Canadian Museum of Human Rights, Archives

Manitoba, Manitoba Museum, Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources, St.

John’s College, St. Paul’s College, Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre.236 The intention is that these Partners will facilitate the success of the NRC by collecting data, disseminating information, and supporting its educational role.237 The nature of the relationship between the U of M, its Partners and the NRC will be vital to the future and success of the NRC.

Name and Funding

In his opening words at the NRC forum, Brad Morse pointed out that the name

“National Research Centre” was only a working title for the future archive.238 While

NRC is how the institution is referred to in the mandate handed to the TRC by the

IRSSA, this label is problematic. Characterizing an institution as “national” sets up a

236 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 237 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 238 Morse, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (7.00), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188.

85 number of preconceptions, and in the case of the NRC they would be incorrect. National institutions in Canada would be Library and Archives Canada (LAC), as well as the umbrella corporation of the National Museums of Canada (NMC) which is responsible for a number of national institutions that include the National Gallery of Canada, the

National Museum of Science and Technology, the Canadian Museum of Nature and the

Canadian Museum of History.239 The NMC will also operate the new Canadian Museum of Human Rights (CMHR). National institutions such as the ones named are symbolically important in defining ideas of Canada’s heritage and thus play a role in shaping and affirming hegemonic ideas of Canadian national identity.

Can the NRC be a national institution? Can it ever be one, if it remains outside the umbrella of the NMC? Labelling it the NRC fuels a misconception that it is or will be funded in the same manner as other NMC institutions. The most recent addition to the

NMC, the CMHR “began as the dream of the late Israel Asper,”240 but became an official national museum with the passing of Bill C-42 in 2008.241 The federal government has allocated $100 million in capital funding for the CMHR and has signed an agreement that ensures $21.7 million annually for the operation of the museum.242 The CMHR is also receiving funding from the province and the city of Winnipeg. In stark contrast, according to the TRC/U of M Administrative Agreement, the NRC will depend on

239 National Museums of Canada is accountable for the National Gallery of Canada, the Canadian Museum of History (formerly the Canadian Museum of Civilization), the Canadian Museum of Immigration at Pier 21, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, and the Canadian Science and Technology Museum, as well as the Canadian Conservation Institute and the Museums Assistance Program. “Canada’s National Museums,” last modified February 6, 2013, http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2013-06-e.htm#txt15. 240 “Annual Report, 2008/2009,” accessed November 15, 2014, https://humanrights.ca/sites/default/files/2008_09_Annual_Report_English.pdf. 241 “Bill C-42: An Act to Amend the Museums Act and to Make Consequential Amendments to Other Acts,” last modified February 22, 2008, http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/LegislativeSummaries/39/2/c42-e.pdf. 242 “Annual Report, 2008/2009,” accessed November 15, 2014, https://humanrights.ca/sites/default/files/2008_09_Annual_Report_English.pdf.

86 donations, grants and the support of the University of Manitoba.243 The U of M has committed to “use reasonable efforts to establish sufficient human resources and pursue funding opportunities to support additional Centre staff positions.”244 While noble in principle, such commitments in the context of the ongoing contingencies and constraints of post-secondary institutional funding leave much uncertainty for the resource base for the NRC.

As of March 2014 there is no official name for the NRC.245 In the Trust Deed and the Administrative Agreement signed by the TRC and the University of Manitoba, the

NRC is referred to as the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.246 This change removes the emphasis from “research” and puts it onto truth and reconciliation, while also removing the word national and its inherent complications discussed above. Centre for

Truth and Reconciliation is only a working title at this time. The name of the NRC will be of the utmost consequence. Questions that must be considered when choosing the name include: How can the name be inclusive of all residential school survivors and their communities, across a widespread geographical area and a wildly varying school experience? How can the name convey the purpose of the NRC, when it has been tasked with fulfilling so many differing roles? And finally, how can the chosen name communicate that the NRC is, in many ways, a separate entity from the U of M, owing allegiance to Indigenous communities before the university that has given it a home.

243 “Call for Submissions to Permanently Host a National Research Centre on Residential Schools,” accessed October 19, 2013, http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/NRC%20- %20Call%20NOV%2016_EN_FINAL.pdf. 244 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 245 Since National Research Centre and Centre for Truth and Reconciliation are both working names for the future centre, I will use National Research Centre (NRC) throughout this thesis because NRC has been in circulation since the IRSSA was signed. 246 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Trust Deed,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-TrustDeed.pdf.

According to the Administrative Agreement, the final name of the NRC will be chosen by the U of M in a “thoughtful naming process” that will consider the input of elders and other Indigenous advisors; however, the name will be “subject to the approval of the

University’s Board of Governors, in accordance with its policy on the Naming of

Academic Units.”247 In an issue as important as the final name of this centre, the U of M has the final say – a disparity in power that is troubling considering the purpose of the

NRC and its symbolic role in the reconciliation and healing for Indigenous people.

Location

Along with its name, the final physical location for the NRC will be vital as to how successfully the NRC will fulfill its purpose. Elizabeth Silkes, Executive Director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience, noted in her presentation at the forum that commemorative sites have the inherent ability to “connect past and present, and memory to action.”248 She asserted that this is “a powerful step towards healing.”249

Silkes’s point is a reminder that the NRC must act as more than an archive: it must serve as a place of commemoration and a memorial to all survivors of residential schools. The difficulty lies in finding a way to make a centre located in one geographical area symbolically represent all residential schools in order to make the connection that Silkes references. IRSSC member Terry Brown offered her vision for how the NRC can make this connection:

I want to see [a] sacred place in these buildings they are going to design. I want to see my vision there. I want to see that little dormitory with that tiny bed that we slept in. I want to see those little shoes. I want to see the little clothes and the little closets....I want to preserve some part of the

247 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 248 Silkes, “Sharing Truth: Day 2” (5.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=189. 249 Silkes, “Sharing Truth: Day 2” (5.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=189.

building where they imprisoned us so that other people can walk through those halls and say, “Oh my God. They actually lived here, those little children slept in those beds, those were their shoes.”250

The impact of such a setting would be a meaningful contribution to the experience of visitors to the NRC, paralleling what I, and I am sure many others experienced at the

Anne Frank House in Amsterdam by walking through the rooms in which her family hid.

Decades later, I still remember how that experience affected me. Many residential schools were located in remote areas, and it is important that the NRC be geographically central and easily accessed. Thus an exhibit such as Brown describes can only exist outside of an original location if it is to be part of the NRC.

Located on a campus in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the NRC will thus face the challenge of being physically disconnected from the history of residential schools. As a part of the U of M campus, it will be either a separate structure or part of another building in a large group of other buildings, the latter having no connection to the history and trauma of the memories the NRC represents. But somehow this connection has to be made for its visitors. Frieda Miller, from the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre addressed this issue at the conference, noting that the Vancouver Holocaust Education

Centre is “by definition an ocean and continent away from the history that it would represent.”251 She then discussed the importance of making “connections explicit in the work” by discussing issues such as anti-Semitism in Canada’s history, and Canada’s treatment of Jewish refugees during World War II. Unlike the Vancouver Holocaust

Education Centre, the NRC will be situated within Canada and will not be wholly disconnected from the history of residential schools in the way that Miller described;

250 Brown, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (6.00), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 251 Miller, “Sharing Truth: Day 2” (4.50), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=189.

89 however, its location will still be a challenge an it will be essential for it to describe and connect to the diverse experiences of Indigenous people within the residential school system.

The reality is that the TRC had to choose a location for the NRC, and it was impossible for that location to be physically accessible to all Indigenous communities and

Canadians, as well as accessible to non-Indigenous Canadians. Similar challenges have been faced by memorial centres, such as the National Nikkei Museum and Heritage

Centre that was founded to memorialize the internment of Japanese Canadians in camps during World War Two. Founding President Robert Banno stated that deciding to build the national centre in Vancouver “created a lot of controversy” with Japanese Canadians living in other parts of the country.252 The Nikkei Museum, however, like the TRC had to choose one location, knowing that it there would never be complete agreement on where that should be. At the NRC conference Stuart Murray, CEO and President of the

Canadian Museum for Human Rights, drew attention to the suitability of Winnipeg as a possible location for the future NRC, as the TRC had been based there. He stated that

“our work at the museum can both compliment and directly support the TRC.”253

Winnipeg is a central geographical point of Canada, lending a sense of equity to

Winnipeg as the final location.

The TRC’s mandate makes it clear that the NRC must be “accessible to former students, their families and communities, the general public, researchers and educators who wish to include this historic material in curricula.”254 The U of M has enlisted the

252 Banno, “Sharing Truth: Day 2” (12.15), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=189. 253 Murray, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (2.04), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 254 Schedule N, “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,” accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf.

90 help of partner institutions across Canada to aid in achieving success in the NRC. The statement of support made by Murray was prescient, as the Canadian Museum of Human

Rights is a partner institution.

Electronic Accessibility

The digitization of the NRC collection will be an important solution to the question of accessibility. The TRC intends for documents to be classified in three categories for the purpose of accessibility: public documents, redacted documents, and restricted documents.255 The different levels will make it possible for the NRC to respect the requests of survivors, who will determine the level of accessibility at which their testimony is shared. Many of the speakers at the forum represented institutions that make extensive use of technology to reach their audience and educate the wider public.

Speaking in his role as Information Management Officer for the United Nations Mission in Sudan, archivist Tom Adami pointed out that there are two approaches to knowledge management: it is often either “technocentric,” which focuses on the creation and management of digital records; or “ecological” which stresses the interaction of the archive with people.256 The ecological aspect of archives becomes difficult to mediate when material is digitally uploaded to the internet. Some Indigenous speakers noted that counselling must be made available to survivors or other visitors who may be emotionally or spiritually traumatized by the material that they access in the archive; however, it is difficult to make this level of intervention available over the web.

255 “National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools: An Overview,” accessed March 13, 2014, http://chrr.info/images/stories/NRC_-_Public_Presentation_-_Overivew_-_Summer_2013.pdf. 256 Adami, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (13.00), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188.

Digital technology now plays an important role in archives, and has led to new ways of storing, managing and accessing records. It has been essential to the collection of the documentation by the TRC, and it has made the sharing of church records, RCMP records, and government documents manageable.257 It has allowed the NRC to bring together an unprecedented collection of information about the residential school system.

Such a thorough archive has the capacity to allow Indigenous survivors, their descendents and authorized researchers a clear picture of the factual history of residential schools.

Survivor testimonies will allow the trauma of the personal experiences and their impact on families and communities to be known. However, such data will remain both encumbered and protected by privacy legislation and institutional restrictions.

Privacy Act

Freedom of information legislation is intended to protect citizens and their private information, regulate how public and private institutions handle this data. Freedom of information legislation, when operating correctly, should provide pathways for

“journalists, opposition members of Parliament, and civil-service organizations” to obtain data from the government that has historically been inaccessible.258 However, critics have claimed that the Canadian government has sought to undermine the Access to

Information Act with “the development of administrative routines or strategies deliberately designed to minimize [its] disruptive potential.”259 In other words, the

Canadian government has not always been compliant with its own act and has even hid

257 For instance, archivist Nancy Hurn discussed the efforts that the Anglican and Protestant Church are making to disclose documents to the TRC, which includes the effort to digitize in order to facilitate sharing. “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (2.20), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 258 Gafuik, “Access-to-Information Legislation,” in Better Off Forgetting?, eds. Cheryl Avery and Mona Holmlund (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 52. 259 Gafuik, “Access-to-Information Legislation,” in Better Off Forgetting?, eds. Cheryl Avery and Mona Holmlund (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2010), 43.

92 behind the Privacy Act when it deemed it necessary. The TRC faced this issue as it laboured to ensure the Canadian government’s compliance with the IRSSA in meeting its obligation to provide for the TRC all documents in its archives that pertain to residential schools. In January 2014, Judge Paul Perrell ruled that the Canadian government was required to hand over documents related to abuses that took place at St. Anne’s Indian

Residential School, which had been withheld because of ostensible privacy concerns.260

The difficulties in obtaining these records have led survivors of St. Anne’s to question the reliability of the Independent Assessment Process261 and the government’s sincere participation in process.262

The NRC collections will contain a variety of documents that will require the utmost respect, attention and care if, and when, they are made accessible to the public.

When the TRC’s collection is handed over to the NRC, it will be subject to Manitoba’s

Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA), which applies to the

University of Manitoba and will therefore be applicable to the NRC and its Settled

Property. The Administrative Agreement describes FIPPA as “substantially equivalent to the federal Access to Information Act and Privacy Act” and states that the U of M will

“ensure that the Settled Property is not less accessible than it would be if it were held at

260 “Residential school documents will be released, Ottawa says,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, January 14, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/sudbury/residential-school-documents-will-be-released- ottawa-says-1.2496650. 261 The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement included an Independent Assessment Process (IAP) that was intended to act as “an enhanced alternative dispute resolution process” for survivors to “pursue a sexual or serious physical abuse claim.” “Indian Residential Schools Frequently Asked Questions,” last modified April 22, 2014, http://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015798/1100100015799#IAP-1. 262 Roman, “Residential school survivors want government lawyers turfed,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, March 2, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/residential-school-survivors-want- government-lawyers-turfed-1.2558462.

Library and Archives Canada.”263 The U of M and the NRC will be responsible for the

“massive” task of organizing the records received from the TRC and ensuring that FIPPA is applied correctly to each document.264

Education

One way that restorative forms of justice such as the TRC acquire meaning is by ensuring that future generations are educated so that similar travesties do not happen again. Memorial museums and centres are founded on this principle. According to

Williams these institutions “invariably cherish public education as it is geared towards the future avoidance of comparable tragedies.”265 These sentiments were echoed by

IRSSC member Terry Brown who stated that she wanted visitors at the NRC to have an emotional and physical response to the information presented to them “because we never want this to happen again.”266 Education of the public must be a priority, and to that end the NRC needs to be created with an infrastructure that does not treat the documents it holds as an “end,”267 but as a means. Accordingly, in the ‘Objectives’ section of the

Administrative Agreement a stated purpose of the NRC is to “engage in public education efforts regarding residential schools which promote understanding and reconciliation.”268

The efforts of the NRC in this regard will be aided by its Partners that will “support a

263 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 264 “National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools: An Overview,” accessed March 13, 2014, http://chrr.info/images/stories/NRC_-_Public_Presentation_-_Overivew_-_Summer_2013.pdf. 265 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 131. 266 Brown, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (7.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 267 Adami, “Sharing Truth: Day 1” (16.40), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188. 268 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf.

94 broad national scope of public education, research, cultural and reconciliation activities.”269

The Trust Deed and Administrative Agreement

The Trust Deed and Administrative Agreement signed between the TRC and the

University of Manitoba established the foundation for the relationship between these two entities. It has the potential to significantly impact the future success of the NRC. In order for the NRC to successfully fulfill its role, it must be a decolonized space; therefore, I would argue that the basis for a decolonized relationship between the NRC and the U of M must be in place from the beginning. To that end, the Administrative

Agreement provides a framework for the decision making and governance at the NRC.

This framework has both positive and negative aspects as a working document and does not necessarily dictate how this agreement will actually be implemented. One of the most promising aspects of the Administrative Agreement is that of the Governing Circle which will “make decisions and provide advice” to the U of M and its Partners.270 The

Governing Circle will consist of seven members, three of whom will be survivors or family members of survivors and will be representative of the First Nations, Inuit and

Métis. Two other members will be employees of the U of M and two more will be from partner institutions. The majority of the Governing Circle members “must identify as

Aboriginal.”271 The Governing Circle will have significant authority concerning

269 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 270 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 271 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf..

95 decisions made about ceremonies, establishment of committees, and particulars pertaining to how the Settled Property is treated.272

The formation of the Governing Circle will be an important step, and follows precedents set by other institutions in Canada that consult with Indigenous advisors regarding their policies and collections. The NRC will also include a Survivor’s Circle that “will provide advice to the Governing Circle, the University and the Partners regarding any matters relevant to the Centre.”273 Stuart Murray of the CMHR described how his institution is working closely with Indigenous advisors to create a space in which

“an aboriginal identity is woven into [its]...very foundations.”274 In fact, many of the explicit goals written into the Administrative Agreement that are clear steps towards building a NRC that prioritizes the needs of residential school survivors and Indigenous

Canadians. These include objectives such as using the Settled Property “to allow the voices and personalities and culture of the children who attended residential schools to be heard, celebrated, remembered, and personalized,” as well as encouraging research, fulfilling the goals of laid out in 1996 in RCAP275, educating the public, and creating employment and education opportunities for Indigenous people.276 Many of these goals can contribute to the indigenization of the NRC if this is understood to mean that it is

272 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 273 The Survivor’s Circle is mentioned in the Administrative Agreement, but the details of how it will be comprised and operate are not given. “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS- AdminAgreement.pdf. 274 Murray, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (7.44), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 275 In 1996, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People recommended that a national archive be created to house the records of the residential school system, collect the testimony of residential school survivors, and facilitate education regarding residential schools to the Canadian public. “Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 1,” last modified February 8, 2006, http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071124130216/http://www.ainc- inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sgm10_e.html. 276 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf.

96 consulting with source communities, protecting the rights and privacy of residential school survivors, and preserving and advancing an accurate history of residential schools in Canada.

Although the NRC will operate within the institutional framework and culture of the U of M, the early steps in policy making at the NRC seem positive. The protocols put into place are nods to respecting and involving Indigenous communities in the operation and management of the NRC. However, the wording of the Administrative Agreement is troubling in places, and the tension between old institutional structures and the need for new pathways is woven into much of the contract. While the Governing Circle,

Survivor’s Circle, and administrative staff will be able to make some decisions and provide input into other decision makers, the wording of the Agreement makes it clear that “the Centre will operate within the academic and administrative structure of the

University, and as such, be subject to the policies and rule of the University.”277 The administration of the NRC will report directly to a member of the U of M executive,278 the core staff at the NRC will be university employees,279 and the U of M can ultimately decide to terminate the Trust Deed after ten years if it is “unwilling or unable to continue to host the Centre."280 The U of M has agreed to provide a significant amount of support for the NRC, but will also retain the final decision making power regarding many of the details of its operations. Whether the U of M exercises this power or not remains to be

277 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 278 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 279 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 280 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf.

97 seen. Regardless, any kind of umbrella relationship could be seen as potentially problematic to the NRC achieving its full potential.

In my second chapter, I considered the TRC within the context of a global movement for transitional justice. I discussed reconciliation as a difficult goal to both define and achieve. In the case of the TRC, the NRC has the capacity to work towards this goal long after the official TRC mandate is ended. To do so successfully, the NRC must negotiate carefully its relationship with the U of M, as well as the fraught history of institutions such as museums and archives with Indigenous people in Canada. This relationship has been changing in recent decades, and can provide many insights for the

NRC as it moves forward. This chapter has considered the initial policies for the NRC laid out in the Trust Deed and Administrative Agreement between the TRC and the U of

M. I have used the information and discussions given at the NRC conference to reflect on these policies. There is room for both hope and concern in this examination. In my conclusion, I discuss possibilities for the future of the NRC, situating this within a national discussion about the changing relationship between the state, museums, archives and Indigenous people.

CHAPTER FIVE

Conclusion

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission is required to build a National

Research Centre to “preserve the historical records and evidence related to the creation, funding, and administration of residential schools.”281 The NRC is intended to give a space for Indigenous voices to be heard, while also facilitating research and education and acting as a space that commemorates the survivors of residential schools. In the preceding chapters I have examined the National Research Centre closely with two understandings: first, that the Truth and Reconciliation Commission must be understood within the context of the global transitional justice movement in order to understand clearly the role that the NRC must play in working towards reconciliation in Canada; and second, that in order for the NRC to be a success it must be a decolonized space in which residential school survivors and Indigenous people have decision making powers. As a museum, an archive or a memorial centre – or as an amalgamation of the three – the NRC must acknowledge and navigate the connection between these institutions and the history of colonialism in Canada. Negotiating this connection can help to predict some of the pitfalls the NRC will face as it shapes its policies, builds its collections, and carries out its role as a commemorative and educational centre.

As part of the planning process for the National Research Centre, the National

Research Forum was held March 1 to 3, 2011 in Vancouver, B.C. The forum was a pivotal event that brought together experts in museums, archives, and memorial centres to share their experiences and offer input into the future of the centre. The Administrative

281 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf.

Agreement and Trust Deed signed by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the

University of Manitoba to host the NRC both challenges and embodies many of the ideas and thoughts put forth at this conference. The NRC must find ways to incorporate and build on the recent developments in how museums, archives and Indigenous communities navigate the disparity of power embedded in their historical relationships. It must create a space of commemoration and reconciliation. It must also contend with the complicated and fraught concept of reconciliation in Canada today as it takes up the work of the TRC when the TRC’s mandate ends in July 2015.

The Goal of Reconciliation

As a form of transitional justice, truth and reconciliation commissions seek to address histories of human rights violations with a two-fold purpose: allowing survivors a venue for truth-telling and holding perpetrators to some measure of accountability, but usually without formal legal avenues available in tradition judicial processes. The goal is ultimately a successful transitioning from a state of conflict to a post-conflict state in which fellow citizens can find peace while continuing to live side by side. Unfortunately, it is unclear that the model of transitional justice can be successful in Canada, for as

Professor Courtney Jung has observed “when governments and indigenous groups agree to employ a transitional justice framework to address a discrete segment of the historical injustices that have structured relations between them, they are likely to use the framework for different purposes.”282 Even when the purpose is “reconciliation,” coming to an agreement about just what that means can be the first roadblock to success.

282 Jung, “Canada and the Legacy of the Indian Residential Schools,” in Identities in Transition, ed. Paige Arthur (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 226.

100

Deena Rhyms has stated that “casting Aboriginal people in a state of victimization, yet simultaneously calling on indigenous communities to “heal” despite continued poverty, differences in education, and a hostile criminal justice system, means that reconciliation’s successes have been more illusory than real.”283 Others believe that the term reconciliation can be misleading, in that it indicates that there was once a period of time when Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people lived in accord with one another. John Amagoalik argued that “the history of this relationship is marked by crushing colonialism, attempted genocide, wars, massacres, theft of land and resources, broken treaties, broken promises, abuse of human rights, relocation, residential schools, and so on.”284 For many it will be difficult to “reconcile” a relationship that was never built on respect, equality or trust in the first place. Instead, it will be necessary to forge a new relationship between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous Canadians.

A categorical shift is needed in the way that the Canadian government treats

Indigenous people, especially in regard to issues such as rights to land and resources, unresolved treaty issues, and quality of life issues on reserves. The 2014 decision made by the Supreme Court of Canada on behalf of the Tsilhqot'in Nation has been lauded as an important step in addressing land claims. The decision clarifies the requirements for claiming aboriginal title to land with “a three-point test” that considers “occupation, continuity of habitation on the land, and exclusivity in the area.”285 Instead of proving that they settled land in accordance to Western definitions of settlements, the decision

283 Rymhs, “Appropriating Guilt,” English Studies in Canada 32, no. 1 (2006): 119. 284 Amagoalik, “Reconciliation or Conciliation,” in From Truth to Reconciliation, eds. Marlene Brant Castellano, Linda Archibald, and Mike DeGagné (Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008), 93. 285 “Tsilhqot’in First Nation granted B.C. title claim in Supreme Court ruling,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, June 26, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/tsilhqot-in-first-nation-granted-b-c-title- claim-in-supreme-court-ruling-1.2688332.

101 means that nomadic or semi-nomadic Indigenous nations can claim aboriginal title.

Furthermore, the Supreme Court of Canada reinforced in this decision that the Canadian government must consult with Indigenous groups who are claiming aboriginal title, as well as those who have aboriginal title before developing land. While aboriginal title does not give Indigenous people absolute right over their land, it does require that “the government must act in a way that respects the fact that Aboriginal title is a group interest that inheres in present and future generations, and the duty infuses an obligation of proportionality into the justification process: the incursion must be necessary to achieve the government’s goal (rational connection); the government must go no further than necessary to achieve it (minimal impairment); and the benefits that may be expected to flow from that goal must not be outweighed by adverse effects on the Aboriginal interest

(proportionality of impact).”286 This judgement was met with elation by Indigenous people, and its repercussions in land claims and disputes about resources and development of land will have important consequences moving forward; however, even the importance of this decision is but a small measure of hope in the face of the many issues that face Indigenous communities today.

The connection between the work of the TRC on residential schools and the broader issues faced by Indigenous people was made explicit in the testimony given by survivors given at the TRC’s public events held across Canada. Ronald Niezen stated that the testimony of survivors at the public TRC events tends to

reject the boundary that separates their remembrances of the schools from other more current, personally felt wrongs. Publicly remembering the abuses of childhood leads almost seamlessly into accounts of political usurpation, unresolved treaty claims, the indignities of criminal prosecution, the apprehension

286 “Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia,” last modified November 17, 2014, http://scc- csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc-csc/en/item/14246/index.do.

102

and fostering of their children by provincial child protection agencies, the experience of ostracism in reserve communities.... any active, irritating, burning cause of indignation can find its way into witness’s narrations.287

It is clear that reconciliation will not be achieved by only addressing the history of residential schools; the systemic violence experienced by Indigenous people in the various forms Niezen details will continue to affect Indigenous communities when the

TRC ends its mandate in 2015. The closing of the TRC doors should not be perceived as marking the Canadian government’s success in addressing the imbalances inherent in its relationship with Indigenous people. The TRC cannot be used by “the Canadian state as an instrument that draws a line through history, in effect finalizing or perfecting the colonial project rather than being part of a transformation and decolonization.”288 The

TRC is one significant step toward building a new relationship between Canada and

Indigenous people; however, it is only a first step towards reconciliation.

Terry Brown, a member of the IRSSC who spoke at the National Research Centre

Forum, defined reconciliation as equality and “freedom from violence for aboriginal women; that we are no longer raped and put out in the street to make a profit for men to live of off.”289 This definition is particularly poignant in light of a recent request by the

Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) that the Canadian government undertake a public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women in Canada.

This request took the form of a petition signed by 23,000 people that NWAC presented on February 13, 2014.290 In March 2014 the Canadian government released Invisible

Women: A Call to Action which made sixteen recommendations to confront violence

287 Niezen, Truth and Indignation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013): 102. 288 Hughes, “Instructive Past” Canadian Journal of Law and Society 27, no. 1 (2012): 102. 289 Brown, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (11.43), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 290 “Thousands of Canadians Call for National Public Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women,” accessed July 7, 2014, http://www.nwac.ca/press-release-immediate-release-2014-02-13-en.

103 against Indigenous women. However, none of these recommendations were for a national inquiry. NWAC released a statement in which the organization’s president

Michèle Audette stated that “this report fails to show the needed commitment and resources to adequately address this ongoing tragedy – a tragedy that is a reflection on

Canada as a whole.”291

The Canadian government’s refusal to hold a public inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women highlights the reality that the relationship between

Indigenous people and the government has not changed significantly in recent years. In her 2009 study on Indigenous self-government in the Northwest Territories, negotiator and polar expert Stephanie Irlbacher-Fox discussed how difficult it can be to forge new relationships between Indigenous people and the Canadian government because of the “a profoundly unconscious colonial attitude, one in which a dominant-subordinate relationship is the natural order of things.”292 In Irlbacher-Fox’s opinion, government officials are unable to bring new solutions to the table because they presuppose that injustices are either historical or so systemic that they cannot be undone or recompensed.293 This outlook is indeed grim, and leaves little room for a future of real and lasting change between Indigenous people and a government that does its best to ignore environmental and political activism within Indigenous communities.

The government must address the daily injustices faced by Indigenous people in order to support the work of the TRC on the long and difficult path to reconciliation. As far back as the 1960s, Cree activist and scholar Harold Cardinal noted that “historically,

291 “NWAC Disappointed Once Again,” accessed July 7, 2014, http://www.nwac.ca/press-release- immediate-release-2014-03-07-en. 292 Irlbacher-Fox, Finding Dahshaa (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 160. 293 Irlbacher-Fox, Finding Dahshaa (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 160.

104 the question of Indians has been one raised by politicians for some purely ulterior motive, perhaps to create and image of social awareness or compassion.”294 The government’s participation in TRC events has been lacklustre, and its early non-compliance with the requirements of the IRSSA has been the subject of legal challenges by the TRC. Niezen has stated that “the federal government has kept its presence at the TRC meetings to a minimum,” a lack of involvement that “has been, for the most part, quietly accepted.”295

While the TRC may have had a direct impact on the healing of Indigenous survivors and their communities, the impact it has had towards realizing reconciliation is difficult to measure. Its full impact will take time to ascertain.

Decolonization

I began this thesis with the intention of examining how the NRC could become a decolonized space while it exists within the structure of a larger institution – the

University of Manitoba. The NRC will be challenged by the absence of its own funding, and it will be further constricted by the confines of the Administrative Agreement and

Trust Deed signed with the U of M. Krmpotich and Peers write that “museums themselves have become a focus of anthropological study, since they articulate deeply held assumptions about the value and importance of objects and knowledge, about the dynamics and power of cross-cultural representation, and about relationships between mainstream society and colonized or marginalized elements of the nation-state.”296 In other words, the relationship between Indigenous people and the Canadian museums that hold their cultural heritage can be used as a lens for examining the relationship between

294 Cardinal, The Unjust Society (Vancouver: Douglas & McIntyre, 1999), 12. 295 Niezen, Truth and Indignation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013): 78. 296 Krmpotich and Peers, This is Our Life (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2013), 3.

105 the Canadian government and the Canadian public, and the Indigenous people in this country. Canadian museums hold collections that were built upon assumptions about

Indigenous nations made by non-Indigenous collectors, curators and private citizens.

These assumptions, while formative, have been challenged within museums by

Indigenous people, curators, anthropologists and other scholars beginning in the late twentieth century. The response of museums has often productively been twofold: “deep structural and policy change, and collaboration.”297 These responses have had an enduring influence in Canada, where museum practices over the last two decades since the 1992 publication of Turning the Page: Forging New Partnerships between Museums and First Peoples have changed dramatically.

The most significant change in Canadian museums has been an increase in collaborative approaches between museum officials and Indigenous source communities.

Indeed, as Harrison points out “working collaboratively with those whose material history museums hold is essential to the work of these institutions in the 21st century.”298

Collaboration can be an effective way for museums to approach Indigenous collections and communities. Phillips cites collaboration as “one of the clear achievements of

Canadian museology since the 1980s,” and states that it has allowed for “the establishment of a culture of shared authority and power.”299 The policies written in the

NRC’s Administrative Agreement with the U of M use collaborative strategies as building blocks for creating a decolonized space in which Indigenous needs are considered at every turn. These take the shape of collaborative strategies such as the

297 Ashley, “State Authority and the Public Sphere,” in Museums and Their Communities, edited by Sheila Watson (Oxon: Routledge, 2007), 492. 298 Harrison, “Shaping Collaboration,” Museum Management and Curatorship 20 (2005), 210. 299 Phillips, Museums Pieces (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2011), 229.

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Governing Circle and the Survivor’s Circle, both of which are meant to “provide advice and guidance” to the U of M and its Partners.300 These strategies are a starting point, but whether they will be enough to temper the authoritative position of the U of M remains to be seen.

Setting aside the potential difficulties in the relationship between the NRC and the

U of M, I believe the biggest stumbling block for the success of the centre will be the challenge of serving the needs of diverse Indigenous communities. When the experiences of residential school survivors becomes homogenized into one collective and decimating history, the lives of individuals become part of the whole. The subsuming of diverse experiences echoes the colonization and forced assimilation already imposed by

Canada on Indigenous people. Nika Collison, curator and member of the Haida First

Nation, addressed this issue at the National Research Centre Forum, stating that

“nationalizing individual First Nations that have been already stripped of their identity, history, and culture will only continue problems. It must go the communities first.”301

Charlene Belleau, a member of the Esketemc First Nation who spoke on behalf of the

Assembly of First Nations, believes that the dangers of homogenizing the experiences of survivors can be managed by basing the NRC regionally or even tribally. She had difficulty envisioning an NRC that served community purposes but existed in only one spot in Canada and was therefore inaccessible to many Indigenous people.302

The NRC will be located in Winnipeg, and while this city is geographically central in Canada, it will not be easy for all Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians to

300 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf. 301 Collison, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (28.47), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 302 Belleau, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (17.40), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

107 access. In order to make itself more accessible to distant and remote areas, the NRC will be represented across Canada by its Partners. The institutions that have been named as

Partners in the Administrative Agreement will work with the NRC to collect information and facilitate public education, 303 and it is in the work of the Partners that the opportunity for success lies. These outliers to the NRC can articulate new methods for institutions to serve communities because collectively they will hold more power to interact and build relationships with Indigenous communities than the NRC. The possibilities that lie in such an arrangement were alluded to a number of times at the NRC forum. At this point, the details of how these Partners will work in conjunction with the NRC has not been specifically defined; however, it is one opportunity for technology to be used effectively, perhaps to create a portal that brings together the electronically accessible collections of the Partners and the NRC. Technology can also make education programming and curated exhibits accessible across Canada, utilizing the internet in the same way so many museums in Canada and the world are doing today. The Partners, along with technology, will be powerful tools that extend the NRC’s reach into the smallest communities in the country.

The NRC must precariously balance the needs of survivors and its archival responsibilities in relation to the testimonies of residential school survivors. Niezen has indicated that “the survivors who appear before the microphone, cameras, and live audience did not put themselves there to shout into the air and have their words evaporate; their intention is clearly to be listened to and ideally to have what they say

303 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf.

108 preserved, not just in the memories of their listeners but noted, recorded, and archived.304

The “public, embodied, and performed dimensions”305 of the testimony given at the TRC is part of what is considered by many experts to lead to healing for survivors. There is a widespread belief that “truth-telling satisfies victims’ need for justice by holding perpetrators accountable in some fashion for their crimes, and eases their mental anguish by revealing the details of how they or their loved ones suffered.”306 The idea that giving testimony about one’s traumatic life experiences will bring about healing has become intertwined with the accepted convention that truth and reconciliation commissions are a successful way to promote both the healing of individuals and societies. The reality, as

David Mendeloff observes, is less straightforward because while some individuals may find healing in truth telling, others may be re-traumatized by the experience.307 When the testimony has been collected, it also becomes a concrete entity that is no longer in the control of the person who gave it. Worrying about the fate of their testimony is another way that survivors can become uncomfortable with, or traumatized by, the truth telling process.

The residential schools survivors who spoke at the forum addressed their own fears regarding how their testimony would be archived and used by the NRC. Charlene

Belleau expressed apprehension about the NRC potential to “relegate me to another number in an archive.”308 Residential school survivors have already suffered the ignominy and brutality of becoming a nameless number within a dehumanizing system.

304 Niezen, Truth and Indignation (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2013): 87. 305 Cole, “Performance, Transitional Justice, and the Law,” Theatre Journal 59, no. 2 (2007): 167. 306 Mendeloff, “Trauma and Vengeance,” Human Rights Quarterly 31 (2009): 615. 307 Mendeloff, “Truth Seeking, Truth-Telling, and Postconflict Peacebuilding,” International Studies Review, 6 (2004): 365. 308 Belleau, “Sharing Truth: 3” (11.22), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

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Terry Brown and Eugene Arcand, both members of the IRSSC, were concerned with how the experiences and documents collected by the NRC will be used by researchers.

Rebekah Uqi Williams urged the TRC to ensure that this documentation will stay within

Canada and be researched within Canada.309 Brown and Arcand both stated that they do not want academics becoming experts on residential schools and Indigenous survivors.310

Once the NRC opens as a research centre that contains the most complete record on residential schools, it is possible that it will be used by non-Indigenous scholars to study the residential school system and Indigenous survivors without restraint, perpetuating a disparity in power that turns Indigneous people into subjects to be studied by settlers.

Arcand urged Indigenous researchers and scholars into action, describing their role in the

TRC as “major.”311 Arcand stated, “I respect and agree that there is a place for archives to preserve what has happened. I agree that there is a place for research,” but went on to emphasize there must be a balance between the needs of Indigenous communities and preserving the residential school experience for future study by Indigenous and non-

Indigenous scholars – a balance that the he charges the TRC commissioners to define.312

Ultimately, how the testimony of survivors is handled by the NRC will have an impact on the success of the NRC. The Administrative Agreement signed between the

TRC and the University of Manitoba makes it clear that survivor testimony, as well as all other components of the Settled Property, will be subject to Manitoba’s The Freedom of

Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). Assurances were also made to

309 Williams, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (6.55), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 310 Brown, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (11.00) and Arcand, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (5.47), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 311 Arcand, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (6.50), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 312 Arcand, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (11.00, 5.00), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

110 survivors that their testimony would be treated in accordance with their wishes, as public, redacted, or restricted documents.313 Even with these assurances in place controversy arose over the handling of the testimony that survivors did not want made public. In May

2014, the TRC asked the Ontario Superior Court for clarification on how this testimony should be treated, and where it should be held. The TRC wanted these confidential statements to be held in the NRC archives; however, survivors worried that eventually these archives would become public against their wishes and the TRC’s initial assurances of privacy.314 Dan Shapiro, the chief adjudicator of the Independent Assessment Process

(IAP), wanted the thousands of documents generated by this process to be destroyed to protect the privacy of the children who experienced the abuse, instead of placed in the

NRC as the TRC wishes.315 In August 2014, the Ontario Superior Court handed down its judgement that survivors will have the authority to decide whether their IAP testimony is destroyed or archived after a fifteen year retention period is over.316 This resolution was a victory for residential school survivors; however, the need for this case to be heard in a court is an alarming indication that the NRC has the potential to victimize the very people it is being built to serve, and highlights the difficult task the NRC will face in the future as it balances the needs of survivors with its mandate to make the truth about residential schools part of the wider historical record.

313 “National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools: An Overview,” accessed March 13, 2014, http://chrr.info/images/stories/NRC_-_Public_Presentation_-_Overivew_-_Summer_2013.pdf. 314 “Residential school survivors fear testimony could be made public,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, May 15, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/residential-school-survivors-fear-testimony- could-be-made-public-1.2644349. 315 Galloway, “Evidence of abuse in residential schools could be destroyed,” The Globe and Mail, June 19, 2014, http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/adjudicator-to-ask-ontario-court-to-keep-residential- schools-testimony-private/article19233215/. 316 “Residential school survivors will decide fate of testimony documents,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, August 7, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/residential-school-survivors-will-decide- fate-of-testimony-documents-1.2730490.

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The decision regarding the fate of IAP testimony sets a powerful precedent for how survivor testimony will be treated in the NRC. Hopefully, individuals will continue to hold a measure of power over how their information is used and managed. This will be a positive alternative from institutional decision making, and I also see it as one that is in keeping with the paradigm of Indigenous resurgence, which advocates for “a rejection of colonized mindsets, among both Indigenous peoples and settlers.”317 In order for the

NRC to be decolonized it must be a place of transformational thinking about how the past is documented, and who holds the power over that documentation. In his contribution to the NRC forum, David George-Shongo Jr. – archivist and director of the Seneca Nation

Tribal Archives – explored the challenges of building an Indigenous archive and stated that “I do not have the right for all generations to come to say that that this is knowledge that needs to be kept forever.”318 This statement recognized that Indigenous interaction with archives is still in its infancy, and challenges the dynamic relationship that

Indigenous cultures have with their traditional ways of keeping the past.

If the philosophy espoused by George-Shongo is taken up by the NRC, it will put the NRC in some tension with the policies of LAC. Daniel Caron, former Librarian and

Archivist of LAC, stated at the forum that his institution is “responsible for ensuring that the most important documents are selected and preserved for future generations.”319 The tension inherent in the role of archives in communities must be addressed in order for the

NRC to succeed. Archivist Terry Cook noted that the challenges of “region versus centre

[and] the contrary tugs of access and privacy laws...threaten the quality and completeness

317 Irlbacher-Fox, Finding Dahshaa (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2009), 160. 318 George-Shongo, Jr., “Sharing Truth: Day 2” (12.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 319 Caron, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (3.50), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190.

112 of the archival record.”320 In finding unique resolutions to the challenges described by

Cook by empowering the Partners and the Indigenous communities, the NRC can make an important contribution to how Indigenous communities interact with archives.

In its role as a memorial centre, the NRC needs to take what Williams has called

“a brave stand against ‘history as usual,’ or indeed, ‘tyranny as usual.’”321 Memorial centres often revise national histories by revealing hidden histories and allowing victim and survivor experiences to be heard. Speaking at the NRC conference, residential school survivor Terry Brown explained that she wants the NRC to have an impact on visitors “because we never want this to happen again.”322 An underlying thread found in memorial centres suggests that making troubling, if not subversive aspects of national histories known and visible should ensure that the same injustices and atrocities are not repeated. The NRC will have to work hard to make the impact Brown desires a reality.

In many cases memorial centres are located in the places where atrocities were committed, and visiting them becomes a pilgrimage of sorts that requires visitors to reflect on “why the effort has been made” to even make the journey and what is to be learned from the experience.323 The NRC, located at the University of Manitoba in

Winnipeg, will need to invest significant resources to prompt both Indigenous and non-

Indigenous Canadians to make the journey, if not the pilgrimage, to learn of the tragic and important story of residential schools in Canada.

The NRC’s physical space will affect its success. However, in its Winnipeg location it cannot draw on the atmosphere of an actual school. It could, however, in

320 Cook, “From Information to Knowledge,” Archivaria 19 (1984-85), 29-30. 321 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 181. 322 Brown, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (7.30), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 323 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 182.

113 locations where the schools were located create smaller satellite institutions that capitalize on “the unanticipated feel of the place – the accidental observation, the physical contact, the self-aware footing and awkward stumbling.”324 In Winnipeg, the NRC will have to depend on architecture, text, artefacts, photographs and other media to create an intimate experience for visitors that will help them understand the enormity and impact of residential school history. The National Museum of the American Indian in Washington,

D.C. uses “a thirteen minute multi-sensory theatrical presentation” to introduce visitors to the cultures and history of Native Americans.325 The U’Mista Cultural Centre in Alert

Bay also use film to introduce their collection, bringing history into sharp relief in a way that resonates as visitors move through the museum. Ultimately, the impact of the NRC will be limited by the physical space that the NRC is allotted and the funding that is made available for constructing the space; however, it is capable of presenting a strong and resonant experience to its visitors. More important, however, will be the NRC’s work within Indigenous communities. According to the Administrative Agreement, this work will include continuing to collect testimony and historical data, making a space where the voices of survivors are heard, fostering dialogue about reconciliation, and holding ceremonies that celebrate Indigenous cultures and heritage.326

Within non-Indigenous Canadian communities, there remains an alarming ignorance regarding the history of residential schools and the history of colonialism that the NRC must address through education and public outreach programs. A quick reading

324 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 182. 325 Evelyn, “The Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian,” The Public Historian 28, no. 2 (2006): 54. 326 “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement,” accessed November 17, 2014, http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS-AdminAgreement.pdf.

114 of the comments that accompany any media account of TRC news reveals ignorance and prejudice on a scale that is appalling, and must be disheartening (but perhaps less than shocking) to Indigenous people. As an example, in the CBC news report regarding the

Ontario Superior Court decision to allow IAP testimony to be destroyed, many on-line comments decried a lack of transparency in IAP proceedings and questioned the credibility of survivor accounts.327 Idle No More and NWAC’s work to raise awareness about missing and murdered Indigenous women have been successfully bringing

Indigenous issues to the attention of non-Indigenous people, but the response is not always supportive. When the issues raised are over aboriginal land rights and unresolved treaties, the response can quickly become violent, and that violence may even be sanctioned by Canadian law, as discussed in Chapter Two. Changing how non-

Indigenous Canadians relate to and understand Indigenous issues is essential to reconciliation. Otherwise, I must agree with Taiaiake Alfred that reconciliation – if it means only the successful completion of the TRC mandate without any intrinsic societal transformation – is only obscuring the true issues of inequality and systemic racism facing Indigenous people and Canadian society today.328

Of course, the NRC cannot be solely responsible for changing the minds and hearts of non-Indigenous Canadians. In his 2008 apology, Prime Minister Stephen

Harper stated that the TRC would “be a positive step in forging a new relationship between Aboriginal peoples and other Canadians.”329 Relationships are built on the

327 “Residential school survivors will decide fate of testimony documents,” Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, August 7, 2014, http://www.cbc.ca/news/aboriginal/residential-school-survivors-will-decide- fate-of-testimony-documents-1.2730490. 328 Alfred, foreword to Unsettling the Settler Within by Paulette Regan (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), xi. 329 Prime Minister Stephen Harper, “Statement of Apology,” June 11, 2008, https://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649.

115 intentions of all participants, however, and too many non-Indigenous Canadians do not seem to have the positive intentions necessary for the realization of Harper’s vision. The federal government can begin to change these mindsets, by according Indigenous issues the attention that they deserve. Paulette Regan, Director of Research for the Truth and

Reconciliation Commission of Canada, has made the observation that “much remains to be done to address settler denial, particularly through educating not only the Canadian public but negotiators, policy makers, and bureaucrats who work in Indigenous contexts.”330 While some change is observable, the process of accomplishing the task of changing the hearts and minds of many Canadians who are in “settler denial” will be long and arduous.

The National Research Centre can be a success, but in order to become one it must build on the strides made by museums and archives in their interaction with

Indigenous source communities, and design its framework and policies around the needs and desires of residential school survivors and their families. The Governing Circle and the Survivor’s Circle must play a central role in all decisions, but especially regarding how the testimony of survivors is stored, accessed and interpreted. There is room in

Canada for an institution such as the one that the NRC has the potential to become – a decolonized, Indigenous run multi-faceted centre that holds an important place amongst the archives and museums and memorial centres that already serve diverse and particular roles within Canadian communities. The small centres and museums run within

Indigenous communities play essential roles; however, there is common ground in the shared history of colonialism, residential schools, unresolved treaties and land claims, and other social and political issues that can be served by a larger institution. Like the

330 Regan, Unsettling the Settler Within (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2010), 37.

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National Museum of the American Indian, the NRC has the potential to become a

“symbol of cultural sovereignty.”331 However, comparing the NRC to the NMAI highlights one essential fact – that the NRC is starting out at a dire financial disadvantage which calls into question its independence as an institution as it negotiates for steady funding and adequate quarters within its home at the University of Manitoba.

Paul Williams has noted that “in drawing attention to the most terrible aspects of what a society has endured, [memorial museums] can function as a yardstick for measuring current progress (in terms of showing how a society has progressed, and what it is no longer).”332 The NRC can be such a yardstick for Canada. Commemoration is an important role for the NRC, but it can achieve even more than enshrining the past if it can engage non-Indigenous Canadian in learning about the relationship between Indigenous people and Canada from and Indigenous viewpoint and becoming a place for celebrating the strength and vibrancy of Indigenous people and their cultures.

At the NRC forum, Charlene Belleau stated that “we need to move on in this healing journey.”333 Some scholars have expressed a growing wariness regarding “living in remembrance” to the exclusion of scholarly debate, artistic representations, and other meaningful ways of coming to terms with the past.334 It is important that the NRC does not arrest the history of residential schools in a way that does not leave room for movement and that does not recognize the healing in which Indigenous people are already engaged. There are important movements across the country within Indigenous communities to reclaim history, culture, languages, and autonomy over important areas

331 Cobb, “The National Museum of the American Indian,” American Indian Quarterly 29, no. 3/4 (2005): 382. 332 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 184. 333 Belleau, “Sharing Truth: Day 3” (12.20), http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. 334 Williams, Memorial Museums (Oxford: Berg, 2007), 186-187.

117 such as health and education. This is evident, for example, in the role of the Native

Women’s Association of Canada in empowering Indigenous women, in the work of the

Assembly of First Nations in focusing national attention of Indigenous issues such as unresolved treaties and land claims, which have been working in Canada, and in the unexpected power of the grassroots movement Idle No More as it swept across Canada.

Recognizing the strength and richness of the lives and culture Indigenous people within

Canada will enrich the NRC and will contribute to the ongoing work towards reconciliation with Canadian people and the Canadian state.

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Lacasse, Danielle and Antonio Lechasseur. The National Archives of Canada, 1872- 1997. The Canadian Historical Society: Ottawa, 1997. Accessed November 18, 2014. http://epe.lac-bac.gc.ca/100/200/300/cha-shc/historical_booklet/H-58_en.pdf. Ross, Rupert. “Telling Truths and Seeking Reconciliation: Exploring the Challenges.” In From Truth to Reconciliation: Transforming the Legacy of Residential Schools, edited by Marlene Brant Castellano, Linda Archibald, and Mike DeGagné, 143-159. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2008. Accessed March 27, 2011. http://www.ahf.ca/downloads/from-truth-to-reconciliation-transforming-the-legacy-of- residential-schools.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “They Came for the Children: Canada, Aboriginal Peoples and Residential Schools.” Winnipeg, Manitoba: TRC, 2012. Accessed September 16, 2013. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/2039_T&R_eng_web%5B1%5D.p df. Websites Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. “Indian Residential Schools Frequently Asked Questions.” Last modified April 22, 2014. http://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015798/1100100015799#IAP-1. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. “Indian Residential Schools Frequently Asked Questions.” Last modified April 22, 2014. http://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015798/1100100015799#CEP-AP-1. Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development Canada. “Statement of Apology.” Last modified September 15, 2010. http://www.aadnc- aandc.gc.ca/eng/1100100015644/1100100015649. Aboriginal Healing Foundation. “FAQS.” Accessed April 25, 2014. http://www.ahf.ca/faqs. Assembly of First Nations. “Charter of the Assembly of First Nations.” Accessed December 15, 2014. http://www.afn.ca/index.php/en/about-afn/charter-of-the-assembly- of-first-nations. Canadian Museum of History. “Grand Hall.” Accessed October 20, 2014. http://www.historymuseum.ca/cmc/exhibitions/aborig/grand/grandeng.shtml. Canadian Museum of History. “The History of the Museum.” Accessed October 10, 2014. http://www.historymuseum.ca/about-us/about-the-museum/history-of-the-museum. Glenbow Museum. ““Nitsitapiisiini: Our Way of Life.” Accessed December 15, 2014. http://www.glenbow.org/blackfoot/#. Health Canada. “A Statistical Profile on the Health of First Nations in Canada: Determinants of Health, 1999-2003.” Last modified February 12, 2009. http://www.hc- sc.gc.ca/fniah-spnia/pubs/aborig-autoch/2009-stats-profil/index-eng.php.

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Idle No More. “The Manifesto.” Accessed March 6, 2014. http://www.idlenomore.ca/manifesto. Indian and Northern Affairs Canada. “Report of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, Volume 1.” Last modified February 8, 2006. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/webarchives/20071124130216/http://www.ainc- inac.gc.ca/ch/rcap/sg/sgm10_e.html. Indian Residential Schools Settlement. “Schedule N.” Accessed December 16, 2013. http://www.residentialschoolsettlement.ca/SCHEDULE_N.pdf. International Coalition of Sites of Consciousness. “About Us.” Accessed August 25, 2014. http://www.sitesofconscience.org/about-us/. Judgements of the Supreme Court of Canada. “Tsilhqot’in Nation v. British Columbia.” Last modified November 17, 2014. http://scc-csc.lexum.com/scc-csc/scc- csc/en/item/14246/index.do. Library and Archives Canada. “About the Collection.” Last modified November 7, 2007. http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/collection/003-300-e.html. Library of Parliament. “Bill C-42: An Act to Amend the Museums Act and to Make Consequential Amendments to Other Acts.” Last modified February 22, 2008. http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/LegislativeSummaries/39/2/c42-e.pdf. National Museum of Human Rights. “Annual Report, 2008/2009.” Accessed November 15, 2014. https://humanrights.ca/sites/default/files/2008_09_Annual_Report_English.pdf. Native Women’s Association of Canada. “Fact Sheet: Violence Against Aboriginal Women.” Accessed March 6, 2014. http://www.nwac.ca/files/download/NWAC_3E_Toolkit_e.pdf. Native Women’s Association of Canada. “NWAC Disappointed Once Again.” Accessed July 7, 2014. http://www.nwac.ca/press-release-immediate-release-201-4-03-07-en. Native Women’s Association of Canada. “Thousands of Canadians Call for National Public Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Aboriginal Women.” Accessed July 7, 2014. http://www.nwac.ca/press-release-immediate-release-2014-02-13-en. Nisga’a Lisims Government. “Nisga’a artifacts returning home.” Accessed November 12, 2014. http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/632491/nisga-a-artifacts-returning-home- september-15-2010. Parliament of Canada. “Canada’s National Museums.” Last modified February 6, 2013. http://www.parl.gc.ca/Content/LOP/ResearchPublications/2013-06-e.htm#txt15. Statistics Canada. “Adult correctional statistics in Canada, 2010/2011.” Last modified May 31, 2013. http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2012001/article/11715- eng.htm#a7.

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Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “About the National Research Centre Forum.” Accessed November 18, 2014. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=132. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “British Columbia National Event: Program.” Accessed December 12, 2013. http://www.trc.ca/websites/vancouver/File/TRC-073.06%20BCNE%20program-web.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Call for Submissions to Permanently Host a National Research Centre on Residential Schools.” Accessed October 19, 2013. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/NRC%20- %20Call%20NOV%2016_EN_FINAL.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Community Event Criteria Guide.” Accessed November 25, 2013. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/TRC_Comm_Events%20Guide_en_m ar10. pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Reconciliation...towards a new relationship.” Accessed May 15, 2014. http://www.trc.ca/websites/reconciliation/index.php?p=312. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Remarks at the National Research Centre Signing Ceremony, June 21, 2013 at the University of Manitoba.” Accessed October 27, 2013. http://www.umanitoba.ca/about/media/Justice_Sinclair_remarks_at_NRC_signing_cerre mony_21_June_2013.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Residential School Locations.” Accessed October 27, 2013. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=12. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Sharing Truth – Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools: Day 1 – Webcast Recording.” Accessed November 18, 2014. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=188. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Sharing Truth – Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools: Day 2 – Webcast Recording.” Accessed November 18, 2014. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=189. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Sharing Truth – Creating a National Research Centre on Residential Schools: Day 3 – Webcast Recording.” Accessed November 18, 2014. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=190. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “TRC Concludes Atlantic National Event in Halifax.” Accessed October 19, 2013. http://www.trc.ca/websites/trcinstitution/index.php?p=509. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “TRC Welcomes Court’s Clarification of Its Mandate.” Accessed November 16, 2014.

129 http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/pdfs/TRC%20NEWS%20RELEAS E%20-- %20TRC%20WELCOMES%20COURT%20DECISION%2030%20jan%202013.pdf. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “TRC Wraps up Northern National Event in Inuvik, NWT.” Accessed October 19, 2013. http://www.newswire.ca/en/story/736191/trc-wraps-up-northern-national-event-in- inuvik-nwt. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. “Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Interim Report,” Accessed October 27, 2013. http://www.myrobust.com/websites/trcinstitution/File/Interim%20report%20English%20 electronic.pdf. United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. “Universal Declaration on Cultural Heritage.” Accessed November 1, 2014. http://portal.unesco.org/en/ev.php- URL_ID=13179&URL_DO=DO_TOPIC&URL_SECTION=201.html. University of Manitoba. “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Administrative Agreement.” Accessed November 17, 2014. http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013-NRCAS- AdminAgreement.pdf. University of Manitoba. “Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Trust Deed.” Accessed November 17, 2014. http://umanitoba.ca/admin/indigenous_connect/media/IND-00-013- NRCAS-TrustDeed.pdf. University of Manitoba, “National Research Centre on Indian Residential Schools: An Overview.” Accessed March 13, 2014. http://chrr.info/images/stories/NRC_- _Public_Presentation_-_Overivew_-_Summer_2013.pdf. Where Are The Children. “Reclaiming History: The Residential School System in Canada.” Accessed November 16, 2014. http://wherearethechildren.ca/timeline/research/.

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APPENDIX A

For a complete list of speakers at the National Research Centre Forum, please see http://www.myrobust.com/websites/NRC/index.php?p=127. Hosts of the National Research Centre Forum and TRC Commissioners Justice Murray Sinclair Chief Wilton Littlechild Commissioner Marie Wilson TRC Survivor Committee Eugene Arcand – member of the Muskeg Lake First Nation, Saskatchewan Rebekah Uqi Williams – Iqaluit, Nunavut

Terri Brown Speakers Tom A. Adami – United Nations Mission in Sudan. See http://unmis.unmissions.org/ for more information. Adami has worked for the United Nations in many capacities, including Chief Archivist for the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and at the UN Archives in New York. Robert Banno – Founding President of the Nikkei National Museum & Cultural Centre and current President of the Nikkei Place Foundation. The Nikkei National Museum is a Japanese Canadian cultural centre involved in archiving and commemorating Japanese Canadian history, including the detainment of Japanese Canadians in internment camps during the Second World War. http://www.nikkeiplace.org/. Daniel J. Caron – former Librarian and Archivist of Canada (2009-2013). See http://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/Pages/home.aspx for more information about Library and Archives Canada. Jisgang (Nika Collison) – member of the Ts’aahl Eagle clan of the Haida nation and curator at the Haida Gwaii Museum at Kay Llnagaay. See http://www.haidaheritagecentre.com/ for more information about the Haida Gwaii Museum. Cristian Correa – Senior Associate with the Reparations Unit of the International Centre for Transitional Justice, which “works to help societies in transition address legacies of massive human rights violations and build civic trust in state institutions as protectors of human rights.” See http://www.ictj.org/ for more information about the International Centre for Transitional Justice. Doudou Diène – originator and person responsible for UNESCO’s Intercultural Routes projects: Silk Roads, Slave Route, Faith Roads and Al-Andalus Routes, as well as a member of the Board of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience.

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David L. George-Shongo Jr. – the first archivist of the Seneca Nation of Indians. See https://sni.org/ for more information regarding the Seneca Nation of Indians. Frieda Miller – Executive Director of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, a centre devoted to “Holocaust Based anti-racism education.” See http://www.vhec.org/index.html for more information. Bradford W. Morse – Dean of Law and Professor of Law at the University of Waikato Te Piringa - Faculty of Law in Hamilton, Aotearoa/New Zealand, and Professor of Law in the Faculty of Law, at the University of Ottawa. Stuart Murray – first Chief Operating Officer (CEO) of the new Canadian Museum for Human Rights. The CMHR opened its doors in 2014 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. It is dedicated to the “evolution, celebration and future of human rights.” See https://humanrights.ca/. Elizabeth Silkes – Executive Director of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience. The website of the International Coalition of Sites of Conscience states that “we are sites, individuals, and initiatives activating the power of places of memory to engage the public in connecting past and present in order to envision and shape a more just and humane future.” See http://www.sitesofconscience.org/ for more information. Dr. Stephen D. Smith – Executive Director, University of Southern California Shoah Foundation Institute, which is involved in Holocaust education. The USC Shoah Foundation Institute was established by Steven Spielberg in 1994 with the goal of gathering video testimony from Holocaust survivors and has expanded to include testimony from survivors of other genocides. See http://sfi.usc.edu/ for more information.

Parties to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement Pierre Baribeau – Catholic Church Entitities Charlene Belleau – AFN Indian Residential Schools Unit Nancy Hurn – Anglican Church of Canada Julia Roy – Department of Justice on behalf of the Government of Canadian

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APPENDIX B SCHEDULE “N”

MANDATE FOR THE TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION COMMISSION

There is an emerging and compelling desire to put the events of the past behind us so that we can work towards a stronger and healthier future. The truth telling and reconciliation process as part of an overall holistic and comprehensive response to the Indian Residential School legacy is a sincere indication and acknowledgement of the injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal people and the need for continued healing. This is a profound commitment to establishing new relationships embedded in mutual recognition and respect that will forge a brighter future. The truth of our common experiences will help set our spirits free and pave the way to reconciliation.

Principles

Through the Agreement, the Parties have agreed that an historic Truth and Reconciliation Commission will be established to contribute to truth, healing and reconciliation.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission will build upon the “Statement of Reconciliation” dated January 7, 1998 and the principles developed by the Working Group on Truth and Reconciliation and of the Exploratory Dialogues (1998-1999). These principles are as follows: accessible; victim-centered; confidentiality (if required by the former student); do no harm; health and safety of participants; representative; public/transparent; accountable; open and honourable process; comprehensive; inclusive, educational, holistic, just and fair; respectful; voluntary; flexible; and forward looking in terms of rebuilding and renewing Aboriginal relationships and the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadians.

Reconciliation is an ongoing individual and collective process, and will require commitment from all those affected including First Nations, Inuit and Métis former Indian Residential School (IRS) students, their families, communities, religious entities, former school employees, government and the people of Canada. Reconciliation may occur between any of the above groups.

Terms of Reference

1. Goals

The goals of the Commission shall be to:

(a) Acknowledge Residential School experiences, impacts and consequences;

(b) Provide a holistic, culturally appropriate and safe setting for former students, their families and communities as they come forward to the

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Commission; (c) Witness,335 support, promote and facilitate truth and reconciliation events at both the national and community levels; (d) Promote awareness and public education of Canadians about the IRS system and its impacts;

(e) Identify sources and create as complete an historical record as possible of the IRS system and legacy. The record shall be preserved and made accessible to the public for future study and use;

(f) Produce and submit to the Parties of the Agreement336 a report including recommendations337 to the Government of Canada concerning the IRS system and experience including: the history, purpose, operation and supervision of the IRS system, the effect and consequences of IRS (including systemic harms, intergenerational consequences and the impact on human dignity) and the ongoing legacy of the residential schools;

(g) Support commemoration of former Indian Residential School students and their families in accordance with the Commemoration Policy Directive (Schedule “X” of the Agreement).

2. Establishment, Powers, Duties and Procedures of the Commission

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission shall be established by the appointment of “the Commissioners” by the Federal Government through an Order in Council, pursuant to special appointment regulations.

Pursuant to the Court-approved final settlement agreement and the class action judgments, the Commissioners:

(a) in fulfilling their Truth and Reconciliation Mandate, are authorized to receive statements and documents from former students, their families, community and all other interested participants, and, subject to (f), (g) and (h) below, make use of all documents and materials produced by the parties. Further, the Commissioners are authorized and required in the public interest to archive all such documents, materials, and transcripts or recordings of statements received, in a manner that will ensure their preservation and accessibility to the public and in accordance with access and privacy legislation, and any other applicable legislation;

335 This refers to the Aboriginal principle of “witnessing”. 336 The Government of Canada undertakes to provide for wider dissemination of the report pursuant to the recommendations of the Commissioners. 337 The Commission may make recommendations for such further measures as it considers necessary for the fulfillment of the Truth and Reconciliation Mandate and goals.

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(b) shall not hold formal hearings, nor act as a public inquiry, nor conduct a formal legal process;

(c) shall not possess subpoena powers, and do not have powers to compel attendance or participation in any of its activities or events. Participation in all Commission events and activities is entirely voluntary;

(d) may adopt any informal procedures or methods they may consider Expedient for the proper conduct of the Commission events and activities, so long as they remain consistent with the goals and provisions set out in the Commission’s mandate statement;

(e) may, at its discretion, hold sessions in camera, or require that sessions be held in camera;

(f) shall perform their duties in holding events, in activities, in public meetings, in consultations, in making public statements, and in making their report and recommendations without making any findings or expressing any conclusion or recommendation, regarding the misconduct of any person, unless such findings or information has already been established through legal proceedings, by admission, or by public disclosure by the individual. Further, the Commission shall not make any reference in any of its activities or in its report or recommendations to the possible civil or criminal liability of any person or organization, unless such findings or information about the individual or institution has already been established through legal proceedings;

(g) shall not, except as required by law, use or permit access to statements made by individuals during any of the Commissions events, activities or processes, except with the express consent of the individual and only for the sole purpose and extent for which the consent is granted;

(h) shall not name names in their events, activities, public statements, report or recommendations, or make use of personal information or of statements made which identify a person, without the express consent of that individual, unless that information and/or the identity of the person so identified has already been established through legal proceedings, by admission, or by public disclosure by that individual. Other information that could be used to identify individuals shall be anonymized to the extent possible;

(i) notwithstanding (e), shall require in camera proceedings for the taking of any statement that contains names or other identifying information of persons alleged by the person making the statement of some wrong doing, unless the person named or identified has been convicted for the alleged wrong doing. The Commissioners shall not record the names of persons so identified, unless the person named or identified has been convicted for

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the alleged wrong doing Other information that could be used to identify said individuals shall be anonymized to the extent possible;

(j) shall not, except as required by law, provide to any other proceeding, or for any other use, any personal information, statement made by the individual or any information identifying any person, without that individual’s express consent;

(k) shall ensure that the conduct of the Commission and its activities do not jeopardize any legal proceeding; (l) may refer to the NAC for determination of disputes involving document production, document disposal and archiving, contents of the Commission’s Report and Recommendations and Commission decisions regarding the scope of its research and issues to be examined. The Commission shall make best efforts to resolve the matter itself before referring it to the NAC.

3. Responsibilities

In keeping with the powers and duties of the Commission, as enumerated in section 2 above, the Commission shall have the following responsibilities:

(a) to employ interdisciplinary, social sciences, historical, oral traditional and archival methodologies for statement-taking, historical fact-finding and analysis, report-writing, knowledge management and archiving;

(b) to adopt methods and procedures which it deems necessary to achieve its goals;

(d) to establish a research centre and ensure the preservation of its archives;

(e) to have available the use of such facilities and equipment as is required, within the limits of appropriate guidelines and rules;

(f) to hold such events and give such notices as appropriate. This shall include such significant ceremonies as the Commission sees fit during and at the conclusion of the 5 year process;

(g) to prepare a report;

(h) to have the report translated in the two official languages of Canada and all or parts of the report in such Aboriginal languages as determined by the Commissioners;

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(i) to evaluate commemoration proposals in line with the Commemoration Policy Directive (Schedule “X” of the Agreement).

4. Exercise of Duties

As the Commission is not to act as a public inquiry or to conduct a formal legal process, it will, therefore, not duplicate in whole or in part the function of criminal investigations, the Independent Assessment Process, court actions, or make recommendations on matters already covered in the Agreement. In the exercise of its powers the Commission shall recognize:

(a) the unique experiences of First Nations, Inuit and Métis former IRS students, and will conduct its activities, hold its events, and prepare its Report and Recommendations in a manner that reflects and recognizes The unique experiences of all former IRS students;

(b) that the truth and reconciliation process is committed to the principle of voluntariness with respect to individuals’ participation;

(c) that it will build upon the work of past and existing processes, archival records, resources and documentation, including the work and records of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples of 1996;

(d) the significance of Aboriginal oral and legal traditions in its activities;

(e) that as part of the overall holistic approach to reconciliation and healing, the Commission should reasonably coordinate with other initiatives under the Agreement and shall acknowledge links to other aspects of the Agreement such that the overall goals of reconciliation will be promoted;

(f) that all individual statements are of equal importance, even if these statements are delivered after the completion of the report;

(g) that there shall be an emphasis on both information collection storage And information analysis.

5. Membership

The Commission shall consist of an appointed Chairperson and two Commissioners, who shall be persons of recognized integrity, stature and respect.

(a) Consideration should be given to at least one of the three members being an Aboriginal person;

(b) Appointments shall be made out of a pool of candidates nominated by former students, Aboriginal organizations, churches and government;

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final decision as to the appointment of the Commissioners.

6. Secretariat

The Commission shall operate through a central Secretariat.

(a) There shall be an Executive Director in charge of the operation of the Commission who shall select and engage staff and regional liaisons;

(b) The Executive Director and the Secretariat shall be subject to the direction and control of the Commissioners;

(i) research;

(ii) event organization;

(iii) statement taking/truth-sharing;

(iv) obtaining documents;

(v) information management of the Commission’s documents;

(vi) production of the report;

(vii) ensuring the preservation of its records;

(viii) evaluation of the Commemoration Policy Directive proposals.

(d) The Executive Director and Commissioners shall consult with the Indian Residential School Survivor Committee on the appointment of the Regional Liaisons.

(e) Regional liaisons shall:

(i) act as knowledge conduits and promote sharing of knowledge among communities, individuals and the Commission;

(ii) provide a link between the national body and communities for the purpose of coordinating national and community events;

(iii) provide information to and assist communities as they plan truth and reconciliation events, coordinate statement-taking/truth- sharing and event-recording, and facilitate information flow from the communities to the Commission.

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7. Indian Residential School Survivor Committee (IRSSC)

The Commission shall be assisted by an Indian Residential School Survivor Committee (IRSSC).

(a) The Committee shall be composed of 10 representatives drawn from various Aboriginal organizations and survivor groups. Representation shall be regional, reflecting the population distribution of Indian Residential Schools (as defined in the Agreement). The majority of the representatives shall be former residential school students;

(b) Members of the Committee shall be selected by the Federal Government, in consultation with the AFN, from a pool of eligible candidates developed by the stakeholders;

(i) the characteristics of a “community” for the purposes of participation in the Commission processes;

(ii) the criteria for the community and national processes;

(iii) the evaluation of Commemoration Policy Directive proposals;

(iv) such other issues as are required by the Commissioners.

8. Timeframe

The Commission shall complete its work within five years. Within that five year span, there are two timelines:

Two Year Timeline

(a) Preparation of a budget within three months from being launched, under the budgetary cap provision in the Agreement;

(b) Completion of all national events, and research and production of the report on historic findings and recommendations, within two years of the launch of the Commission, with the possibility of a 6 month extension, which shall be at the discretion of the Commissioners.

Five Year Timeline

(a) Completion of the community truth and reconciliation events, statement taking/truth sharing, reporting to the Commission from communities, and closing ceremonies;

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(b) Establishment of a research centre.

9. Research

The Commission shall conduct such research, receive and take such statements and consider such documents as it deems necessary for the purpose of achieving its goals.

10. Events

There are three essential event components to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission: National Events, Community Events and Individual Statement-Taking/Truth Sharing. The Truth and Reconciliation process will be concluded with a final Closing Ceremony.

(A) National Events

The national events are a mechanism through which the truth and reconciliation process will engage the Canadian public and provide education about the IRS system, the experience of former students and their families, and the ongoing legacies of the institutions.

The Commission shall fund and host seven national events in different regions across the country for the purpose of:

(a) sharing information with/from the communities;

(b) supporting and facilitating the self empowerment of former IRS students and those affected by the IRS legacy;

(d) engaging and educating the public through mass communications;

(e) otherwise achieving its goals.

The Commission shall, in designing the events, include in its consideration the history and demographics of the IRS system.

National events should include the following common components:

(f) an opportunity for a sample number of former students and families to share their experiences;

(g) an opportunity for some communities in the regions to share their experiences as they relate to the impacts on communities and to share insights from their community reconciliation processes;

(h) an opportunity for participation and sharing of information and knowledge among former students, their families, communities, experts, church and

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government officials, institutions and the Canadian public;

(i) ceremonial transfer of knowledge through the passing of individual- statement transcripts or community reports/statements. The Commission shall recognize that ownership over IRS experiences rests with those affected by the Indian Residential School legacy;

(j) analysis of the short and long term legacy of the IRS system on individuals, communities, groups, institutions and Canadian society including the intergenerational impacts of the IRS system;

(k) participation of high level government and church officials;

(1) health supports and trauma experts during and after the ceremony for all participants.

(B) Community Events

It is intended that the community events will be designed by communities and respond to the needs of the former students, their families and those affected by the IRS legacy including the special needs of those communities where Indian Residential Schools were located.

The community events are for the purpose of:

(a) acknowledging the capacity of communities to develop reconciliation practices;

(b) developing collective community narratives about the impact of the IRS system on former students, families and communities;

(c) involving church, former school employees and government officials in the reconciliation process, if requested by communities;

(d) creating a record or statement of community narratives – including truths, insights and recommendations - for use in the historical research and report, national events, and for inclusion in the research centre;

(e) educating the public and fostering better relationships with local communities;

(f) allowing for the participation from high level government and church officials, if requested by communities;

(g) respecting the goal of witnessing in accordance with Aboriginal principles.

The Commission, during the first stages of the process in consultation with the IRSSC, shall develop the core criteria and values consistent with the Commission’s mandate that

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Within these parameters communities may submit plans for reconciliation processes to the Commission and receive funding for the processes within the limits of the Commission’s budgetary capacity.

The Commission shall coordinate the collection of individual statements by written, electronic or other appropriate means. Notwithstanding the five year mandate, anyone affected by the IRS legacy will be permitted to file a personal statement in the research centre with no time limitation.

The Commission shall provide a safe, supportive and sensitive environment for individual statement-taking/truth sharing.

The Commission shall not use or permit access to an individual’s statement made in any Commission processes, except with the express consent of the individual.

(D) Closing Ceremony

The Commission shall hold a closing ceremony at the end of its mandate to recognize the significance of all events over the life of the Commission. The closing ceremony shall have the participation of high level church and government officials.

11. Access to Relevant Information

In order to ensure the efficacy of the truth and reconciliation process, Canada and the churches will provide all relevant documents in their possession or control to and for the use of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, subject to the privacy interests of an individual as provided by applicable privacy legislation, and subject to and in compliance with applicable privacy and access to information legislation, and except for those documents for which solicitor-client privilege applies and is asserted.

In cases where privacy interests of an individual exist, and subject to and in compliance with applicable privacy legislation and access to information legislation, researchers for the Commission shall have access to the documents, provided privacy is protected. In cases where solicitor-client privilege is asserted, the asserting party will provide a list of all documents for which the privilege is claimed.

Canada and the churches are not required to give up possession of their original documents to the Commission. They are required to compile all relevant documents in an organized manner for review by the Commission and to provide access to their archives for the Commission to carry out its mandate. Provision of documents does not require provision of original documents. Originals or true copies may be provided or originals may be provided temporarily for copying purposes if the original documents are not to be housed with the Commission.

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Insofar as agreed to by the individuals affected and as permitted by process requirements, information from the Independent Assessment Process (IAP), existing litigation and Dispute Resolution processes may be transferred to the Commission for research and archiving purposes.

12. National Research Centre

13. Privacy

The Commission shall respect privacy laws, and the confidentiality concerns of participants. For greater certainty:

(a) any involvement in public events shall be voluntary;

(b) notwithstanding 2(i), the national events shall be public or in special circumstances, at the discretion of the Commissioners, information may be taken in camera;

(d) if an individual requests that a statement be taken privately, the Commission shall accommodate;

(e) documents shall be archived in accordance with legislation.

14. Budget and Resources

The Commission shall prepare a budget within the first three months of its mandate and submit it to the Minister of Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada for approval. Upon approval of its budget, it will have full authority to make decisions on spending, within the limits of, and in accordance with, its Mandate, its establishing Order in Council, Treasury Board policies, available funds, and its budgetary capacity.

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The Commission shall ensure that there are sufficient resources allocated to the community events over the five year period. The Commission shall also ensure that a portion of the budget is set aside for individual statement-taking/truth sharing and to archive the Commission’s records and information.

Institutional parties shall bear the cost of participation and attendance in Commission events and community events, as well as provision of documents. If requested by the party providing the documents, the costs of copying, scanning, digitalizing, or otherwise reproducing the documents will be borne by the Commission.

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APPENDIX C

CENTRE FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION ADMINISTRATIVE AGREEMENT

BETWEEN:

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (the “TRC”) and

The University of Manitoba (the “University”)

WHEREAS:

A. The TRC, as settlor, and the University, as trustee, entered into a Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Trust Deed dated the 21st day of June, 2013 (the “Trust Deed”);

B. The parties wish to enter into this Agreement to document their understanding regarding the ways that they will, individually, together and with others, work to realize the Purposes of the trust established through the Trust Deed and set more detailed goals and objectives.

NOW THEREFORE the parties, in exchange for the mutual covenants and agreements contained herein, agree as follows:

Definitions

1. All terms defined in the Trust Deed have the same meaning in this Agreement.

2. “Original Proposal Partner” means the institutions and organizations which jointly submitted the Proposal with the University, including:

 The University of British Columbia  Lakehead University  The University of Winnipeg  University College of the North  Université de Saint-Boniface  Red River College  Legacy of Hope Foundation  National Association of Friendship Centres  Canadian Museum of Human Rights

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 Archives Manitoba  Manitoba Museum  Centre for Indigenous Environmental Resources  St. John’s College  St. Paul’s College  Sandy-Saulteaux Spiritual Centre

3. “Objectives” means the objectives the parties seek to accomplish through this Agreement, and in support of the Purposes, as set out herein.

4. “Partner” means an educational institution, research centre, archive, Aboriginal organization, or other interested group or entity engaged as a Partner, pursuant to an agreement with the University and the terms of this Agreement. The definition of “Partner” will include all Original Proposal Partners, so long as they continue to meet the conditions of eligibility set out in this Agreement.

5. “Proposal” means the proposal submitted to the TRC by the University, in association with the Original Proposal Partners, whereby the University and the Original Proposal Partners sought to be the host of the Centre.

Commitment

6. The University affirms its commitment to, on its own and through its Partners, fulfil the expectations established by the Proposal, and diligently pursue the Purposes of the trust set out in the Trust Deed.

Objectives

7. In pursuing the Purposes, the University will use the Settled Property to help fulfil the following objectives (the “Objectives”):

a. to establish an archival repository that is as complete as possible, and which attempts as much as possible to:

i. allow the voices and personalities and cultures of the children who attended residential schools to be heard, celebrated, remembered and personalized;

ii. create a record of the life and family experiences of the children who attended the schools, the families and communities whose children attended the schools, and the staff who operated the schools, not only during the hours they were on school property, but also to show how their lives were lived before, during and after their residential school years;

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iii. continue to offer and provide a safe environment so that anyone affected by the residential school legacy will be permitted to file a personal statement with the Centre, without time restriction;

iv. preserve the historical records and evidence related to the creation, funding and administration of residential schools, any abuses that occurred at the schools, and the history of how the residential school system came to a close, including apologies, litigation and claims resolution, the Settlement Agreement, evolutions in Canada’s education policies towards Aboriginal peoples, and subsequent attempts at reconciliation;

v. preserve the historical and current records and evidence, and promote analysis, research and publications, on Canada’s past and current laws and policies as they affect Aboriginal peoples, rights and cultures; b. to establish a Centre for public education and engagement, commemorative ceremonies, statement gathering, dialogues of reconciliation and celebrations of Aboriginal cultures, languages and ceremonies; c. to encourage and facilitate new research into residential schools, including but not limited to the experiences of former students, families and staff, the impacts and legacy of the system, pathways to reconciliation, oral history and Aboriginal concepts and ethics relating to archives and research; d. to assist Aboriginal peoples in Canada in the exercise of their rights under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples; e. to assist in fulfilling some of the recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, including in particular recommendation 1.10.3, “a national repository of records and video collections related to residential schools, co-ordinated with planning of the recommended Aboriginal Peoples' International University … and its electronic clearinghouse, to facilitate access to documentation and electronic exchange of research on residential schools; provide financial assistance for the collection of testimony and continuing research; work with educators in the design of Aboriginal curriculum that explains the history and effects of residential schools; and conduct public education programs on the history and effects of residential schools and remedies applied to relieve their negative effects”; f. as resources permit, to assist in fulfilling some of the other recommendations of the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, including:

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i. 1.11.13 (relocations of Aboriginal communities); ii. 1.12.4 (Aboriginal history research); iii. 2.3.30 (Aboriginal government transition centre); iv. 2.4.61(b) (Aboriginal heritage resource inventories); v. 4.2.1 (Aboriginal women’s research); vi. 4.5.6 (Métis research centre), and vii. 4.6.21 (traditional knowledge research).

g. to attempt to provide educational and employment opportunities to Aboriginal people;

h. to engage in public educational efforts regarding residential schools which promote understanding and reconciliation;

i. to do all of the above with a national focus, by involving Partners across the country, facilitating national access to the archive, facilitating widespread educational efforts, and providing as much information and service as possible in both official languages and Aboriginal languages.

Governing Circle

8. The Centre will be guided by a Governing Circle. The Governing Circle shall constitute and operate as the advisory committee for the Centre contemplated by the University’s policy on Research Centres, Institutes and Groups (as amended from time to time).

9. The Governing Circle will be composed of seven members, each serving two year terms (capable of renewal), as follows:

a. two members being employees of or holding an academic appointment with the University;

b. two members representing Partners;

c. three members representing survivors or their families or ancestors, one each of First Nations, Inuit and Métis background;

d. at all times, a majority of the seven members must identify as Aboriginal; and

e. members shall:

i. reflect a spirit of shared governance by the University, survivors and their families, and other Partners;

ii. include a diverse set of cultures and languages; and

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iii. possess skills, experience and ability to help fulfill the Purposes and Objectives.

10. The University will create a nomination committee to nominate and select the first members of the Governing Circle and future members as terms of the members of the Governing Circle expire or replacements otherwise become necessary. The University will select the initial nomination committee in consultation with the TRC Commissioners and the Original Proposal Partners. Thereafter, the University will consult with the Governing Circle regarding the ongoing constitution of the nomination committee.

11. The Governing Circle shall make decisions and provide advice to the University and the Partners on matters related to the Centre. In regard to the following topics, the University and the Partners shall show deference to the decisions and advice of the Governing Circle, as long as such advice is not inconsistent with applicable laws, the terms of the Trust Deed, the terms of this Agreement, and the University’s policies:

a. ceremonies and protocols relating to the Purposes, the Objectives, and the Settled Property;

b. Aboriginal concepts important to the Purposes and the Objectives;

c. methods, sources and subject matters for expanding the Centre’s holdings and resources;

d. communications strategies for the Centre, including a logo;

e. establishment of committees, including a Survivors Circle;

f. engagement with external experts and interested parties for the furtherance of the Purposes and Objectives, including inviting such individuals to provide advice to the Governing Circle or to participate in any of its meetings or committees;

g. procedures and rules for Governing Circle meetings; and

h. policies and input to guide the University in the exercise of its powers and discretions in relation to the Trust Deed, especially in relation to lending or disposing of any portion of the Settled Property, or the winding up of the trust.

12. The Governing Circle shall provide advice and guidance to the University and the Partners on other topics, including the following:

a. priorities for the Centre’s activities and spending;

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b. identification and acceptance of new Partners, or removal of existing Partners, and identification of categories of Partners that would benefit the Centre;

c. policies for the exercise of such discretionary decisions as permitted by freedom of information, privacy and copyright law;

d. the application of appropriate research ethics related to Aboriginal matters, including (where appropriate) reference to Aboriginal principles of Ownership, Control, Access and Possession (“OCAP”), Protocols for Native American Archive Materials, and the Tri-Council Policy Statement: Ethical Conduct for Research Involving Humans, specifically the chapter on Research involving the First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples of Canada, or any similar or related protocols which have been or may in the future be developed;

e. exercise of discretion to waive fees under the Manitoba Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act;

f. raising funds to support the Centre to help achieve the Purposes and Objectives;

g. hiring and evaluation of Centre staff;

h. rules regarding the conduct or ethics of members of the Governing Circle and its committees; and

i. whether members of the Governing Circle or any of its committees should receive compensation in regard to their services to the Centre, or reimbursement for expenses incurred due to their participation in Governing Circle meetings.

Survivor’s Circle

13. So long as it is practical, the Governing Circle will establish and recruit members for an advisory committee known as the “Survivor’s Circle”. Members will be survivors of the residential school system, their families or their ancestors. The Survivor’s Circle will provide advice to the Governing Circle, the University and the Partners regarding any matters relevant to the Centre.

TRC Commissioners

14. The TRC Commissioners Murray Sinclair, Wilton Littlechild and Marie Wilson will be honourary patrons of the Centre and will be invited to make themselves available to provide advice, engage in public education, speak with potential funders and perform ceremonial functions.

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Centre within the University

15. The Centre will operate within the academic and administrative structure of the University, and as such, be subject to the policies and rules of the University.

16. Subject to a recommendation by its Senate, and approval by its Board of Governors, the University will cause the Centre to be established as an academic centre or institute of the University, pursuant to its policy on Research Centres, Institutes and Groups (as amended from time to time).

17. The Centre will be overseen by a Director, who shall report administratively to a member of the University’s Executive. The Director will manage the affairs of the Centre, and in so doing, be guided by the advice of the Governing Circle and the policies and rules of the University.

18. The University will make available to the Centre and its staff all the usual supports available to academic and administrative units, including with regard to communications, external relations, fund-raising, human resources, finance, information technology, access to information and privacy, and legal matters.

Continuing Development of the Centre

19. The University will (and will seek commitments from its Partners to) continually work to improve the Centre by expanding its holdings, resources, partnerships and public education and outreach activities, including by:

a. encouraging and collecting additional statements from former students, families and staff about residential school experiences and their impacts, ensuring that appropriate consents are obtained and respected and that appropriate health supports are available;

b. seeking and collecting additional relevant records;

c. seeking and collecting additional relevant artifacts;

d. encouraging the development of community narratives;

e. proactively reviewing records in the archive, and making them available as quickly as possible to the public, as permitted by applicable privacy and other legislation;

f. seeking out researchers and research funding which will use the Centre as a resource;

g. ensuring research and publications which use the Centre as a resource provide appropriate credit to the Centre;

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h. creating static and travelling displays and exhibits relating to residential schools;

i. hosting dialogues on reconciliation;

j. hosting ceremonies and celebrations of Aboriginal cultures and languages;

k. public education and engagement;

l. seeking out grants and other funding supports for the Centre; and

m. seeking a wide range of partnerships.

20. The University will (and will seek commitments from its Partners to) use all reasonable efforts to ensure that the Centre’s holdings are maintained to the highest current technical, archival, public access and privacy standards, and will seek upgrades to the supporting technologies, facilities and methods as necessary over time.

Centre Facilities

21. The University will (and will seek commitments from its Partners to) provide such facilities from its existing infrastructure as are reasonably necessary to fulfil the Purposes, and as resources allow seek new facilities, including for:

a. preservation of physical records and assets;

b. electronic storage and access of electronic records;

c. research activities;

d. Centre staff;

e. meetings of the Governing Circle and its committees;

f. commemorations and museum-like experiential displays about residential schools;

g. hosting educational activities, meetings, and conferences; and

h. traditional Aboriginal ceremonies and gatherings, to be held on a regular basis, particularly related to residential schools, those who have been impacted and those who did not survive.

22. The University will (and will seek commitments from its Partners to) seek

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funding for new public spaces supporting the Centre and its Purposes, including space for displays about residential schools and Aboriginal cultures, space to be available to community groups and suitable for Aboriginal ceremonies, space to facilitate dialogues for reconciliation and conducting public education and community engagement relating to residential schools, Aboriginal rights, cultures and reconciliation.

Centre Staff

23. The core staff of the Centre at the University will be employees of the University. Additional staff positions associated with the Centre may be located at Partner agencies or institutions, and will be employees of or otherwise engaged by the Partners.

24. The University is committed to pro-actively seeking Aboriginal students for academic programs and Aboriginal candidates for staff positions across the entire institution, and to providing training, educational opportunities and support to enhance the ability of Aboriginal students and staff to succeed within the University environment. The University will require its Partners to engage in similar equitable hiring and recruitment practices with regard to positions associated with the Centre.

25. The University will consult with the TRC regarding opportunities for TRC staff to move to positions at the University, with the Centre or otherwise, and encourage applications from qualified candidates.

26. The University has or will fund from its own resources and external sources, a number of staff positions whose duties, in whole or major part, will be to support the Centre. These staff positions have an approximate annual salary value of $250,000, and include:

a. Director; b. Head of Research; and c. Archivist.

The University will ensure these staff positions (or equivalents) remain funded for a minimum of 10 years, and will use all reasonable efforts to ensure continued funding so long as the positions are deemed necessary for the effective operation of the Centre.

27. The University will (and will work with its Partners to) use reasonable efforts to establish sufficient human resources and pursue funding opportunities to support additional Centre staff positions, including those described in its Proposal or which may otherwise be required to support achieving the Purposes and Objectives. It is acknowledged that in order to make progress toward the Purposes and Objectives at a reasonable pace, the University will need to provide its own staff and seek funding for additional Centre staff, with a variety of skills,

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experience and abilities.

28. The staffing needs of the Centre will change over time, but it is acknowledged that among the skills initially required will be staff to:

a. provide communications, public outreach and public education;

b. create, maintain and update the Centre’s web site;

c. edit and redact video recordings to comply with applicable privacy and other laws, and make them available to the public and researchers;

d. review and redact records as necessary to comply with applicable privacy and other laws, and make them available to the public and researchers;

e. seek out additional donations of relevant records from organizations and individuals, including those who were not parties to the Settlement Agreement;

f. seek out additional Partners for the Centre; and

g. engage in fundraising for the Centre.

Centre Finances

29. The University will (and will work with its Partners to) make reasonable efforts to provide or raise the funds necessary for the Centre to fulfil the Purposes and Objectives.

30. In addition to its other commitments, the University will seek and collect donations, grants, sponsorships, and other types of funding and support for the Centre, including:

a. donations from private individuals, corporations, public and private funding agencies and other organizations in support of the Centre’s general operations;

b. grants and gifts in support of renovating, expanding or constructing facilities which support the Centre;

c. grants and gifts in support of additional Centre staff positions;

d. grants and gifts in support of research proposals utilizing the Centre and its resources;

e. grants and gifts in support of professorships, chairs, and other academic positions dedicated (in whole or in part) to research relevant to residential

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schools;

f. grants and gifts in support of scholarships or bursaries for Aboriginal students;

g. sponsorships for conferences, meeting, displays, exhibits and events which promote understanding and reconciliation; and

h. commitments from Partners to help support the Centre, both centrally and with regard to specific Partner activities.

Access and Privacy

31. Subject to the below, the University will make the Settled Property as accessible to the public as possible.

32. The Mandate requires that the archives be preserved and accessed “subject to and in compliance with applicable privacy and access to information legislation”. To the extent possible under applicable legislation, records among the Settled Property will be made available to the public in an un-redacted form.

33. It is intended that the Settled Property, once under the control of the University, will be subject to The Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (Manitoba) (“FIPPA”), which is substantially equivalent to the federal Access to Information Act and Privacy Act. The University and the TRC will take all reasonable steps to work with the Government of Manitoba to ensure the records among the Settled Property are subject to FIPPA, and to achieve any new statutes or amendments to legislation or regulations necessary to ensure that the Settled Property is not less accessible than it would be if it were held at Library and Archives Canada.

34. The Settled Property has not been reviewed by the TRC for the purposes as assessing which records or information can be made publicly accessible under applicable legislation. Upon receipt of the Settled Property, the University will begin the task of reviewing the Settled Property to determine what records and information can be made publicly accessible in both un- redacted and redacted form under applicable legislation as soon as possible, with priority to be given to statements given to the TRC.

35. Those portions of the Settled Property which cannot be made generally accessible to the public may be made available to researchers in accordance with applicable legislation, appropriate ethics and other approvals, and in accordance with the requirements of the University.

36. Certain portions of the Settled Property, including records related to the IAP process under the Settlement Agreement, may be subject to particular confidentiality provisions, imposed by a court of competent jurisdiction, or

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otherwise. The University will use all reasonable efforts to protect such records in accordance with the confidentiality requirements.

Intellectual Property

37. Upon transfer of the Settled Property to the University, the TRC transfers all intellectual property rights, including consents, licences, permissions and Crown copyright, that it has with respect to the Settled Property, including the right to make the information publicly available pursuant to the Settlement Agreement, subject to freedom of information and privacy legislation.

Centre Partners

38. The University will continually seek out partnerships with other Aboriginal rights research centres and archives, Aboriginal cultural and educational institutions, Aboriginal organizations, educational institutions, museums, libraries and archives and other interested groups or entities (“Partners”) to help it fulfil the Purposes and Objectives. In so doing, the University will attempt to engage Partners who will:

a. make the Settled Property more accessible and better used throughout all regions of Canada;

b. contribute additional holdings to the Centre archive;

c. facilitate additional oral history and community narratives, research, and reports;

d. support a broad national scope of public education, research, cultural and reconciliation activities;

e. be inclusive of a wide variety of individuals and groups;

f. assist the Centre in serving the public in a variety of indigenous languages and English and French; and

g. fulfill regional or community needs and desires related to residential school research, education, and reconciliation.

39. Potential Partners will be invited to enter into a contractual relationship with the University, which at a minimum, will impose the obligations on the Partner described in Schedule “A”.

40. The University will ensure that Partners are aware of the terms of the Trust Deed and this Administrative Agreement, and that all contractual relationships with Partners are consistent with these documents. Any inconsistency between a

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Partner contract and the Trust Deed or Administrative Agreement will be resolved in favour of the Trust Deed or Administrative Agreement.

Naming of the Centre

41. The University, in consultation with its Original Proposal Partners and the TRC Commissioners, will engage in a thoughtful naming process for the Centre, which will include:

a. conducting a survey of Canadian Aboriginal languages for the words associated with archives, libraries, research, reconciliation, resilience, survival, and other relevant concepts, with a view to drawing inspiration from this survey for the naming of the Centre;

b. conducting a survey of the names of international research centres with similar purposes;

c. consulting elders representing a variety of Aboriginal cultures, and parties to the Settlement Agreement; and

d. hosting a thoughtful and appropriate naming and opening ceremony.

42. The naming of the Centre shall be subject to the approval of the University’s Board of Governors, in accordance with its policy on the Naming of Academic Units (as amended from time to time).

43. The naming of any facilities in which the Centre is located shall be subject to the approval of the University’s Board of Governors, in accordance with its policy on the Naming of Buildings, Part of Buildings and Spaces (as amended from time to time).

Term and Termination

44. This Agreement will continue in force, and be terminated only upon the termination of the Deed, in accordance with its terms.

General Terms

45. The recitals form an integral part of this Agreement. Headings are for convenience only, and do not form part of the terms of this Agreement.

46. Should any part of this Agreement be found to be illegal or unenforceable, such part shall be severed from the Agreement, and the rest remain in full force and effect, providing that the substantive intent of the Agreement is preserved.

47. This Agreement shall be governed by the applicable laws of the Province of

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Manitoba and Canada.

48. This Agreement and the Trust Deed shall be public documents.

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APPENDIX D

CENTRE FOR TRUTH AND RECONCILIATION TRUST DEED BETWEEN:

Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada as settlor (the “TRC”)

and

The University of Manitoba as trustee (the “University”)

WHEREAS:

A. The TRC is created pursuant to the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement dated May 8, 2006 (the “Settlement Agreement”) and subsequent federal Orders-in-Council;

B. The University is a post-secondary educational institution created by the Legislature of the Province of Manitoba, pursuant to The University of Manitoba Act (Manitoba);

C. The Settlement Agreement, through its Schedule “N”, establishes a “Mandate for the Truth and Reconciliation Commission” (the “Mandate”), a copy of which is attached as Schedule “A”;

D. The Mandate states that “the Commissioners are authorized and required in the public interest to archive all such documents, materials, and transcripts or recordings of statements received, in a manner that will ensure their preservation and accessibility to the public and in accordance with access and privacy legislation, and any other applicable legislation”; that “all materials collected through this process should be accessible to the public” after “taking into account the relevant law and any recommendations by the Commission concerning continued confidentiality”; and directs the TRC to establish a National Research Centre, which this Deed refers to as the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (the “Centre”), which will “ensure the preservation of its archives” and “be accessible to former students, their families and communities, the general public, researchers and educators”;

E. The Mandate further directs that “all individual statements are of equal importance, even if these statements are delivered after the completion of the report” and “anyone affected by the IRS legacy will be permitted to file a personal statement in the research centre with no time limitation”;

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F. The Mandate further directs that, “insofar as agreed to by the individuals affected and as permitted by process requirements, information from the Independent Assessment Process(“IAP”), existing litigation and dispute resolution processes may be transferred to the Commission for research and archiving purposes”; and Schedule “D” of the Settlement Agreement, paragraph “o” states that in the IAP “Claimants will also be given the option of having the transcript deposited in an archive developed for the purpose”; and it is the intention of the settlor and the trustee that the Centre be recognized as an “archive developed for the purpose”;

G. The TRC and the University intend for the Centre to respect any conditions of confidentiality relating to IAP records that may be established by a court of competent jurisdiction, or otherwise be agreed by the TRC and University;

H. The TRC and the University intend for the Centre to ensure that all materials created or received by the Centre shall, in accordance with the Settlement Agreement, “be archived with a purpose and tradition in keeping with the objectives and spirit of the Commission’s work”;

I. The TRC intends to provide to the University all of the records it has collected or created through its work, including survivor statements and artifacts, as well as any of its physical assets which may be of use to the University (the “Settled Property”);

J. The University intends to continue to add to the Settled Property even after the TRC mandate has expired through the continued collection of individual statements and the collection of records from the parties to the Settlement Agreement and others;

K. The TRC, as settlor, wishes to establish the Centre with the University through the creation of a trust for the benefit of the people of Canada, and intends to transfer to the University, as trustee, the Settled Property;

L. The University, as trustee, has agreed to hold and deal with the Settled Property pursuant to the conditions of trust set out herein.

NOW THEREFORE this Deed witnesses that the TRC, as settlor, hereby declares that the Settled Property will be transferred to the University, as trustee, to be held on the following conditions of trust:

Definitions

1. “Aboriginal” means the indigenous peoples and individuals of Canada, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.

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2. “Administration Agreement” means the separate administrative agreement between the TRC and the University setting out details concerning the administration and operation of the Centre.

3. “Centre” means the Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, or national research centre on Indian Residential Schools, or such other name as may be chosen, which is to be established by the TRC pursuant to its Mandate.

4. “Governing Circle” means the Governing Circle established pursuant to the Administration Agreement, which will provide guidance in the operation of the Centre.

5. “Mandate” means the mandate of the TRC, as set out in Schedule “N” of the Settlement Agreement, and attached hereto as Schedule “A”.

6. “Purposes” means the purposes of the trust established through this Deed, as set out herein.

7. “Settled Property” has the meaning assigned in the recitals, and includes any other property which the TRC, the University, or any other person may subsequently donate or otherwise transfer to the Centre.

8. “Settlement Agreement” means the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement dated May 8, 2006.

Purpose of the Trust

9. The University shall use and preserve the Settled Property exclusively for the following purposes (the “Purposes”):

a. to ensure the preservation of the TRC’s archives and other materials relating to residential schools;

b. to make the materials accessible to former students, their families and communities, the general public, researchers and educators, in accordance with access and privacy legislation, and any other applicable legislation; and

c. to promote engagement of the public regarding residential schools and other Aboriginal issues, including through the fostering of understanding and reconciliation.

Transfer of Settled Property

10. The Settled Property shall be transferred to the University at such times as agreed between the TRC and the University.

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11. Any additional assets, including survivor statements, historical records, documents and artifacts, subsequently collected by the University for inclusion in the Centre, from any source, will be added to and form a part of the Settled Property for the purposes of interpreting this Deed.

Powers of Trustee

12. In addition to any other powers and discretions conferred upon the University, as trustee, under The Trustee Act (Manitoba) or other applicable law, and provided that at all times the University remains the trustee and the Settled Property is protected by access to information and privacy legislation, the University shall have full authority to enter into any transactions or do any acts that the University, in its unfettered discretion, deems advisable to help achieve the Purposes, including:

a. acquire additional property to be added to the Settled Property;

b. engage with other persons and organizations as partners in managing the Settled Property, for the furtherance of the Purposes;

c. lend portions of the Settled Property to other persons and organizations, for the furtherance of the Purposes;

d. earn income or collect fees related to the use of the Settled Property, so long as the income is reinvested exclusively for the support of the Centre;

e. register the University’s ownership rights, as trustee, in any of the Settled Property; and

f. dispose of portions of the Settled Property which are duplicate, redundant, or of little or no archival value.

13. The University, as trustee, shall develop policies to guide the exercise of its powers and discretions, and shall seek advice from the Governing Circle in the development of such policies and in the exercise of the University’s powers and discretions.

14. The University, as trustee, when exercising its powers and discretions, shall demonstrate respect for Aboriginal protocols and ceremonies in relation to Aboriginal sacred objects and ethics relating to Aboriginal research.

Restrictions on Trustee

15. The University, as trustee, may not:

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a. sell or otherwise dispose of for consideration any portion of the Settled Property; or

b. pay to itself any fees for the management of the Settled Property through the depletion of the Settled Property. Trust Irrevocable

16. This Deed and the settlement of property hereunder are irrevocable.

17. It is the intention of this Deed to establish the Centre as a resource for the benefit of the people of Canada, in perpetuity.

Termination of Trust

18. Should, no earlier than 10 years from the date of this Deed, and after consulting the Governing Circle, the University become unwilling or unable to continue to host the Centre, the University may transfer the Settled Property to another entity on conditions of trust substantially similar to those contained in this Deed. Pursuant to s.9 of The Trustee Act (Manitoba), as amended from time to time, the University shall apply to the Manitoba Court of Queen’s Bench for approval of a substitute trustee, and advice and direction on the appropriate transfer of the Settled Property. The University shall give reasonable notice of any application to all partners of the Centre, the Assembly of First Nations, the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, the Government of Canada and to the senior offices of the United Church of Canada, Anglican Church of Canada, Presbyterian Church in Canada and the Roman Catholic Church. This Deed shall terminate upon the complete transfer of all Settled Property.

General Terms

19. The recitals form an integral part of this Deed. Headings are for convenience only, and do not form part of the terms of this Deed.

20. Should any part of this Deed be found to be illegal or unenforceable, such part shall be severed from the Deed, and the rest remain in full force and effect, providing that the substantive intent of the Deed is preserved.

21. Should, at some time in the future, it become impossible or impractical for the University to follow or comply with the terms of this Deed, the University may apply to the courts of Manitoba to vary the trust, in accordance with the relevant provisions of The Trustee Act (Manitoba), provided notice of any application is given as set out in article 18.

22. This Deed shall be governed by the applicable laws of the Province of Manitoba and Canada. This Deed is subject to The Trustee Act (Manitoba),

163 which provides that “any person creating” the trust or “any person beneficially interested” in the trust may apply for an appropriate order to be determined by a court of Manitoba.