On December 15, 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission presented its Final Report on the impacts of residential schools, just eighteen years after the last institution closed its doors. What the TRC compiled was a record of a system designed to forcibly assimilate Indigenous children, including at least 3,200 who died there. Murray Sinclair, one of the TRC’s three commissioners, who passed away last November, maintained that the true number of deaths was far higher.
As Justin Trudeau, then the newly elected prime minister, accepted the report from Sinclair, he thanked survivors for their courage, saying, “Today, there is reason for hope . . . we need nothing less than a total renewal of the relationship between Canada and Indigenous peoples.” He promised to “completely implement” the ninety-four Calls to Action in the Final Report, which outlined the changes necessary to repair that relationship.
But, a decade later, most of those calls have not been answered. . .
