A powerful library of suffering

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 03/11/2015 (3718 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation has fulfilled a promise. It is a promise that was made across the country in small community gatherings, in large conference centres, in survivors’ homes, at gravesites and meeting rooms filled with video cameras and recording equipment. The promises were made at every Truth and Reconciliation Commission event, large and small, remote and urban where the commission gathered statements. It is a promise that came through the words of the commissioners and through the countless others who worked so hard to document the residential school history.

We promised we would never forget survivors; that we would forever honour what they had experienced, and that we would do our absolute best to ensure their history found its way into the dominant Canadian narrative.

This is why we chose to launch the database at a major education gathering of more than 1,700 students and educators from across the province. Survivors told us to get this information into the hands of young learners, and today we have taken additional steps on this road.

To put things in context, this collection of approximately five million documents was collected over four short years. This equates to roughly 3,500 documents arriving at the commission’s doorstep every day during a four-year period. There were weeks when documents arrived in the tens of thousands.

The centre was asked to make this collection as accessible as possible while protecting the privacy rights of survivors and others named in the document collection.

And therein lies a significant challenge.

We also promised survivors we would not create further harm to them in the release of the materials that were collected over the course of the commission’s mandate. The collection is vast, it is diverse, and it contains a great deal of sensitive information. The work ahead is daunting. We will do our best to be engaged and diligent as we try to respond to the many requests that are already flooding into the centre.

Our initial launch of records from the databases will be limited. In making these records available we have tried to strike a balance between public access and proceeding cautiously. To be honest, the responsibility of balancing these two priorities weighs heavily on us.

But as the elders have said to us at the centre, there are times in life when you walk on sand, and other times you walk on rocks. On sand you can run, on rocks you step carefully. We believe this initial release of documents reflects these cautious steps forward. This is the start of the next phase of the journey rather than the end.

And perhaps, in looking back, the real magic of the moment is not in what’s available to the public immediately. The magic reveals itself when we take a step back and reflect on the collective moment we share as a nation with the release of this database.

The centre is the product of literally tens of thousands of people rallying together to create a more complete and robust history as well as a new narrative — a history that was largely ignored, silenced and suppressed. None of this would be possible without the health supports that cared for the survivors as they gave their testimony, the church and government officials that found ways to produce their documents, the thousands of people who attended commission events, the visionaries who drafted the settlement agreement, the technicians who laboured in archives scanning documents, and the statement gatherers who recorded the history.

And most importantly, none of this would have been possible without the courage of survivors who fought so bravely for recognition in the first place and endeavoured to share their vision for the centre.

When we take a step back and look at what we have accomplished, collectively, as a country, it is amazing. We have created a unique set of historical records that has never before been assembled in one place. The potential for learning, understanding, hope and reconciliation through the work of the centre and its partners is limitless. We may not fully appreciate this potential for years to come.

The fact this collection even exists says something very powerful. It says we can change, that we can reverse the tide of history, that we are changing and that if we set our minds to it, we can reshape the entire trajectory of a nation, one recording, one document, one voice and one step at a time.

In turning this database over to young minds at the centre’s education day events we are anchoring change in history. Those students will be forever affected by their contact with this knowledge.

We look forward to what the future holds.

 

Ry Moran is director of National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation. Aimée Craft is the centre’s director of research.