Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission was a seven-year project which examined the country’s residential school system.

For more than 100 years, Indigenous children were taken from their families to boarding schools with the sole purpose to “kill the Indian in the child”.

The schools were run by various church organisations on behalf of the Canadian government, and many children were subject to physical and sexual abuse.

In 2015, the commission found that cultural genocide had been committed against Canada’s Indigenous people.

Chief Wilton Littlechild was one of the three commissioners who travelled the country hearing survivor’s testimony. He has been speaking to Tim O’Callaghan.

Eye-witness accounts brought to life by archive. Witness History is for those fascinated by and curious about the past. We take you to the events that have shaped our world through the eyes of the people who were there.

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(Photo: Female students at a residential school with a nun in 1940. Credit: Reuters/ Canada. Dept. Indian and Northern Affairs/Library and Archives Canada)