New TRC research centre opens at University of Manitoba
- Fraser Needham | November 08, 2015
The goal of a new research centre at the University of Manitoba is to ensure the stories, memories and dark legacy of Indian residential school survivors is never forgotten.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation officially opened at the Winnipeg-based university on November 3.
The new centre contains hundreds of photos, countless hours of video, government documents, church records and thousands of testimonial statements from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
The research centre will also be the new home to the Bentwood Box which contains various items including a broken brick from a residential school, Saskatoon police hat and miniature birch bark canoe.
It’s database is also accessible to anyone across Canada via the centre’s website.
Ry Moran is the director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.
He says the hope is that the extensive number of records the centre holds will spur academics to further investigate the broader ramifications of the residential school system.
“Researchers are going to be very important,” Moran says. “Both at the community level and from academic institutions at further exploring both the documentary and oral history of the residential schools. And also digging deeper into the record and finding out what else was said in there beyond just what was said about residential schools. Because there is a lot of information in there and survivors often talked about other effects that being a subject of a an aggressive colonial state had on them.”
While the goal of the new centre is to provide as much information on the Indian residential school system as possible, Moran says at the same time they have been very careful to protect the privacy of survivors while being cognizant of the sensitive nature of the material.
He says the documents that are currently accessible at the centre are the ones where survivors decided to go public with their statements.
Private statements are another matter and these stories will only ever be made public if these survivors indicate they wish this to be the case, Moran says.
He adds although the centre contains countless documents and other materials, there are many other records still out there and it will be an ongoing process of collecting them.
Moran also points out that the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is not only for residential school survivors and their families but is there to educate the broader non-Aboriginal public.
“We are working on a number of exciting partnerships, we’ve got a number of great partners working alongside of us including universities, Aboriginal organizations and a variety of other partners,” he says. “And we are going to be looking to those partners to help us spread the word and take up the cause of sharing this information to ensure that as many Canadians as possible have access to this collection.”
A number of prominent Aboriginal activists attended the opening ceremonies of the new centre including former Chief of the Assembly of First Nations Phil Fontaine and Executive Director of the First Nations Child and Family Caring Society Cindy Blackstock.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation’s database can be accessed at http://nctr.ca.
Related stories:
- TRC finds Canada committed "cultural genocide"
- Hundreds attend TRC commemoration event in Saskatoon
- PHOTOS: Saskatoon TRC commemoration