Dozens of people attended a meeting last week and told the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) that onerous paperwork made going through the residential school settlement difficult or impossible for survivors.
They also said there are still too few supports for survivors and their descendants.
Avery Zingel/NNSL photo
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) was in Yellowknife Nov. 15 to gather insights from survivors and intergenerational survivors of residential schools who took part in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
What the national centre heard last week could determine how future settlements agreements are carried out, including class action lawsuits for day schools, segregated hospitals like Charles Camsell Indian Hospital and the '60s Scoop agreement, said Ry Moran, the centre's director.
The centre is travelling to seven communities before it compiles a report on survivors' feedback.
“Just because the settlement agreement is over, doesn’t mean that we’ve got all these issues resolved. Everyone recognizes these issues are going to take decades if not generations to resolve,” said Moran.
At least 30 people attended proceedings at St. Patrick's Parish in Yellowknife, sharing their struggles with accessing reparations, variable quality of their adjudicators and the need for accessible and culturally relevant health and healing services.
Although the settlement agreement covered survivors of residential schools, intergenerational survivors whose parents and relatives attended are suffering from the schools’ lasting effects, said Liidlii Kue Chief Gerald Antoine in an interview.
“There needs to be support and assistance for us to get out of this mess that the residential school and genocidal processes have created,” said Antoine.
“It’s good to see the NCTR focusing on the survivors, however, if you look at the people that are living the consequences, it’s also the children and the great grandchildren. They have ongoing struggles. We need to support and assess the family and their functions and responsibilities,” he said.
Improved mental health supports needed: survivor
An educator and survivor in attendance, who wished not to be identified, said youth who are acting out in schools are also in need of improved mental health supports.
Children are “having emotional difficulties” and can’t verbalize the root causes of those difficulties, because residential schools discouraged emotional vulnerability, she said.
Children need consistent and culturally relevant supports to “empower” them emotionally but they aren’t the focal point of the settlement, she said.
Implementation of the $2-billion settlement agreement began in September 2007, after a massive lawsuit brought by 80,000 survivors against the federal government and four churches.
It is the largest class action settlement in Canadian history and covers the Common Experience Payment and a separate Independent Assessment Process (IAP), health and healing services, funding for commemoration and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) itself.
The IAP offered an out-of-court process for resolving claims of sexual, physical and psychological abuse.
Though the Aboriginal Healing Foundation was instrumental in helping survivors make statements for the IAP, it closed in September 2014 to the dismay of the TRC.
They wrote several times to the federal government to keep the foundation but it never acknowledged their correspondence, said former commissioner Marie Wilson.
In 2012, the TRC also recommended “a sustainable, northern, mental health and wellness healing centre” specializing in childhood trauma and long-term grief for survivors and their families. That recommendation hadn’t yet been fulfilled, said Wilson.
The commissioner agreed that survivors lack adequate supports to navigate the IAP and often wait long periods of time to learn the outcome of their claims.
The result is that some survivors missed deadlines or had their claims rejected on technicalities, the NTCR heard.
Beatrice Bernhardt and her husband Ernie are both residential school survivors who attended the meeting. Ernie helped hundreds of people in the Kitikmeot fill out their applications for the IAP without external supports, even though applicants had language barriers, said Beatrice Bernhardt.
Beatrice, who is from Kugluktuk, attended Grollier Hall for 12 years.
“(The IAP) was tough for them, even me. You’re thinking of a time in your life where great harm was done to you. We never talked about this stuff. We were so ashamed and felt guilt. For the short period of time we were home with our parents, we just wanted to enjoy,” she said.
The documents and statements gathered through the IAP document some of the most egregious damage and are at risk of being destroyed forever after the Supreme Court of Canada ruled the information was confidential.
Those records will be destroyed in the next 10 to 15 years unless survivors come forward and say they want those records to be saved but “survivors mostly don’t know that” and weren’t made aware during their hearings, said Wilson.
“We run the risk in Canada that the very worst of our history is destroyed because of that court order,” she said.