Friday, 20th June 2014
The records that hang in the balance are irreplaceable and comprehensive, said Ry Moran, director of the National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, the facility that may be tasked with housing the documents should the court rule against destroying them.
PHOTO COURTESY OF ALGOMA UNIVERSITY
Nearly 38,000 school survivors recalled horrific abuses. The official in charge of the survivors’ claims process now seeks to destroy the testimony.
“If that information is destroyed, as sensitive as it may be, we have to ask ourselves: What happens to the truth? What happens to this huge collection of the voices of survivors?” said Moran.
He said material at the research centre would not immediately, or definitely, be made public but that the majority-aboriginal board of governors, advised by a committee of survivors from across Canada, would determine how to handle it.
“In the future, we have to be able to critically reflect on the past. And when we look at a big collection like this, it is intensely personal, it is unique, it can’t be replicated; it would be inhumane to try to replicate it at any point in the future and the destruction of this information is a little bit scary to me. I would consider it to be a major loss,” said Moran.
The Independent Assessment Process was set up to evaluate the claims of survivors of Indian residential schools. More than 21,000 hearings have been held where individuals detail the horrific abuses they experienced at residential schools in Canada. Those hearings have generated 800,000 documents and 19,500 written decisions so far. The process is creating more documents daily. The last hearings are slated to be held in spring 2016 and the work finalized by 2018, according to a press release. “I think it was decided from the beginning that there was, in fact, a confidential, private process. That part of it was decided, but what wasn’t decided fully was how that would be operationalized,” said Shapiro in an interview with the Star. “It is a logical conclusion to what is intended to be a private, confidential process.” Shapiro says researchers have a wealth of other evidence to rely on to document the history of residential schools in Canada, saying that around 7,000 survivors have independently shared their experiences with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission at public sessions. “I don’t see how adding intimate details of this abuse or these circumstances at residential schools is necessary to create a complete historic record,” said Shapiro. “The cost is simply too great in terms of sacrificing the privacy interests of the individual for the collective knowledge.”
Jonathan Dewar, director of the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre, said survivors he has spoken to have been split on their views about the privacy of the hearings.
“I have heard survivors say, ‘I would never have done this if I never thought this was 100 per cent private,’ and other survivors who say, ‘I’ve told my story and it absolutely has to be shared so that people understand what happened to me and others,’” said Dewar.
The fate of the materials from the claims process is set to be decided at a court hearing to be held from July 14 to July 16 where a judge will hear arguments from representatives for the government, the claims process and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
The commission, a separate body mandated to produce a full report on the Indian residential school system, is expected to push back against the move.
From : http://torontostar.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx
