Inuit groups urge action following TRC report

The Truth and Reconciliation report receives applause June 2 in Ottawa. Inuit groups in Nunavut and Nunavik have commended the report, calling it the beginning of the reconciliation process. (PHOTO BY JIM BELL)

Inuit organizations in Nunavut and Nunavik say the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is just the beginning of a healing process for families across Canada’s North.

The TRC released its long-awaited report June 2, summarizing testimony from more than 6,000 Aboriginal resident school survivors, documenting accounts of discrimination and deprivation along with physical, sexual, emotional and mental abuse.

That report, issued by Justice Murray Sinclair, makes 94 recommendations to all levels of government, while urging Canadians to embrace the principle of reconciliation with Canada’s Indigenous people.

Now, with that truth made public for all Canadians to see, reconciliation can begin, said Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. President Cathy Towtongie.

“It is of vital importance that Justice Sinclair’s report, which details the horrible realities of residential school, becomes part of the conversation in all Canadian households,” Towtongie said in a June 2 release.

“All Canadians have a personal responsibility to learn about this time in Canadian history in order to better understand the lasting impacts and legacy that residential schools continue to have on a large percentage of this country’s Aboriginal population,” she said.

“We still have much grieving to do for this time in our lives and our families and our history, and must continue to work to find ways to heal and move on to healthier futures.”

In northern Quebec, Makivik Corp., which represents Nunavik’s Inuit, commended the TRC’s report June 2.

But the birthright organization noted the TRC’s work has also “opened the flood gate” on issues that have plagued Nunavimmiut residential school survivors for decades.

In a June 2 release, Makivik pointed to the region’s high rate of suicides, school drop-outs, unemployment and violence.

“Health officials and the Inuit population have known for years the residential school era was much to blame for the social [disfunction,]” Makivik said.

Now is the time to go from “apology to action,” Makivik president Jobie Tukkiapik said.

“Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper issued an apology to former residential school students in 2008, and now we have been given the whole story and a blue print to recovery,” Tukkiapik said June 2.

“Let’s do it.”

That should take the form of new legislation around education, language protection, health and justice for Inuit communities, Makivik said.

The TRC’s Inuit sub-commission hosted hearings in communities in both Nunavut and Nunavik in 2011, where the commission took statements from hundreds of former residential school students.

It is estimated that between 3,000 and 4,000 Nunavummiut and about 350 Nunavimmiut were forced to attend residential schools.

Both Nunavut Tunngavik Inc. and Makivik were party to the lawsuit that resulted in the Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

That meant that Inuit in both Nunavut and Nunavik who were forced to attend residential schools were included in the settlement’s program, including the Common Experience Payment, Independent Assessment Process and the Personal Education Credit — although Inuit were found to benefit less from those programs than their Aboriginal counterparts.

Other Canadian Inuit are still fighting for their own reconciliation.

In the Nunatsiavut region of Labrador, Inuit residential school survivors held “walks of reconciliation” June 2 to honour former students who were excluded from the federal settlement agreement due to a legal technicality.

Residential schools in Labrador were established before 1949, when Newfoundland and Labrador officially joined Canada as a province, which meant the prime minister omitted Labrador from his 2008 apology.

Approximately 1,000 Inuit residential school survivors who attended five schools in Newfoundland and Labrador have filed five separate class-action suits against the government of Newfoundland and Labrador, the Moravian Mission and the International Grenfell Association.