TRC launches hearings in Baffin region

Peter Irniq, a former residential school student at the Joseph Bernier School in Chesterfield Inlet, speaks at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearing in Iqaluit last March, as commissioners Marie Wilson and Chief Wilton Littlechild take notes. The TRC’s Inuit sub-commission is now touring other communities on Baffin Island to gather students’ statements. (FILE PHOTO)

The Inuit sub-commission of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission launched a tour of Baffin Island communities Feb. 7.

The community forums begin today in Pond Inlet before heading on to Clyde River, Pangnirtung and wrapping up in Qikitarjuaq Feb. 16.

Jennifer Hunt-Poitras and Robert Watt, co-chairs of the Inuit sub-commission, will host the public forums where former students can talk about their residential school experiences.

“The commission will focus its efforts on getting to as many Inuit communities as possible to collect statements from survivors and their families,” Watt said in a TRC news release.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) first launched its northern tour last March, 2011, when it visited eight communities in Nunavut and Nunavik to hear from residential school survivors.

But the Inuit sub-commission, formed to serve former Inuit residential students, promised to make itself available to other communities by request.

The TRC was established as a result of the 2007 Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.

Its mandate: to inform all Canadians about what happened during the country’s 150-year residential school history.

Statements taken from Inuit residential school students will be archived in a national research centre.

But while the community hearings are open to the public, the commission will also collect private statements from those who do not wish to speak publicly.

Hearings will be hosted in Pond Inlet on Feb. 7, in Clyde River Feb. 9-10, in Pangnirtung on Feb. 13 and in Qikiqtarjuaq Feb. 15-16.

For more information visit www.trc.ca.

Those who would like to the Inuit sub-commission to come to their community can contact Jennifer Hunt-Poitras in Yellowknife at (867) 766-8491 or Robert Watt in Ottawa at (613) 992-8183.