Manitobans travel to Ottawa for final Truth and Reconciliation Commission event

Aboriginal Affairs Minister Bernard Valcourt is expected to deliver a statement of reconciliation to the House of Commons on Monday as part of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's last event this week.

In 2010, the TRC was tasked with ensuring the voices of residential school survivors were heard by Canadians in an effort to promote healing.

This week, the commission is holding "The Closing Event" over four days – ending on June 3.

The TRC is set to release its findings on Tuesday, along with several events including a walk for reconciliation, a grand entry and a closing ceremony.

• A history of residential schools in Canada
• Aboriginal nutritional experiments had Ottawa's approval
• How ballet slippers, broken chalice are helping to heal residential school wounds

Valcourt is expected to participate in all four days of the event, and he will also hold a lunch with former students and aboriginal youth.

"The TRC and the process is really about engaging Canadians in a conversation about their history – our collective history," said former Assembly of First Nations chief Phil Fontaine. "[It's] about exposing the residential school experience, all of what happened with residential schools, good and bad. And sadly, there are too many sad, tragic stories."

Fontaine, himself a survivor of a residential school in Manitoba, said the TRC had to expose an experience that directly affected 150,000 aboriginal students, and "righting the wrongs and fixing the many things that are wrong is not something that will happen overnight but that doesn't take away from the fact that we are dealing with issues that require urgent action."

He said questions remain about whether or not the report's authors will use the word genocide in the executive summary of the report.

'It is and it was a genocide'

Fontaine and others have worked for years to get the federal government to refer to the residential school system as genocide.

"We don't want to paper over all of the things that were terribly wrong, but at the same time we want to express this experience in a way that reaches Canadians and will result in a collective process of fixing the many things that were wrong with the experience," Fontaine said.

Residential school survivor Mary Courchene said she unequivocally believes the residential school system amounted to genocide.

Courchene was taken from her home at age five and put into Fort Alexander Indian Residential School No. 96. She was barred from going home to see her parents during the school year – even though her home was just next door.

"For the next ten years, that institutionalised living became the norm for me," said Courchene. "I could never ever wrap my head around why I had to stay there when my parents lived next door. It was the most horrific experience for me because in those pre-school years I was the happiest kid, never wanted for anything, lived a normal life with a mom and dad who were nurturing. I had siblings – suddenly, abruptly, that attachment was severed."

Courchene said she hopes the TRC will acknowledge it was genocide.

"Truth and reconciliation is telling our truth. Before reconciliation, you have to face your truth, and we are now facing our truth, and we have to talk about our truth," she said. "I believe that's part of our truth. It is and it was a genocide -- a genocide on a whole ... culture of people."

On Thursday, Beverley McLachlin, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, said Canada attempted "cultural genocide" against aboriginal peoples. 

Justice Murray Sinclair, the commission's chair, said he agreed with that characterization.

Manitoba survivors travel to Ottawa for ceremonies

Ted Fontaine is a residential school survivor from Manitoba who plans to be in Ottawa for the ceremonies this week.

Fontaine, from Sagkeeng First Nation, was taken from his home at the age of seven and put into a residential school.

He endured years of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.

Fontaine said the TRC has been an important vehicle for dialogue.

"It has helped bring back the attributes we had as an Indian people, and it made us realize that we weren't all – like it wasn't always miserable and revengeful and all this stuff that comes with what happened with me. That's almost all disappeared."

Fontaine said despite recent progress, the work is not over. He said more help for survivors is needed.

"The next step is to do what we've been doing but also help individuals, not just entities," he said. "Don't grow entities and say, 'You go and help them,' but direct help and a lot of education."