Truth and reconciliation committee near Lynn Beyak's hometown plans to meet with her
'I'm very much looking forward to sitting down with her,' says Lac Seul Chief Clifford Bull
It's not too late for Senator Lynn Beyak to learn from reconciliation efforts in her own backyard, according to Lac Seul First Nation Chief Clifford Bull, himself a residential school survivor.
Beyak said last week that she doesn't need anymore education about the horrors of the residential school system because she "suffered" alongside Indigenous people who were sent to the institutions. Those comments came after a speech in which she said Canadians should "focus on the good" done by the residential school system.
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On Tuesday, Bull added his voice to calls for Beyak's resignation, but said he's still open to meeting with her as part of the truth and reconciliation committee established by Lac Seul and the nearby town of Sioux Lookout.
"That offer is still there and I'm very much looking forward to sitting down with her, along with my counterparts, and just having a good discussion about residential schools," Bull told CBC News.
Beyak accepted the invitation from the committee last month and agreed to meet with them "sometime in the summer", he said.
Bull said he spent seven years "incarcerated" in two residential schools — Cecilia Jeffrey in Kenora, Ont., and Pelican Falls, near Sioux Lookout. The two are among nine residential schools that operated in northwestern Ontario, a region that includes Beyak's hometown of Dryden.
'She doesn't understand'
"It's very, very hurtful, for me as a survivor" to hear Beyak's remarks, Bull said, recalling "a lot of loneliness, a lot of suffering, a lot of pain, bullying, crying yourself to sleep at night, those types of things and of course the sexual abuse was also part of it" at residential school.
"She doesn't understand," he said.
The truth and reconciliation committee in Sioux Lookout is working through the calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Committee, Bull said.
The invitation to Beyak has to do with the local committee's goal of "healing, reconciliation, understanding and respecting each other," he said. "That's what we want to do."
Bull, and other Indigenous leaders have called for their Liberal MP Bob Nault to join in their calls to at least have Beyak removed from her role on the Senate's Aboriginal Peoples committee.
"I am asking Mr. Nault to come forward and join us in the stance," Bull said in a news release on Tuesday. "I seek support from Mr. Nault because Senator Beyak hails from the Kenora riding and as such, Mr. Nault cannot remain mum on the matter."
CBC News is waiting for a response from Nault to the requests that he become involved in the matter.