ABSTRACT
In 2015 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada delivered its final reports and 94 Calls to Action. The TRC was meant to document, pay witness to, and create an official record of Canada’s use of residential schools which operated for more than 100 years and targeted multiple generations of Indigenous persons with the expressed purpose of cultural assimilation. With the goal of “civilizing” Indigenous children, residents were prohibited from speaking their native languages, were malnourished, used as experimental bodies, and experienced normalized emotional, physical, and sexual violence. 1 Many residents did not survive these schools. The TRC, amongst others, has referred to residential schooling as “cultural genocide”:
Cultural genocide is the destruction of those structures and practices that allow the group to continue as a group. States that engage in cultural genocide set out to destroy the political and social institutions of the targeted group. Land is seized, and populations are forcibly transferred and their movement is restricted. Languages are banned. Spiritual leaders are persecuted, spiritual practices are forbidden, and objects of spiritual value are confiscated and destroyed. And, most significantly to the issue at hand, families are disrupted to prevent the transmission of cultural values and identity from one generation to the next. 2
