Tuesday marked the second day of the Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal on Missing Indigenous Children and Unmarked graves in Montreal.
A panel of residential school survivors shared their experiences as part of the week-long tribunal established to demand accountability for alleged crimes against Indigenous children in Canada’s residential schools.
READ: International tribunal in Montreal on alleged crimes against Indigenous children begins
“I did experience all kinds of abuse, physical, sexual abuse by the minister, and the emotional, the psychological trauma of being separated from your family,” said residential school survivor Roberta Hill. “Yeah, it was probably one of the saddest times in my life.
“I didn’t know what that place was. I didn’t know what to expect from it, but you’re stuck there, you have to stay there.”
Other residential school survivors were also in attendance at the tribunal.
“I had a lot of physical violence, and a little bit of sexual violence by one of the supervisors,” said Evelyn Wolfe, 85, from Brunswick House First Nation in Northern Ontario. “But, basically the hardest part of the residential school was the loneliness. And it was almost, it made you ill, practically, you were so lonely, because there’s nobody there, no family.”
The Permanent Peoples’ Tribunal or PPT is hosted by the Native Women’s Shelter of Montreal and was set up to address allegations that Canada committed crimes against humanity and genocide through residential schools and other institutions.
“As far as genocide, I would say the whole system of residential schools is genocide because they’re deliberately removing Indigenous people, Indigenous children,” said Hill, from Mohawk Six Nations of the Grand River Territory in Ohsweken, Ont. “They’re taking children at a very young age so that they can change them.
“You know, take away the language, take away the culture, all of that. They want that disappeared.”
On Tuesday, the tribunal also heard from an expert panel on investigative journalism about reporting on missing and murdered Indigenous women and children, sexual abuse at residential schools, as well as unmarked graves.
Journalists Tanya Talaga and Connie Walker shared their observations and challenges on reporting about these issues and the impacts they had.
“The plan was for Indian residential schools to take children away from their families, their homes, their communities, their languages, and turn them into good Canadians, turn them into good British subjects. In that process, they destroyed generations of people, of children,” said Talaga, who is also an author and filmmaker.
“A big lesson for me in the last, you know, 10 years of my work is understanding how much truth we have still yet to uncover about Indian residential schools,” added Walker. “And I feel a sense of urgency to document that as quickly as possible because the window for survivors is closing, then the window for justice and accountability is closing as well.”
