As clinical head for aboriginal services at the Centre for Addiction
and Mental Health in Toronto, Dr. Peter Menzies has seen his share of
residual trauma.

Much of this comes from the forced stay of generations of native children at remote, religiously run residential schools.

Himself Ojibwa, Menzies treats native men and women who now make the
big city their home and who suffer from loss of identity, depression,
substance abuse and the effects of being caught up in the child welfare
system.

In theory, at least, Menzies understands why many of these survivors
might tell their stories to the newly re-formed Truth and
Reconciliation Commission.

But at the same time, he is concerned there won't be enough
community or mental health support for the many already fragile people
who would make these submissions.

"You're reopening up a can of worms that has been buried for years
by substance abuse, by ignoring the problem and by defence mechanisms
and disassociation," he says.

Diane
Simon and her then four-year-old son Muin participate in a "letting go"
ceremony in Shubenacadie, N.S., in June 2008 on behalf of former
residential school students. It is one of many similar ceremonies and
reunions taking place across the country as part of a long-term healing
process for aboriginal Canadians. (Mike Dembeck/Canadian Press)

"Now, who is going to help them? Where is their safety net?"

'A daunting task'

On
July 1, the new chair of the commission, Justice Murray Sinclair of
Manitoba, along with commissioners Chief Wilton Littlechild of Alberta
and Marie Wilson, a broadcaster from the Northwest Territories,
formally began their five-year mandate.

Their job is to create a record of what happened in Canada's Indian
Residential Schools (IRS) between 1883 and 1996. It is, observed
Sinclair, "a daunting task, almost scary."

Modelled in part on the truth and reconciliation hearings of
post-apartheid South Africa, the Canadian TRC is meant to help repair
some of the emotional and psychological damage done by the
government-mandated schools.

As well, it is hoped, it will help build a new relationship between Canada's Aboriginal Peoples and everyone else.

But as a CBC investigation has discovered, the TRC is not very well
known even among natives, many of whom are currently fighting just to
prove their attendance.

Manitoba
Judge Murray Sinclair, the new chairman of the Truth and Reconciliation
Commission, which is getting underway after a one-year delay. (Wayne
Glowacki/Canadian Press)

The commission is also clearly
undergoing some growing pains as it attempts to fulfill a huge mandate
after an almost year-long false start.

Exercise in humiliation

Not all native students suffered in these schools. Some have fond or at least reasonable memories and received an education.

But for too many the schools were an exercise in humiliation and often brutality.

They crippled the cultures and languages of First Nations and
inflicted a stunning blow to their spirit. Some children even died in
the schools' care.

Perhaps the most lasting blow, though, was the loss of the intimate
bond between parent and child and the intergenerational trauma that
came from the breakdown in family structures that the schools helped
create.

Ian Littledeer's is an almost too typical story.
While he was away at a residential school at Sioux Lookout for nine
years, his parents' marriage broke up. His, too, didn't last very long
and he struggled for many years to break himself from the problems of
alcoholism.

He is almost a walking embodiment of Dr. Menzie's plea: who is going to look after them now?

Growing pains

The
TRC says it is ready to help. A real person immediately answered the
commission's crisis hotline (it's available in English and French) when
it was tested. The commission is promising health support services and
counselling at all its hearings.

But it is clear the TRC still has a long way to go to get its house in order.

For example, it did not respond directly to questions about its progress but sent statements from its website to the CBC.

"We are moving forward as quickly as possible to receive statements
from anyone affected by the residential schools," the email said.

Another email also noted that it was putting its budget together and increasing its communications and outreach.

But the upshot is that several aboriginal groups couldn't wait for the TRC to pull itself together.

For example, the Native Council Fire Cultural Centre in Toronto was
so concerned about losing the stories from aging, former residents that
it started its own round of interviews months ago.

That was before the former chief commissioner, Justice Harry LaForme, resigned in October 2008 amid a squabble with his colleagues, who themselves then stepped down on June 1, 2009.

Other native groups, such as the Legacy of Hope Foundation,
an Ottawa-based group that was established 11 years ago to deal with
former residential school students, have already laid some of the
groundwork for the TRC by recording over 500 stories from former
residents.

Healing "reunions" are also being held by different groups in Northern Ontario and the Prairies.

Little known

Of
the 150,000 who attended the schools, only 80,000 may still be alive.
Many are elderly and have spent a lifetime burying the past. Few seem
aware of the TRC beyond the ugly split that delayed its work.

Spreading
the word: Phil Fontaine, the outgoing chief of the Assembly of First
Nations and a former residential school student, listens to Kevin
Daniels, interim national chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples
in the Senate in June 2009 on the anniversary of the Canadian
government's apology. (Adrian Wyld/Canadian Press)

"Generally, individual survivors don't know what the heck is going on," says Mike Cachagee, executive director of the National Residential Schools Survivors' Society, a body set up in 2005 to give voice to former students.

What's more, "there's no word for reconciliation in our language (Ojibwa)" he says. "They may not understand."

What the former residents are focused on at this point is
compensation, another element of the court-approved $1.9-billion Indian
Residential Schools Settlement Agreement (IRSSA), which was put in
place in the summer of 2008.

Apart from setting up the TRC, with its five-year, $60-million
mandate, the agreement also provides for compensation to former
residents and money for different healing strategies.

The compensation agreement says that anyone who can prove they went
to an IRS can claim $10,000 in a common experience payment and $3,000
for each year they were at the school.

Students who suffered particular abuses can go through an independent assessment process and apply for more money.

But this is proving problematic, Cachagee says: government and
churches are missing records and perhaps as many as 30 per cent of
former residents are being denied their due.

The effect is that many former residents are "being re-victimized,"
he says. "They want you to tell the truth in order to reconcile, but we
don't have the truth."

What was lost

Another challenge
for the TRC is that many former residents are unaware of the commission
and just beginning themselves to open up to the past, says Karen
Wastasecoot, a Manitoba-based consultant who helps people navigate the
compensation process.

"For a lot of people, when they tell me their story, it's the first
time they've told anyone," she says "It takes courage to tell someone
else what happened to them and it's traumatic but with each telling it
gets a little easier."

This fall, Wastasecoot and her former school chums will gather at
the McKay Residential school in Dauphin, Man. It's not the first
reunion but she says this one will focus on healing.

Another school reunion is also being held in Spanish, a northern
Ontario community that was home to the St. Joseph's and Garnier
residential schools. On the invite list are townspeople who attended
the schools as day students as well as representatives from the
Catholic Church and the federal government.

Joe Tom Sayers, a project manager of the Community Healing Strategy
Project of the Shingwauk Education Trust, a vast collective along the
northern shore of Lake Superior, says these reunions can be a place for
former students to open up.

"These reunions are the ideal venue for truth-taking, healing and
reconciliation," he says. But he believes the process of reconciling
with the rest of Canada won't come about because of the TRC alone.

"What motivates a lot of people to come forward is not to tell
Canadians but to pass it on to another generation — their children and
grandchildren and help them understand," says Sayers.

"Nothing happens overnight," he says. "It's a process. I can't see
it happening within the mandate of the TRC. It will take a longer time."

++++++++

+++++++++++

From CBC.ca