Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission

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I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. To mark 250 years of the United States, we speak to Roman Mars of 99% invisible. This soft power, this influence, was an incredible invention. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com. or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hello and welcome to witness history from the BBC World Service with me, Tim O'Callaghan. If this is already one of your favourite podcasts, then feel free to skip ahead a bit to get to today's episode. But if you're new here, welcome along. We're the daily podcast that takes you back to moments from history with the people who are there to see it. So if that sounds like something that should be part of your daily routine, then make sure you subscribe and turn on your push notifications for wherever you get your BBC podcasts,

so you never miss an episode. But for today, we're going back to a time when Canada came to terms with a dark hidden part of its history and a warning. There are descriptions of abuse and violence in this programme. There's been something of a day of reckoning for the people of Canada recently. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission has finally given its verdict on how the country treated its Aboriginal children. This is the story of how more than 150,000 Indigenous children were taken from their homes and sent to residential schools, a practice that took place in Canada for over 100 years, with the last school closing in 1997. This was the most unknown, saddest, darkest, darkest chapter in Canadian history.

Because no one knew what was going on all these years behind the residential schools until the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was established. In 2008, the truth about what happened to the children who were taken from their families began to be heard. My Kree name is Mahikan Mohdeo and my chief's name is Osagi Hill. Kree name meaning walking wolf and my chief's name is a golden eagle. but also my name was number 65 when I was in residential school. And of course my English name is Willie Little Child. Willie was one of the three commissioners on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission,

a lawyer and former member of Parliament. This was a deeply personal experience for him. I was born on the Erman-skin Cree Nation and was raised by my grandparents until I was taken to residential school when I was six years old. So for 14 years, I was being raised by a building. And I say that because of the connotations behind that, in a sense of being stripped away from your parents. So the bond of having a family was severed right at the outset when you're a little boy.

Attendance at the schools for Indigenous children became compulsory in 1920, and they were taken from their families for a sole purpose. The records show that the purpose of establishing the schools was to kill the Indian in the child. So how do you do that? Well, you punish them when they speak their language, you take them away from your parents, and you prohibit anything that's related to you

as an individual member of a nation. And with that stated purpose, the government then decided to hire faith groups, Catholic Church, the Protestant churches, by contract to run these schools. And that process of attempting to kill the Indian in the child resulted in horrific abuse for the students of residential schools. I had physical abuse. When I did something wrong or was accused of doing something wrong,

One of the things that happened to me was that you were taken into a room and you were put into a position like you're going to do push-ups. But I was being hit with a hockey stick across my back, my lower back. And to this day, I have to use a walker to walk because my back is so bad. You're assaulted mentally, your identity taken away. For example, my name was number 65.

65, come here, stupid. Or 65, why did you do that, you idiot? 65, when are you going to grow up? See, when you grow up with that kind of loss of identity, it assaults your self-esteem, your self-awareness, and your pride. If you had long hair, like braids, the first day of school, they were cut off. And that is a spiritual assault because your spirit is being taken away in a sense brutally, by cutting your hair right off the bat when traditionally you were with pride

and for a purpose long hair with braids. So the physical, the mental, emotional, the cultural, and worst of all, the sexual abuse. And I don't want to go into detail there, but I went through that part of growing up as well. Willie's testimony was mirrored by the thousands of survivors who came forward and spoke to the Commission during a seven-year period. Watching my parents disappear as soon as they left. I never knew about hell, but that's where hell started for me. I was picked up by my ears and carried into the back office,

stripped naked and beaten unconscious because I spoke the language of the devil. There was always one priest that he used to say, my child, my child. He'd put his arms around you and then he'd... be touching you and made sure that he had you cornered. I was hit with a ruler continuously. I was told that I was stupid, dumb, lazy, ugly, that I was a savage. I didn't learn anything. I didn't learn anything in that school.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission started as part of the Indian Residential School's settlement, a multi-billion-dollar class action lawsuit, which was brought against the Canadian government by survivors of residential schools in the early 2000s. Willie, along with the chair of the commission, Judge Murray Sinclair, and former journalist Marie Wilson, travelled thousands of miles across Canada, the world's second largest country, to hear the testimonies.

But having to relive this trauma and hearing the pain of others began to take its toll on Willie and the other commissioners. It was a couple of years into the hearings. I was really getting tired. What I was going through was compassion fatigue because I was hearing these negative, negative, negative, negative abuse stories over and over and over again. And I was not releasing them. I was keeping them to myself.

I wanted to honor the witnesses by keeping their stories safe. But at the same time, I was taking that trauma internally. So we started getting counseling as commissioners right after the, the day's hearings. In June 2015, the commission was ready to give its final report, and the findings were stark, as reported by the BBC. Judge Sinclair, who described the residential school era as one of the darkest, most troubling chapters in Canadian history,

issued his damning verdict. Cultural genocide. Many of them told us this was genocide. What happened to us as children? was genocide. Just look at the scenario. Look at what happened to us. Look at how many people were harmed to the point of committing suicide or having other different consequences of harm, even persons, little people that disappeared. There was many children who died in residential schools, but no one knew about that. Where were they buried? Who were these children?

What was their names? 94 calls to action were issued, including the establishment of a reconciliation council and a national holiday for truth and reconciliation. 11 years on, 16 of those calls have been completed, and many others are in progress. So when I look at sort of a panoramic view across the country, I think we're moving along in a good way together,

Protestant church organisations in Canada apologised for their own while Pope Francis apologised on behalf of the Catholic Church in 2022. The Chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Justice Murray Sinclair, died in 2024. Chief Wilton Littlechild was speaking to me, Tim O'Callaghan, for witness history. Thank you for listening. If you found this interesting, then we have some other episodes in our archives about the history of Indigenous people. There's the story of Australia's first Aboriginal MP, Neil Bollinger. Bonner, who was elected to Parliament in 1979.

You could also learn about when Native American protesters occupied the island of Alcatraz off the coast of San Francisco in 1971 to raise awareness of indigenous rights. You can find those episodes in the Witness History Feed, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. From the pioneers... We weren't going to ask mission, we're just going to do it. And the celebrations... You feel you have... you win. I feel it.

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How did the United States build the largest soft power empire in the world with the help of some tiny metal objects. I'm Tristan Redmond, one of the hosts of the Global Story podcast from the BBC. To mark 250 years of the United States, we speak to Roman Mars of 99% invisible. This soft power, this influence, was an incredible invention. For more, listen to the global story on BBC.com or wherever you get your podcasts.