Truth vs. Reconciliation?

In June 2010, at The Forks in Winnipeg, about 400 people, both Natives and non-Natives, gathered to launch Canada’s first Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It is charged with examining the history of residential schools. The TRC is an outgrowth of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, arrived at in 2007 as the result of a class action lawsuit launched by the victims. The litigation had been directed against the federal government and the Christian religious institutions that were involved in operating the schools. The settlement agreement allotted $60 million over five years for the work of the commission, as well as creating a compensation system providing survivors of the schools with $10,000 plus $3,000 for each year of attendance. The TRC stumbled at first when its first three appointed commissioners quarrelled, but on those sunny days last June, under the new leadership of Justice Murray Sinclair, the process of remembering and recording...