UiT-researchers visiting Canadian institutions and organizations learning about truth and reconciliation follow-up.

Meeting with the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg. From left: Else Grete Broderstad, Kaila Johnston (Director of Education, Outreach, and Public Programming), Stephanie Scott (Executive Director), and Eva Josefsen. Copyright: The National Center for Truth and Reconciliation

- We are impressed, say Eva Josefsen and Else Grete Broderstad. They visited different institutions that in different ways, work with truth and reconciliation.

The Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) worked from 2009 till 2015. The final report presented 94 calls for action to secure a path to reconciliation. These calls for action address the responsibilities of federal, provincial, and local governments as the most significant state authorities, in addition to Indigenous institutions and communities.

The two researchers started their visit at the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation in Winnipeg where they learned about how the center work. A main task is to find and document the destinies of the disappeared and murdered children at the former residential schools in Canada. They also met with the Manitoba provincial government’s Indigenous Reconciliation Secretariat and learned about the comprehensive and thorough follow-up work at the provincial level. Another meeting was with a grassroots organization, Tunngasugit Inc., working to improve the lives of the Inuit in Winnipeg. Their efforts on both facilitating for everyday lives of individuals, and at the same time calling on authorities’ engagement to improve system failures, further illuminated truth and reconciliation perspectives.

The meetings with the Canadian MFA (polar and Nordic section) and the National Gallery of Art in Ottawa, provided additional perspectives on the efforts of the authorities and cultural institutions follow-up on truth and reconciliation.

Adding to the lessons learned, was the book launch of North of Nowhere. Song of a Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner, by former TRC member Marie Wilsons.  In her new book, she shares a first-hand account of the TRC work.

-We return with many lessons learned. And maybe the most important is that even though the contexts are different and Indigenous peoples’ experiences can be difficult to compare, there are also many common denominators.  Within a TRC framework, Indigenous peoples share experiences with state assimilation. What we have seen in Canada is a drive at many levels politically and in civil society, to confront this policy, that is still lurking within the systems, they conclude.