Review of Past Reports
The Commission was established to reveal the truth about the residential school system, and to identify pathways to reconciliation for its survivors and for all Canadians. In order to understand the current context for reconciliation in Canada, the Commission is conducting research into previous reconciliation efforts, and will report on these in future reports.
The most ambitious attempt to reconcile the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada was the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP). It was launched in response to the Oka crisis of 1990. That summer, a bitter land-claim dispute led to a military siege of the Mohawk community of Kanesatake, and galvanized many long-standing Aboriginal grievances across Canada.
Established in 1991, the Royal Commission was mandated to conduct hearings across the country and offer recommendations on how to improve Canada's relationships with its original peoples. Released in 1996, its five-volume Final Report included over 3500 pages and offered over 400 recommendations thematically organized into categories of renewed relationships, treaties, governance, lands and resources, economic development, family, health and healing, housing, education, arts, and heritage. The Commission also dedicated a volume of its Final Report to multiple Aboriginal perspectives: Women, Elders, Youth, Métis, as well as Northern and Urban. Most of RCAP's recommendations were directed to the federal government; many were aimed at other governments, whether Aboriginal, municipal, provincial, and territorial, as well as other elements of civil society including colleges and universities, industry, mass media, and labour unions. The following two sections review the RCAP recommendations that specifically address 1) residential schools, and 2) reconciliation.
Residential-School Recommendations
The Royal Commission made several recommendations regarding residential schools. The most substantive, Recommendation 1.10.1, called for a public inquiry that would:
- investigate and document the origin and effects of residential school policies and practices respecting all Aboriginal peoples, with particular attention to the nature and extent of effects on subsequent generations of individuals and families, and on communities and Aboriginal societies;
- conduct public hearings across the country with sufficient funding to enable the testimony of affected persons to be heard;
- commission research and analysis of the breadth of the effects of these policies and practices;
- investigate the record of residential schools with a view to the identification of abuse and what action, if any, is considered appropriate; and
- recommend remedial action by governments and the responsible churches deemed necessary by the inquiry to relieve conditions created by the residential school experience, including as appropriate,
- apologies by those responsible;
- compensation of communities to design and administer programs that help the healing process and rebuild their community life; and
