Today is the sixth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, where the country remembers the 150,000 Indigenous kids who were taken from their communities and forced to enrol in Indian Residential Schools. While there, they were subjected to widespread abuse and mistreatment. Thousands died before they could return home.
There is a large historical record attesting to this fact. But tens of thousands of survivor testimonies are on track to be destroyed next year. These painful stories were heard and documented as part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement agreement.
Connie Walker is the host of the Pulitzer and Peabody prize winning podcast Stolen: Surviving St. Michaels which looked at her own father's experience at a residential school. She has been working to build a new archive of residential school survivor testimonies. She talks about the urgency of preserving these stories, at a time when there's an upswing in residential school denialism.
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