“My culture is my identity,” says Colleen Cardinal. “This is what has been denied to me.”
The work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission has helped shine a light on the horrendous and lasting harm done by tearing Indigenous children from their families, their communities, their languages and their cultures.
Critically, as the TRC report itself highlights, the uprooting of Indigenous children was not limited to the Residential School Programme.
For decades, Indigenous families having difficulties providing adequate care for their children - whether as a result of impoverishment, the intergenerational consequences of abuses suffered in residential schools, or other social and economic stresses - have been denied the help they need.