Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed in 2008 as part of the Indian Residential Schools (IRS) Settlement agreement. For years, commissioners traveled across Canada to conduct interviews with Residential School survivors and their families. Out of these testimonies, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released a 6 volume report in 2015 detailing the history and ongoing legacy of Canada’s Residential School System. The Commission has also released their “Calls to Action,” an outline of recommendations targeted at all Canadians to critically engage with the legacies of state-sanctioned violence against Indigenous Peoples.

Access the full report on the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation Website.

To find all of the documents in the Queen's collection produced by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, do an author search in Omni with the name "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada."

To find additional resources on the TRC, the following subject searches are helpful: "Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada" and "Truth commissions--Canada." For resources on the residential school system more generally, a subject search of any of the following will provide you with titles: "Indians of North America--Education"; "Off-reservation boarding schools"; "Indians of North America--Canada--Residential schools."

To find resources written by Indigenous people, the University of British Columbia Library Catalogue is a useful tool: do a keyword search with "First nations author" and any additional keywords that describe your topic (Truth and Reconciliation, in this case). If you use the UBC catalogue, remember that Queen's may not have access to every resource you find. Once you have found resources you're interested in, you will need to search Omni to find it at Queen's.