(Image Credit: “Indigenous documentary heritage initiatives”, (28 November 2018), online: Library and Archives Canada <https://www.bac-lac.gc.ca/eng/discover/aboriginal-heritage/initiatives/Pages/default.aspx>.)
Tansi Nîtôtemtik,
Today we will evaluate TRC Call to Action #70, which (spoiler!) we are happy to report has made significant progress. Call to Action # 70 states:
We call upon the federal government to provide funding to the Canadian Association of Archivists to undertake, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, a national review of archival policies and best practices to:
- Determine the level of compliance with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why, with regard to human rights violations committed against them in the residential schools.
- Produce a report with recommendations for full implementation of these international mechanisms as a reconciliation framework for Canadian archives.[1]
In 2016, the newly formed Standing Committee on Canada’s Archives established the Truth and Reconciliation Task Force (TRC-TF) to undertake the response to Call to Action #70. The federal government provided funding support for this task force in 2018 through a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant. [2]
The TRC-TF released its report “A Reconciliation Framework for Canadian Archives” in summer 2020, after four years of conducting a review of archival policies and best practices in collaboration with Indigenous communities, heritage professionals and organizations across Canada.[3] This new framework is meant to be a collaborative living document, and includes principles and objectives, as well as strategies to work toward those objectives.
The release of this report and the ongoing nature of the task force charged with putting the strategies into practice make the response to this call one of the most thorough we have seen to date. This task force included Indigenous voices and views in the final report and clearly engaged in a very collaborative consultation process. The end result is a positive step toward facing the colonial legacy of Canada’s historical archives. You can read the full report here.
We are assigning a grade of ‘A’ for Call to Action #70. However, as much as we hate to temper a positive moment, it feels prudent to note that this call was not completed by Canada, but rather through the efforts of the TRC-TF (and specifically the grant writers behind the flow of funds, because we all know how laborious grant writing is!). Because of this, we thought the report card should clarify who gets this grade.
Stay tuned tomorrow as we dig into specific archival records pertaining to missing children and burials.
Until Next Time,
ReconciliAction YEG
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[1] Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (Ottawa: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, 2015).
[2] Government of Canada; Indigenous and Northern Affairs Canada, “Museums and archives”, (23 April 2018), online: <https://www.rcaanc-cirnac.gc.ca/eng/1524504831027/1557513782811>.
[3] “A Reconciliation Framework for Canadian Archives”, (3 August 2020), online: Librarianship.ca <https://librarianship.ca/news/reconciliation-framework-archives/>.
