I think it's been almost five years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission closed its doors, and there's still a lot of work to be done towards reconciliation and many calls to action that still need to be completed.
When I talk about the balance...I think my mother-in-law was also taken to her first residential school at the age of seven. She wishes for a day to remember the students' and their families' resiliency. She took a bad situation, being in residential school, and she turned it around. Recently she completed her Ph.D., and she's in her seventies. I have much respect for her. She took back her power. She wants all Canadians to know the assimilation policies did not kill her, and she speaks about that often.
As an intergenerational survivor, I see this day as a time for my children and grandchildren to lay tobacco, pray and remember all survivors and the parents who were left behind. We must never forget the thousands of children who died or did not return from the schools. During the TRC, a great many survivors, and the parents of former students, spoke of the children who went to school and never came home. It is unbelievable that some parents who passed on to the spirit world or who are alive today do not know where their children are buried, sometimes even thousands of miles away.
The NCTR will continue to find the truth of what happened to the children of residential schools through an exhaustive review of the residential school records that we hold in the archive, and I think it's important that we have places to gather and to come together and to respect, honour and remember those who have gone before us and for the future generations to learn.