Journalist plans to create new archive of residential school survivor stories — before it's too late

A young cast from award-winning journalist Connie john walker aims to make an file away of testimonies of abuse at residential schools before the accounts are destroyed in September 2027. 

"It just made me feel like we should be doing whatever we can to preserve as many survivor accounts as we possibly can," said Walker, who is a member of Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan.  

"There are 38,000 records of survivors that are set to be destroyed … and I think that a lot of people don't know that this is about to happen."

Her Pulitzer Prize-winning podcast Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's looked into her father's experience at a Catholic-run residential school in Duck Lake, Sask., and was a profound experience, according to Walker. She said she hopes the archive will allow people to develop the same understanding of other schools.

The project at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU), where she is the Velma Rogers Research Chair in the School of Journalism, aims to preserve residential school survivors' stories and raise awareness about the upcoming destruction of Independent Assessment Process (IAP) records. 

"The most comprehensive archive that exists of survivor testimony about severe abuse at residential schools is going to be destroyed," she said. 

"I've been approached by survivors who don't know that this is happening and that they could opt in to have their records archived."

A 2017 Supreme Court decision found that survivors who shared their stories of abuse in the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement's IAP in order to obtain compensation for the harms suffered at residential school were promised confidentiality throughout the process, and the files must be destroyed.

The files are being retained until 2027 to give survivors a chance to request a copy, opt-in to having the file preserved by the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, or both.

Walker said through the TMU record project, she hopes to preserve accounts that survivors gave through the IAP. In the first phase, students will investigate five different schools to create archives similar to the one the podcast created for St. Michael's, Walker said. 

The project will be funded through a lead grant from the Law Foundation of Ontario, with support from the Lincoln Alexander School of Law and Yellowhead Institute in partnership with the School of Journalism at TMU, according to TMU. 

Walker said education and awareness are two of her goals — especially since the earliest IAP hearings took place two decades ago.

"I think even the understanding and awareness of Indian residential schools and the impacts of Indian residential schools on First Nations, Inuit and Métis communities was very different in 2017," she said.

Walker noted that while 6,000 survivor testimonies were gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, the IAP gathered more than six times as many but the IAP is significantly less well known. 

Once the archive has been created, Walker said survivors and families will decide how the information will be stored and shared. 

"I think that's really a core tenet of this project is really to allow them to determine how this information should be used and really try to return this information back to the survivors and their families and communities," she said. 

"Because obviously these are the survivors' stories, but it's also their families and communities that are still, as we know, grappling with all of the intergenerational effects of Indian residential schools. And this information … could be really valuable to them."

Families are unable to access files of survivors who died without requesting their IAP files. Walker said that makes this project even more urgent. 

"The window to tell these stories is closing but also, I think with it, the window for justice and accountability is also closing," she said. 

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