SUPREME COURT OF CANADA HEARING ARGUMENTS
REGARDING DESTRUCTION OF RECORDS
ADDENDUM : HISTORICAL REFERENCES : ADDENDUM
ETC 2 3 4 5 as related to the void Hudson's Bay Company Charter Fitzgerald Examinations : 1613 : Plantagon
REGARDING DESTRUCTION OF RECORDS
ADDENDUM : HISTORICAL REFERENCES : ADDENDUM
ETC 2 3 4 5 as related to the void Hudson's Bay Company Charter Fitzgerald Examinations : 1613 : Plantagon
Submitted By : Ralph C Goodwin / SqYx / +1NEWS : Kwa'mutsun Nation : C-Fires : Contact Chair : TC1975
Comparison : Joseph Sher "It
is not so easy to do this interview. Last night I did not have a
minute's sleep. When I sleep, I dream, I dream, I dream. We did not
know who was going to be left alive. "Don't forget, tell the world" was
the last thing our friends said before they were taken to their deaths.
You cannot keep it inside.
" : Holocaust Survivors Testimonies
Historical Note : The Republic of Canada was declared in 1837 by William Lyon McKenzie
Addendum : The Hudson's Bay Company Charter dissolved in 1676 (also, n.b. 1859) Source : James Edward Fitzgerald: The Vancouver Islands
"WINNIPEG - The head of Canada's national archive dedicated to Indian residential schools says the voices of 40,000 survivors would be silenced if a judge orders their emotional testimony destroyed.
Director Ry Moran said thousands of survivors seeking compensation told their
stories to the Indian Residential Schools Adjudication Secretariat.
But
many of them didn't have the strength to recount painful memories of
sexual, emotional and physical abuse again before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to make them a matter of public record, he
said.
"There is actually unique information there that will
provide greater insight into the history and legacy of the residential
school system that does not exist anywhere else," Moran said Thursday.
"That
oral history, those voices of survivors — as painful as they may be and
as difficult as it may be and as sensitive as they are — those voices
are in those records. There are some 40,000 voices captured in that
particular collection."
An independent assessment process was set
up for former students seeking compensation for sexual, physical and
psychological abuse. Dan Shapiro, head of the secretariat, as well as
some residential school survivors are suggesting that private testimony
should be destroyed so it is never made public.
Arguments over the fate of the emotional evidence are to be made before an Ontario judge next month.
About
150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Metis children were taken from their
families and forced to attend the government schools over much of the
last century to "take the Indian out of the child." The last school
closed outside Regina in 1996.
The National Research Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is being set up at the University of Manitoba
to archive millions of commission documents related to residential
schools. While the commission has papers from churches and government,
the oral history of aboriginal people is fundamental, Moran said.
Any
testimony by claimants that was housed in the national research centre
would be treated with the utmost respect and no survivor would ever be
unwillingly identified, Moran said.
"If those records are
retained, and if they are managed in a highly restricted manner with the
utmost of privacy controls, information can still be reviewed — but
only with all of the personal identifying information stripped out," he
said. "We want to make sure that these records, if they are preserved,
are properly housed."
Shapiro told an Edmonton privacy conference
Thursday that the claims process was set up to be confidential and safe
for survivors. Their records contain everything from intensely personal
memories of abuse to medical records and income tax information, he
said.
"They identify claimants, witnesses and perpetrators, even
though some allegations are later recanted, or never proven. They detail
horrific physical, sexual and emotional abuse," Shapiro said. "They
describe the impact that these events had on the lives of those who were
abused, including intimate accounts of addictions, domestic violence,
psychological harm and suicide attempts.
"And they speak of the
devastating intergenerational impacts that have caused so much suffering
in aboriginal communities in every part of Canada."
Shapiro
quoted a survivor who suggested that disclosing personal information
would be a form of revictimization. Retaining the records isn't
necessary to preserve history, he added.
"Legitimate historians in
our society recognize that the collective right to know and remember is
balanced against other values, including the value of individual
privacy," he said. "Moreover, historians and future generations do not
need to know the intimate details of every individual's suffering in
order to document that abuse occurred."
Destroying all records
after the compensation process is complete is the only way to preserve
the privacy and dignity of claimants, he said.
Janice Knighton of
the Indian Residential School Survivor Society in British Columbia said
many claimants were under the impression their evidence would be
destroyed. Many would not have come forward had they known there was a
chance their history would become public, she said.
Anyone who wanted to talk publicly about their experience did that through the commission, Knighton said.
"I
believe they have more than enough information," she said. "People have
to live with a lot on their memory. If they know somewhere that
information is at risk of becoming public — even 100 years down the road
— it's still very traumatizing for them to even conceive of that."
The
Truth and Reconciliation Commission didn't provide anyone to speak on
the issue Thursday, but sent a statement from May when the matter was
filed in court.
Kimberly Murray, the commission's executive
director, said the federal government has said it won't destroy records
submitted by claimants and could house some of them at the national
archives. The best place for such documents would be the commission's
national research centre, she said in the statement.
The
Winnipeg centre would allow aboriginal control over the records and
would ensure private medical records were made permanently inaccessible
to anyone, including government officials, she added.