The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - Will Canada Let Residential School Testimonies Be Lost?

Episode Date: May 6, 2026

What happens to the stories of residential school survivors if they are never preserved, and is Canada prepared to let them disappear? With a Supreme Court deadline approaching that could see thousands of survivor testimonies destroyed unless individuals act, we examine why many people remain unaware of the clock running out and what is at stake if those records are lost. Pulitzer Prize winning investigative journalist Connie Walker, host of Stolen: Surviving St. Michael's and lead of the Indian Residential School Records Project at Toronto Metropolitan University, explains the push to build a permanent national archive. We then turn to Red Dress Day and the ongoing crisis of missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two Spirit people. Storyteller and educator Carolyn Roberts joins us to discuss her new children's book, "Tess's Red Dress," and how it helps families and classrooms confront a reality that is still unfolding.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hi, I'm Nam Kiwanuka, host and producer of mistreated, a podcast on women's health. There just hasn't been a lot of money put into researching women's health issues. If women are in pain, it's hysteria, it's an emotional issue. And this is what you see consistently. Women's health is not taken seriously. How did we get here? Find us wherever you get your podcasts, and be sure to check out the video version of the show on the TVO Today YouTube channel. Hope to see you then. People are curious, you know, whether they're interested in art or not, they're curious. They want to know why these empty dresses are everywhere.

And, you know, that opens the door for us to begin explaining what, you know, a lot of indigenous communities are facing across Canada. That was Métis artist Jamie Black, discussing her red dress project, would draw us attention to the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirit people. Since 2010, red dresses have been displayed across Canada, and you may have seen them today. That's because May 5th is a National Day of Awareness and Remembrance. It's more commonly known as Red Dress Day. And it highlights a national crisis.

According to Statistics Canada, between 2009 and 2021, 490 indigenous women and girls were the victims of homicide, a rate six times higher than non-Indigenous people. It's a difficult topic, but it's also an important one. So how do you explain it to children? We talk to the author of a new book that introduces young readers to what Red Dress Day is and what it means. But first, almost 40,000 accounts of abuse at Indian residential schools are set to be destroyed by September 2027. We look at an initiative trying to sound the alarm and create a new archive. This is the rundown. In 2017, the Supreme Court ruled thousands of stories of residential school abuse would be destroyed unless survivors chose to preserve them.

They gave survivors a 10-year window to come forward, and that date is coming next year. But many don't know about the looming deadline. Enter a new initiative that is trying to raise awareness and set up a new National Archive. Pulitzer Prize winner and investigative journalist Connie Walker joins us in a new National Archive. studio. How are you doing, Connie? I'm well. Thank you. All right. Let's talk about the Indian Residential School Records Project at TMU, Toronto Metropolitan University.

What exactly is the project? The project is our attempt to try to preserve as much survivor testimony as we can. Survivors of Indian residential schools, I think, fought for a long time to be believed

about what they experienced in residential schools and then really fought to have their voices heard. And this is our attempt to try to preserve as much of that as we possibly can in order to, to, you know, not forget what happened in Indian residential schools. I want a point of clarification. Unlike the testimonies gathered in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which are being permanently archived, these records, why are they being destroyed? These are part of the independent assessment process, a little bit different than the public-facing TRC testaments.

Yeah, it is a little bit confusing, and I think a lot of people do get confused. because of the different ways in which survivors have told their stories. So obviously the work of the TRC is incredibly important, and the testimonies that they gathered will be archived at the National Center for Truth and Reconciliation. But something that a lot of people don't really know is that the TRC traveled across the country for six years. They held national gatherings, they held community gatherings, and in those six years, they recorded just over 6,000 testimonies, largely of Indian residential school survivors.

But there was another process that was happening almost concurrently in some ways, where survivors who wanted to receive compensation for abuse in residential schools participated in these hearings called the Independent Assessment Hearings. And more than six times more survivors participated in the IAP than the TRC hearings, just to give some context of the volume. And that remains the most comprehensive archive that exists of survivor testimony. It was recorded through the IAP, and because, you know, it was part of the residential school settlement agreement, these were confidential hearings that survivors participated in,

and very little information from those hearings has ever been made public, certainly not any survivor testimony. And those are the records that are going to be destroyed in 2027 by order of the Supreme Court of Canada. The Indian Residential School Records Project that I'm working on is separate from both of those archives. So what we are attempting to do is create another set of archives from the lawsuits that survivors filed that led to the residential school settlement agreement. And I think that work feels particularly urgent because the IAP records, the most comprehensive archive, is about to be destroyed. Tell me about, obviously, without going into too much of the details, but, whose stories and whose voices are being captured in some of these?

Yeah. Well, there were, you know, over 150,000 indigenous children, First Nations, Inuit and Méti kids who attended residential schools. They were open for over 100 years. There were over 100 schools across Canada. And I think that, you know, we're in this era of truth and reconciliation. I think there's a lot more awareness and understanding about generally residential schools and what survivors experienced in residential schools.

But the Indian Residential School Records Project is our attempt to fully comprehend and understand what happened at individual institutions. And this is very much for me an extension of the work that I've done as a journalist over the last few years. In 2022, I did a podcast called Stolen Surviving St. Michael's that was focused on my father's experience at a residential school in Saskatchewan.

And when I began that investigation, it was after, you know, a few years of reporting on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and understanding the link between that crisis of violence and the legacy of residential schools. But really, the podcast and the investigation that followed was was so eye-opening and so shocking to me just, you know, to really dig deep into a single school to really try to understand as much as we could about what my father and, you know, my father and, you know, my, aunts and uncles who were there at the school, actually four generations of my family attended that one school, what they really survived. And in a year-long investigation, we were able to create this archive of survivor testimony. We were able to access 485 lawsuits that were filed by survivors of this one school. And in those lawsuits filed by individual survivors, you know, we were really able to understand the scale of abuse, the horrifying scale of abuse at a single school.

And it was such a profound experience for me as a journalist, absolutely, to understand there's still so much truth we have to uncover about residential schools, but also as a daughter of a survivor. It was so incredible to know and understand how my own life has been shaped by my family's experience. And I felt like that should happen at every school. This is a serious undertaking.

And this is, as you mentioned, this is a story that, stories that you have covered for a very long time throughout your career. And I am curious, you know, whether it is your father or another family member or someone that you have no connection to, was there ever a moment particularly with this project that, you know, was there any trepidation in terms of entering this project and making sure that, you know, that these stories are heard? And, you know, there's a lot of weight in that. Absolutely. I think that there was never something, this work generally, and even with the podcast, was never something that I took lightly. I think that I was reminded at every step almost of the seriousness of this undertaking, right? These are very incredibly sensitive personal stories, like of terrible abuse that was committed against children, whether, you know, whether they're my relatives or other survivors. of St. Michael's or other schools or institutions. That's something that I think, obviously, you know, is so incredibly important to consider in a trauma-informed way

and in a way that really tries to amplify the voices of survivors. The thing that I kind of always have gone back to is that, you know, these institutions of these schools were open for so many years, for decades, really. And it wasn't until the 80s and the 90s were surviving. started coming forward and talking about the abuse they experienced in Indian residential schools. And for a long time, you know, they weren't believed. They had to go to court. They had to, you know, try to prove these allegations in a system that wasn't conducive to believing them or to hearing them

and to allowing for justice and accountability. Even the IAP hearings, you know, it was in some ways for a lot of survivors the first time that they had come forward to share their stories. And when they told, they had to tell in very graphic detail, you know, very specific things about the abuse that they experienced. And if they were believed, they received compensation. And I say if they were believed, because sometimes they weren't believed. You know, we spoke to survivors who at St. Michael's who, you know, whose initial claims had been denied, despite the fact that they claimed they were abused by a priest who was known to be abusive in the same way. to other children.

And I think that when you think about how much survivors had to fight in order to receive even compensation, let alone, like, you know, they were recording and testifying to, you know, crimes that were committed against them as children, but they were never investigated as part of the IAP. You know, it was only for compensation. And so when I think about what survivors have done to try to share their truth, to try to share their stories, I think that, you know, obviously makes me want to be as sensitive as I possibly can,

but really that this is very important work. As you mentioned, the IAPE and the independent assessment process, let's talk a little bit about the project, because there's some exciting elements to it in that you are tapping into the future of, you know, of TMU with law students, some journalism students as well. Where are we at with this process? What is the role of those students?

We're right at the beginning of the process. We've just received some support from the Law Foundation of Ontario to essentially what our goal is to replicate the work we did in the podcast surviving St. Michael's, to file access to information request to receive the file numbers of the lawsuits that survivors filed that led to the residential school settlement agreement. Now, those are public documents. And so our goal is to work directly with survivors. families and communities to create these new archives of testimony from the lawsuits that survivors filed. And when I was thinking about, you know, as soon as I finished the podcast, I felt like this should happen on a broader scale. It should happen for every school. It should happen for every community and family and survivor who wants it and intergenerational survivor. And I thought a university

would be an ideal place. You know, I think it's interdisciplinary in nature. There's obviously, were so lucky to work with law students at Lincoln Alexander Law School and with journalism students from the School of Journalism at TMU. And I'm really excited to have them be a part of it, because I think this is really important for law students to learn and understand how to engage with indigenous communities and survivors. But also, I think, for journalism students to understand how much of the truth is still yet to uncover in terms of understanding what happened in Indian residential schools. You say that you guys are just about to start. Is there a timeline in terms of when you would like this to be all done? Well, I mean, yeah, I think that at the outset we're going to be focusing on five schools in Ontario.

And I think because we're going to be so focused on working directly with survivors and their families and communities, we really want this to be a process where we are giving the age of, back to survivors and their families in terms of they can decide what should happen with this information. They can decide what should happen with their own stories. We're really hoping to develop some kind of processes and protocols around that engagement and really putting survivors and their families in the driver's seat. But I anticipate this as a project that goes on potentially for many years and eventually expands to include residential schools across the country. You know, there were over 100 that were open for over.

over 100 years. And I think that one thing that I've realized in, you know, doing the podcast about my family's experience at St. Michael's Indian Residential School is I heard from so many other intergenerational survivors when that podcast came out. You know, it was a very personal story about my father and his experience at this residential school. But they said it felt like it was their story, too. I was talking about them and their parents or grandparents. And it made me realize, you know, just how important it is for intergenerational survivors because, you know, obviously our lives have been shaped by our parents and grandparents' experience in these schools.

But so many of us don't know what it is they really survive, don't really understand what they went through. And I think this is an important part of, you know, my role as a journalist in helping to preserve as much of the truth and raise awareness. But I think it's also, you know, personally, it feels like a really important thing. thing to be able to understand. You mentioned truth, and there's a lot more that needs to come from that. But what do projects like this mean for truth of reconciliation year in Canada?

You know, I think that one thing that I've learned in the various reporting that I've done, you know, I've done a lot of reporting on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. And that to me was really kind of, you know, led me to reporting on Indian residential schools because I think there are so many contemporary issues that we talk about in indigenous communities, especially in journalism. And I think my own career and my own investigations have taught me how it's so interconnected

to this bigger story in Canada of Indian residential schools, but also of colonization in Canada. And I think that, you know, this work has really shown me that we're still in the truth phase of truth and reconciliation. There's still so much we need to know and understand and his journalists so much work for us to do to really expose the truth of what happened in these institutions and that's something that really motivates me and the work that I'm doing.

Do you have to ask, from your early career to where you are now, is it easier now to convince editors and producers that these stories matter? You telling your own story, which won a Pulitzer Prize and a Peabody? If it wasn't for those recognitions, do you think these stories that they would have the same sort of weight in that sense? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, when I first started, I've been a journalist since 2000. You know, at the very beginning, there was very little interest in stories about indigenous people and communities.

And I think, unfortunately, there was a belief, a false belief that those stories weren't important or that Canadians didn't care about them. And I think that has changed, obviously, dramatically over the last, especially 10, 15 years because of the work of survivors, because of the work of the TRC. But it's never something that I take for granted. I think that along with, you know, maybe this awareness of truth and reconciliation, there's also growing denialism. There are people and organizations out there who actively deny what's happened in Indian residential schools and deny what survivors and truth commissions and interlocutor reports have proven about what was happening in Indian residential schools. So it's never something I take for granted. I think also as much progress has been made in Canadian journalism, you know, there is still so much work to do.

I think, you know, I should point out that the awards that I won the Pulitzer and the Peabody was actually when I left Canada to work for an American news organization that supported that work about a Canadian story. So I think that, you know, that's never something I take for granted, that's going to be a given. I imagine a bittersweet feeling as well. Yeah, I mean, sure, but I think that, you know, it's not an unfamiliar feeling. I think certainly I'm not the only indigenous journalist or journalist of color who feels underrepresented in mainstream newsrooms and legacy media, but who have then, you know, done the work of pushing these stories forward, of proving the significance, the importance, the relevance to Canada and to Canadians. And I think that's work that we're always just going to have to continue to do. All right.

Today is Reddress Day. What is something you would like people, Canadians, Ontarians, to reflect on today? Yeah. I mean, in any, you know, I've done quite a lot of reporting on this crisis of violence and on missing and murdered indigenous women and girls. And, you know, I am always thinking of them, you know, Cleos, Meganis, Leah Anderson, Germain Charlo, and their families and communities. and how, you know, so much of my reporting has been, obviously,

wanting to help people understand the scale, again, of this crisis and understanding just how broad-reaching it is in indigenous communities, but also never forgetting the real people at the heart of the stories and the real families that are grieving today and are remembering their lost loved ones and really just want to, you know, think of them and send them support because what they do when they obviously are grieving them, morning, they're often also forced to become advocates for their loved ones and to, you know,

to work with journalists and other people to try to help fight for justice and accountability and the truth. And I think these two issues are very connected. Connie, we are going to have to leave it there. But I want to thank you so much for the work that you do, of course, but for your passion as well for such an important story. So thank you so much. Thank you so much for having me. I really appreciate it. A new children's book takes on a tough topic. Red Dress Day and the crisis of missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and two-spirit people. And offers thoughtful guidance for kids, families, and teachers.

Carolyn Roberts is the author of the new children's book, Tessa's Red Dress. And she joins me in studio. Great to see you. How are you doing? I'm good, thanks. How are you? I'm doing well. All right. Without giving away too much. Yes.

What is Tessa's red dress about? Tessa's red dress is just this beautiful moments in time where Tess and her mom are sharing, having conversations about what it's like to have a sibling because Tessa is going to have a new sibling soon and she kind of wants to hear about what her mom's life was like when she had a sibling growing up and they're talking through the process of what that looked like,

so sharing memories and moments and snippets of time while they are getting ready for Red Dress Day. So as we move through the story, we find out that mom's sister is no longer with us. She's missing. So keeping her memory and her story alive. And it's really about keeping those stories alive and talking about it and honoring her sister in the story. And all of the little snippets of moments in time are from my own personal story with my own kids and my sisters and my nieces and my nephews. So it's all of those little moments and they're all put together in this fictional story with Tess and her.

mom. What are some of the themes you're trying to address with the book? Some of the themes are, well, obviously we would like representation of indigenous people in a good way and how that family is working through the loss of a loved one and how they navigate that and how they keep people's stories alive through sharing of memories and giving that foundational piece. Some of the other themes, the underlying themes, talk about the potlatch and Sundance Band when they work weren't allowed to gather. They also talk about the importance of remembering indigenous women and why we need to remember them. And what Red Dress Day is really about. You had mentioned just right now, but also in your book, that there are some influences from your childhood. Can you elaborate

a little bit on that? What were some of the sort of those influences? And how did you sort of navigate putting that into the book? That's a really good question. I feel like me as an author, I write the stories come through me and there's connections to them to my family of when I was when my kids were little and they would be in the bath together and they scream in and singing and splash it and having all that fun and that's part of the book so I feel like there's just these little moments of connection that give us our memories for our family that I've put in and there's some others along the way within it but those were some meaningful moments that I think help share our stories. And I really wanted to bring out pieces of indigenous culture and an indigenous

community that people might not see within their every day because the narrative of indigenous people in Canada are maybe not as this whole knit family, right? But I wanted to represent what I see within my family and my sister's family and their children's family of this connectedness in love. I wanted those threads to come through. How old is Tess? Tess is about five or six. Five or six. One thing, you know, this is pretty heavy subject matter when you look at the big picture in terms of the conversation and themes that you're trying to talk about.

Why did you want to write it as a children's book? Because I think that it's really important for younger people to understand indigenous communities from an indigenous lens. We've had 150 plus years of other people telling our stories of indigenous people. So I really wanted to tell the story. of an indigenous family from their own perspective, and those little pieces of culture and tradition are woven through it with the visuals, with Tess and her Cedar Hat,

and the Cocella Shawl that's in the book as well. So all of these connections to who we are so that we can see a representation of an indigenous family, which we might not have seen or talked about before. And if you don't know any indigenous people, you may not have that contact. So that representation was really important to have come through in the book.

The artwork is absolutely gorgeous. Right. I am curious, you know, in combination with that, but the storytelling itself, what are some of the nuances that you have to take into consideration for writing for a younger audience about something that is serious? Well, I think that you don't want to overwhelm a reader. You don't want to overwhelm anybody reading the book, but you also want to invite them in. So which was really important when we're thinking about all of those moments in time within my family,

that I was hoping that that would also connect with other people and their memories of their family and time together. So it was really about making those small connections within the book for people to hopefully have similar type stories that they could connect with within the words. You talk about people telling indigenous stories for 150 years that are not told from indigenous people. I am curious, in what ways does,

Tessa's red dress challenge, and sometimes negative stereotypes about indigenous people. Yeah, well, I think so prior to the colonization of this land, many indigenous communities across this land were matriarchal. So our women are our leaders. There are knowledge holders. They keep our stories. Their culture and our traditions. And they also give life to the next generation.

And they led our communities. And since colonization, we've been put into a. a different system where that's not honored and acknowledged and places us in harm's way and at higher risk for either being murdered or going missing in this country. So I think that the things that this book I hope addresses with that is showing the strength of the mother and the strength of Tess in it because there's a moment in time in the book where Tess is super excited to honor her auntie and wear the red dress and make sure that her anti-voice is heard, but Mama's also kind of navigating that feeling of loss, of not making new

memories while she's watching her daughter stand there with so much pride. So that connection and that love is really important to see as they're holding each other navigating that story. There's this beautiful scene in the kitchen with a number of strong women. Yes. And in many indigenous cultures, oral traditions keep ancestral ancestors alive through stories. And I am curious, to what extent does Tess's mom's storytelling carry that oral tradition forward? Yeah.

So it's through that remembering of who they were when they were young and as they were growing up and listening to other aunties, big ante laughs. We call it in the kitchen. But being able to share who we are and who we were within those stories is really important in our communities, which is why it's so important to have those women in our lives. And when they're missing, we're missing like this core piece of who we are. So I love that picture in the kitchen when they're all laughing and talking and sharing. And I've been so lucky and fortunate to have those moments in my life to be able to pass on what I've learned from them in those moments. You mentioned listening.

And so I want to tap into that. What are respectful listening practices for non-Indigenous people when discussing heavy topics like grief, loss, missing and murdered indigenous women, girls and two-spirit people's crisis? Yeah. So in our community, I would equate that to being a witness to something. So when you come into our community and we are having a ceremony and if we ask you to witness that ceremony, we are inviting you in to be a different kind of listener, like a storyteller of what is happening. So it places this onus on us that I really have to make sure that I get all of these pieces correct. So you listen with way more intent. Dr. Joanne Archibald talks about listening with our three ears, the two on our side of our head and the last is with our heart. So I think that what's really important for people to understand when we're talking about the topic of murdered and missing indigenous women and girls is that we listen wholeheartedly and to listen to understand what's happening,

especially if we don't know much about it, but listening to hear the stories, hearing what has happening so that hopefully we can make change moving forward. Carolyn, what's one action students and families can take after reading this book? I think one action they could take in the back of the book. There is a condensed version of the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls report. Take a look at that, read through that. And if you're more curious after that, which I hope you are, then move on to reading the report.

But honoring Red Dress Day, wearing a Red Dress, sharing what you know, and continuing to learn about that. Carolyn, congratulations on a wonderful book. Very important story as well. Thank you. I'm Jayne. Thanks for watching The Rundown. We'd love to know what you think. So send us your suggestions and feedback at tvO.org slash rundown feedback.

Or you can always leave us a comment. Until then, I will see you tomorrow. If you're enjoying this series, please consider supporting TVO with a donation to make more insightful and thought-provoking podcast possible. TVO is a registered charity, and you will receive a tax receipt for your gift. Visit TVO.org slash give TVO to make your donation today.