Honouring the Truth Reconciling for the Future

The challenge of reconciliation • 309used extensively as evidence by both Aboriginal claimants and Crown defendants inlitigation involving residential schools, Treaties, Aboriginal title and rights cases, andland claims.In the case of documents related to residential schools, the problems associatedwith lac’s dual function became apparent during the litigation period prior to theSettlement Agreement. During this time, with regard to its public education mandate,lac produced “Native Residential Schools in Canada: A Selective Bibliography” in2002, and assisted Aboriginal people, academics, and other researchers who wishedto access these holdings. 150 But, because the residential schools litigation put thefederal government in the position of being the major defendant in the court cases,the overriding priority for lac, as the custodian of federal government departmentalrecords, was to meet its legal obligations to the Crown.Librarian and Archivist Emeritus Dr. Ian Wilson, Canada’s former nationalarchivist, described this tension. He explained that, as the residential school litigationintensified,Lawyers besieged the archives. Archivists, caught between the vagaries of oldinformal recordkeeping practices in church schools across the country, legaldemands for instant and full access and obligations to employer and profession,struggled to uphold their ideal of the honest stewardship of the records.... Thisprocess has tested the capacity of the archives and our professional ability torespond. 151These challenges did not end with the implementation of the 2007 SettlementAgreement. The trc’s own difficulties in gaining access to government records heldin lac demonstrated why state-controlled archives are not necessarily best suited tomeet the needs of Survivors, their families, and communities.By 2009, in terms of public education, lac had partnered with the Legacy of HopeFoundation and the Aboriginal Healing Foundation on two exhibitions: Where are theChildren? Healing the Legacy of the Residential Schools; and “We were so far away ...”:The Inuit experience of residential schools. 152 Library and Archives Canada also producedan updated online version of the bibliography, “The Legacy of the ResidentialSchool System in Canada: A Selective Bibliography.” 153 In 2010, lac made an onlinefinding aid available, “Conducting Research on Residential Schools: A Guide to theRecords of the Indian and Inuit Affairs Program and Related Resources at Library andArchives Canada.” 154In the spirit of reconciliation, lac archivists (along with church archivists) broughtbinders of residential school photographs to the Learning Places at the trc’s NationalEvents, where Survivors and others could see them and get copies of their class picturesand other school activities. For many Survivors, especially those who had novisual record of their own childhood or no pictures of siblings who have since passedaway, this proved to be one of the most treasured aspects of the National Events