CANADA
Nunatsiaq Online
LISA GREGOIRE
The fate of thousands of pages of testimony about physical, sexual and psychological abuse at Canada’s notorious residential schools now lies with Ontario Superior Court Justice Paul Perell, but at least one residential school survivor hopes they are not destroyed.
Piita Irniq, who attended three residential schools, including Chesterfield Inlet’s Joseph Bernier School and its notorious Turquetil Hall residence, and who publicly, and repeatedly, disclosed the extent of abuse he suffered there, said July 28 that destroying those documents would be a grave injustice.
“If that happens, then you’re destroying the words of healing, you’re destroying the experience,” Irniq said.
“Were the Jews’ statements about the Holocaust destroyed too? If you destroy them, you destroy the history of Aboriginal people. The pain and the healing would go away.”
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