This is the Final Report of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission and its six-year investigation of the residential school system for Aboriginal youth and the legacy of these schools. This report, the summary volume, includes the history of residential schools, the legacy of that school system, and the full text of the Commission's 94 recommendations for action to address that legacy. This report lays bare a part of Canada's history that until recently was little-known to most non-Aboriginal Canadians. The Commission discusses the logic of the colonization of Canada's territories, and why and how policy and practice developed to end the existence of distinct societies of Aboriginal peoples. Using brief excerpts from the powerful testimony heard from Survivors, this report documents the residential school system which forced children into institutions where they were forbidden to speak their language, required to discard their clothing in favour of institutional wear, given inadequate food, housed in inferior and fire-prone buildings, required to work when they should have been studying, and subjected to emotional, psychological and often physical abuse. In this setting, cruel punishments were all too common, as was sexual abuse. More than 30,000 Survivors have been compensated financially by the Government of Canada for their experiences in residential schools, but the legacy of this experience is ongoing today. This report explains the links to high rates of Aboriginal children being taken from their families, abuse of drugs and alcohol, and high rates of suicide. The report documents the drastic decline in the presence of Aboriginal languages, even as Survivors and others work to maintain their distinctive cultures, traditions, and governance. The report offers 94 calls to action on the part of governments, churches, public institutions and non-Aboriginal Canadians as a path to meaningful reconciliation of Canada today with Aboriginal citizens. Even though the historical experience of residential schools constituted an act of cultural genocide by Canadian government authorities, the United Nation's declaration of the rights of aboriginal peoples and the specific recommendations of the Commission offer a path to move from apology for these events to true reconciliation that can be embraced by all Canadians.

This interim report covers the activities of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada since the appointment of the current three Commissioners on July 1, 2009. The report summarizes: the activities of the Commissioners, the messages presented to the Commission at hearings and National Events, the activities of the Commission with relation to its mandate, the Commission's interim findings, the Commission's recommendations.

Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions highlights the need for post-conflict societies to have access to - and to use – Truth Reconciliation Commissions (TRCs’) documentation to achieve reconciliation and to work towards a democratic society. Including international contributions from a range of disciplines, the volume discusses the challenges that surround TRCs’ documentation. Considering the impact of the politicization of documentation, chapters also highlight the lack of political will to democratize information, the lack of dissemination and the preservation infrastructures that hinder access and its effective use and re-use. Arguing that TRCs’ documentation should be used to inform policy, improve governance and to promote justice, healing and reconciliation, the volume considers the ethical challenges involved in disseminating such information. Contributing authors argue that information professionals should play a major role in the planning for the TRCs’ information management infrastructures, if they are to facilitate access, effectively manage the generated documentation, deal with preservation of the compound records and promote the dissemination of the TRC findings. Documentation from Truth and Reconciliation Commissions demonstrates that TRCs’ documentation provides validation of human rights violations and that it helps to promote an understanding of the causes of conflict. As such, it will be essential reading for academics and students working in Archival Studies, Information Science, History, Transitional Justice, and Peace and Conflict Studies

What are the political roots of South Africa's truth and reconciliation commission (TRC)? By what means did the Commission endeavor to understand South Africa's violent past and promote a spirit of national unity?

“It can start with a knock on the door one morning. It is the local Indian agent, or the parish priest, or, perhaps, a Mounted Police officer.” So began the school experience of many Indigenous children in Canada for more than a hundred years, and so begins the history of residential schools prepared by the Truth & Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Between 2008 and 2015, the TRC provided opportunities for individuals, families, and communities to share their experiences of residential schools and released several reports based on 7000 survivor statements and five million documents from government, churches, and schools, as well as a solid grounding in secondary sources. A Knock on the Door, published in collaboration with the National Research Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, gathers material from the several reports the TRC has produced to present the essential history and legacy of residential schools in a concise and accessible package that includes new materials to help inform and contextualize the journey to reconciliation that Canadians are now embarked upon. Survivor and former National Chief of the Assembly First Nations, Phil Fontaine, provides a Foreword, and an Afterword introduces the holdings and opportunities of the National Centre for Truth & Reconciliation, home to the archive of recordings, and documents collected by the TRC. As Aimée Craft writes in the Afterword, knowing the historical backdrop of residential schooling and its legacy is essential to the work of reconciliation. In the past, agents of the Canadian state knocked on the doors of Indigenous families to take the children to school. Now, the Survivors have shared their truths and knocked back. It is time for Canadians to open the door to mutual understanding, respect, and reconciliation.

"Of the truth commissions to date, the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) has most effectively captured public attention throughout the world and provided the model for succeeding bodies. Although other truth commissions had preceded its establishment, the TRC had a far more expansive mandate: to go beyond truth-finding to promote national unity and reconciliation, to facilitate the granting of amnesty to those who made full factual disclosure, to restore the human and civil dignity of victims by providing them an opportunity to tell their own stories, and to make recommendations to the president on measures to prevent future human rights violations.

Takes a behind the scenes look at the debates and decisions of the Kenyan Truth, Justice and Reconciliation Commission.

Onur Bakiner evaluates the success of truth commissions in promoting political, judicial, and social change. He argues that even when commissions produce modest change as a result of political constraints, they open new avenues for human rights activism and transform public discourses on memory, truth, justice, and reconciliation.

An Introduction to Transitional Justice provides the first comprehensive overview of transitional justice judicial and non-judicial measures implemented by societies to redress legacies of massive human rights abuse. Written by some of the leading experts in the field it takes a broad, interdisciplinary approach to the subject, addressing the dominant transitional justice mechanisms as well as key themes and challenges faced by scholars and practitioners. Using a wide historic and geographic range of case studies to illustrate key concepts and debates, and featuring discussion questions and suggestions for further reading, this is an essential introduction to the subject for students.

History of the First Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the United States