Roundtable Discussion to Mark the One-Year Anniversary of
the Government of Canada’s Official Apology to Former
Students of Residential Schools

Ottawa, Thursday, June 11, 2009

History will remember the words of sorrow and profound regret expressed exactly one year ago today in the heart of Parliament.

Those words born of the indignation brought about by the tragic history of the residential schools, where children torn from their families and stripped of their cultures and languages were shut away.

Those words that spoke of a painful chapter in our collective history, when non-Aboriginals were also dispossessed of a heritage representing our deepest roots on this continent.

Those words resounded right across our country, giving way at last to expressions of hope.

On that day, all of us “together,” as Chief Phil Fontaine of the Assembly of First Nations said, vowed to bridge the gap between us that had been entrenched by years of injustice.

We vowed to write the truth, however painful and, yes, disgraceful it may be, in our collective history, so that together, we could find the way to reconciliation.

We made the choice to embrace the luminous promise of the truth, rather than push this chapter from our minds and thus keep future generations in the dark.

And so it was that our eyes, hearts and minds opened to new possibilities.

More often than not, history, as we all know, is partial, in every sense of the word.

From time to time, we must go back and cast new light on the view that history offers us.

The strength of our community spirit resides solely in our willingness to illuminate our shadows.

Because when the present does not recognize the wrongs of the past, the future takes its revenge.

Because even before we can recognize ourselves in our history, we must endeavour to know it from every angle, particularly those that have been unjustly and shamefully hidden.

It was also in the name of truth that I undertook, in 2005, my first journey abroad as governor general of Canada, accompanying Aboriginal veterans onto the battlefields of the First and Second World Wars.

It was vitally important to me to remember the role that members of the Inuit, Métis and First Nations communities had played in helping many countries to freedom.

Just as it was unacceptable to me that citizens of this country, whose ancestors showed us how to put down roots in the Americas, should be left out of our history books and our collective memory.

We must never turn away from the opportunity to right an historical wrong.

Establishing the truth is tantamount to breaking down the solitudes between us, which too many oversights have served only to reinforce.

It is with that same spirit of openness and sharing that I recently travelled to the North and to the Arctic to meet with women, men and youth whose traditions and achievements have been enriching our land for thousands of years and are essential to our national spirit.

Dear friends, one year after the official apology to the former students of the Indian Residential Schools, we have an opportunity: not to forget the injustices of the past, but to transcend them and work together to create a history that brings us together and reflects who we are.

Yes, today, life has given us the opportunity to change the course of history.

Let us seize this opportunity so that from one end of this country to the other, we might achieve all that is possible between us.

For what is possible is indeed the highest and most just expression of our human dignity.