Manitoba deputy premier Eric Robinson will be among those present today when for the national hearing of Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, in Winnipeg.

The idea, CBC reports here, is to expose and deal with the pain and suffering caused by residential schools. Robinson has first-hand experience with that. He was a student at the Jack River School in Norway House, Manitoba, where he was sexually abused by a priest. And yet, he counts himself relatively fortunate:

“My father was a student at one of these places, went there for seven or eight years, never learned anything more than how to write his name, but he sure became a good farmhand.

“My mother went … at the age of three. She came out when she was 18 to a world of alcoholism and drug abuse and she died alone on the streets of Winnipeg at the age of 31 when I was 11 years old.”

Some 150,000 First Nations, Inuit and Métis children, about 85,000 still living, were forced to attend the government- and church-run schools, the last of which closed in 1996.

Some of those survivors filed a class-action lawsuit, and the $60 million commission is the result.

Gwen Florio

Tags: Boarding schools, Eric Robinson, First Nations, Gwen Florio, Inuit, Jack River School, Metis, Native American news, Truth and Reconciliation Commission