By Larry Kusch and Mary Agnes Welch, Canwest News Service June 17

Winnipeg — Indian Affairs Minister Chuck Strahl was overcome by emotion when it was his turn to speak Wednesday on the opening day of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission national event in Winnipeg.

Strahl, who has headed the portfolio for three years, had been sitting in a sharing circle of 20 people. Around him were the three commissioners, led by Justice Murray Sinclair, and more than a dozen residential school survivors, family members and other witnesses.
Each was asked to tell how residential schools affected their life.

After two hours, Strahl was one of the last to speak. He had heard stories of physical, emotional and sexual abuse, of missing family members, of the extreme pain that led people to alcoholism and drug addiction and the perpetuation of violence and abuse.

Clearly affected by the harrowing stories, Strahl said they were a call "to any of us that have any influence" to ensure that "the record is complete" and that "you can have some peace."
He then paused more than 20 seconds before he regained sufficient composure to continue. As he did so, a couple of residential school survivors who were part of the sharing circle patted his shoulder, offering him comfort.

Strahl said at one time he was involved in a logging business in British Columbia, at which half the people he worked with were aboriginal. But he knew little at the time about residential schools.

"It was never taught; we didn't know much about it," he said.

He said for many Canadians, including himself, he did not "personalize" the matter until Prime Minister Stephen Harper's apology to residential school survivors two years ago.

"I can't imagine it. I have four children, I have nine grandchildren. I can't imagine any of what you described," Strahl told members of the sharing circle.

"You shouldered it alone and we did not help and we were not there," he said.

"So we have our own burden to bear. Those of us who weren't in residential schools can only look on with wonder at the strength that you have, your willingness to share and realizing that reconciliation can only happen because of your candidness. And we don't deserve your ability to share those facts with us and your emotions and the impacts," he said.

The hearings are meant to create a record of residential schools and foster reconciliation.
About 150,000 aboriginal children attended residential schools over 120 years, and many were abused, barred from speaking their language or practising their culture and left with fractured families and generations of dysfunction.

"I hope someday we will look back at this day and say it was an important day in our history," Sinclair told a crowd of about 400 people during the opening ceremonies at The Forks, a plaza in downtown Winnipeg at the junction of the Red and Assiniboine rivers.
Dozens of elders, native leaders, church officials and politicians spoke throughout the morning ceremony on a hot and blindingly sunny day.

Also Wenesday, Strahl announced the Harper government would ask parliament to repeal eight sections of the Indian Act that created the residential schools, forced all aboriginal students to attend and allowed truant officers to forceably remove children from their homes. Those sections haven't been enforced for decades, but the symbolic gesture of reconciliation won a round of applause from the crowd.

While eating a brown-bag lunch provided to survivors, Jack Beardy said it's time Canadians, especially those who believe the schools weren't so bad, hear the truth. For nine years, Beardy attended two schools in Saskatchewan, which were the worst, and two in Manitoba. There, he was frequently strapped for speaking his Cree language, the only one he knew, and fondled by staff while they pretended to bath him.

Beardy, now 65, is hoping to tell his story in public, likely in a special sharing circle with the three TRC commissioners that runs every day.

"I got brave enough, but it took a long time," said the man from Split Lake in northern Manitoba.
"A lot of people, my brothers, still can't tell their story. Too much shame."Read more: