Canada's Residential Schools: The Legacy, Volume 5 examines the devastating effects the residential school system has had on former students, their families, and on Canadian society as a whole. It explores the loss of language and culture suffered by Aboriginal people as well as the significant gaps they experience in health, education, and employment outcomes. The Legacy volume also analyzes in depth the dramatic overrepresentation of Aboriginal Canadians in the child welfare and correctional systems. In each of the volume's five sections, the Commissioners present a series of Calls to Action intended to redress the injustices and inequities that are the legacy of the residential school system and the long-standing policies of assimilation that gave birth to it. This title is part of The Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada describes what Canada must do to overcome the schools’ tragic legacy and move towards reconciliation with the country’s first peoples. For over 125 years Aboriginal children suffered abuse and neglect in residential schools run by the Canadian government and by churches. They were taken from their families and communities and confined in large, frightening institutions where they were cut off from their culture and punished for speaking their own language. Infectious diseases claimed the lives of many students and those who survived lived in harsh and alienating conditions. There was little compassion and little education in most of Canada’s residential schools. Although Canada has formally apologized for the residential school system and has compensated its Survivors, the damaging legacy of the schools continues to this day. This volume examines the long shadow that the residential schools have cast over the lives of First Nations, Inuit, and Métis who are more likely to live in poverty, more likely to be in ill health and die sooner, more likely to have their children taken from them, and more likely to be imprisoned than other Canadians. The disappearance of many Indigenous languages and the erosion of cultural traditions and languages also have their roots in residential schools.
