What Is Reconciliation Without Truth? Protecting Residential School Survivor Records
Release Date: 09/30/2026
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info_outlineKimberly Murray and Connie Walker discuss the impending destruction of 38,000 residential school survival records and the project to preserve them.
In our second episode of the season we are joined by co-leaders of the Indian Residential School Records Project, Pulitzer and Peabody award-winning journalist Connie Walker and former Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, Kimberly Murray. We discuss the scheduled destruction of 38,000 records containing the testimonies of Indian Residential School survivors, the resilience and courage of survivors, intergenerational survivors, families and communities to preserve the truth in the face of denial and historical erasure and the meaning and right to truth in the project of national reconciliation.
Describing the 38,000 files set to be destroyed next year, Walker says:
“There's information about the persons of interest or the alleged abusers in residential schools. There's information about the scale of abuse at individual schools. That is what we're talking about when we're thinking of what is about to be lost in the IAP hearings.
It's really, in some ways, the most complete truth that could ever be understood about Indian residential schools. ”
According to Murray:
“It's going to erase the history. It's going to erase the truth. … if we fast-forward decades from now ..my grandchildren and my great-grandchildren might not know about Indian Residential Schools, 'cause we're slowly erasing that history. And this is part of that erasure.
And when we think about the growing denialism that's happening in this country, the misinformation, disinformation that's being put out there.. protecting these records is an antidote to that denialism .. that this happened. ”
Connect with the Indian Residential School Records Project about their work, or if you have information regarding records filed through the Independent Assessment Process under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
If you have made an Independent Assessment Process (IAP) claim, or Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR) claim for residential school abuse and wish to have your record preserved at the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, visit My Records, My Choice
About today’s guests:
Kimberly Murray is Queen’s University’s National Scholar in Indigenous Legal Studies in the Faculty of Law. She is the former Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada and was the federally appointed Independent Special Interlocutor for Missing Children and Unmarked Graves and Burial Sites Associated with Indian Residential Schools. Murray is a member of the Kanehsatà:ke Mohawk Nation, holds an LLM and LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School, and has been bestowed several Honorary LL.Ds.
Connie Walker is a Pulitzer Prize and Peabody Award-winning investigative journalist and host of the acclaimed podcasts Stolen and Missing & Murdered. Her work has exposed the crisis of violence in Indigenous communities and the devastating impacts of intergenerational trauma stemming from Indian Residential Schools.
Walker is currently an Assistant Professor and Velma Rogers Research Chair at Toronto Metropolitan University where she is leading the Indian Residential School Records Project to preserve testimonies and accounts from Indian Residential School Survivors. Walker is a member of the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan.
Transcript of this episode can be accessed at georgebrown.ca/TommyDouglasInstitute or here.
Image: Kimberly Murray and Connie Walker / Used with permission.
Music: Ang Kahora. Lynne, Bjorn. Rights Purchased.
Intro Voices: Ashley Booth (Podcast Announcer); Bob Luker (Tommy)
Courage My Friends Podcast Organizing Committee: Chandra Budhu, Ashley Booth, Resh Budhu.
Produced by: Resh Budhu, The Tommy Douglas Institute of Labour and Social Justice and Nick Seebruch, rabble.ca.
Host: Resh Budhu.