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Counseling intergenerational trauma4/3/2024 ![]() The TRC created a vehicle for former students – then children, now adults – to tell us about their experiences at residential school and the impact the schools had on them, their families and their communities. It was one of the provisions of a massive out-of-court settlement brought on by former Indigenous residential school survivors in the largest class-action lawsuit in Canadian history. Six years ago, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was formed. Sometimes it takes a large collective voice to bring attention to a significant issue that is not in the public eye. So is the “soul wound” felt by many survivors as they come to grips with the impact of their own experience on their children, family members, and community. ![]() Although the stories vary, grief and loss are dominant themes. I have attended several of these national events and many local hearings as a therapist and health support. All of us in the room were witnessing firsthand the intergenerational harm and traumatic legacy of residential schools in Canada. In a barely audible voice, he made a heart-wrenching apology to his three children for how he had treated them over the decades. In painstaking detail, this soft-spoken man recounted how the school had impacted him. We were at the Truth and Reconciliation Northern event. It was a hot, sticky afternoon in Inuvik, Northwest Territories, in late June 2011. They took my culture, they took my language, they took me from my family, my people, the animals, my land, everything I knew and loved.” In a sharing circle of other residential school survivors, this man spoke his truth for the first time in a room filled with family members, health supports, and the public. It took me far away from home and I was never the same after that. “I still remember the smell of the cold metal inside the float plane.
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