The Work that Remains: Continuing the Reconciliation Work of Legal Tribunals through Museums

There is no substitution for seeing something with your own eyes. Attending the Woodland Cultural Centre and touring the Mohawk Institute added an indelible texture to the TRC Workshop and to my thoughts about the long-term work of truth and reconciliation. Seeing the physical space where children were held, abused, and some killed, and meeting and listening to the experiences of survivors has brought an urgency to my work that no amount of reading these histories in books and journals could ever do. Even though I had attended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada event in Montreal in 2013 and listened to dozens of people testify about their experiences in residential schools, there was something different about being in the very place where the children had lived. While I can empathize with the desire of some student-survivors to destroy the physical buildings where such widespread harm was inflicted, as an outsider I gained a new level of understanding from seeing the space, and I hope that these buildings will be preserved so that generations of people may also do so.