Abstract            Volume:4  Issue-2  Year-2016         Original Research Articles

Online ISSN : 2347 - 3215 Issues : 12 per year Publisher : Excellent Publishers Email : editorijcret@gmail.com

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) of Canada’s (2015) Report, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future,” attests to the practices of cultural genocide that characterized the residential school experience for many of the Aboriginal children who were removed from their home communities and sent to residential schools across the country. The Report chronicles the anecdotes of Aboriginal peoples who survived the residential school experience and shares in gripping detail the physical, emotional, psychological and sexual abuse to which many of these students were victim.  Upon a close examination of these anecdotes, however, it can be argued that equally compelling to the narratives of the survivors are the proverbial whispers that speak to us as readers from all those victims whose experiences are not directly cited in these testimonials but are among those who seem to have spoken on their behalf.  This paper, consequently, provides a context of the residential school period as it was described in the Truth and Reconciliation Committee Report, and perhaps more significantly, argues that the words of the survivors are particularly captivating because of their potential to encompass the broader realities of trauma for all the children enrolled in these institutions.

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