Canadian Archives Community Developed Unified Response to Truth and Reconciliation Commission

As reported on the website Librarianship.ca, the Canadian Council of Archives, the Association of Canadian Archivists, Library and Archives Canada, l’Association des archivistes du Québec, and the Council of Provincial and Territorial Archivists have developed a joint response to the the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

That Commission looked into the legacy of the Indian residential school programme that for generations hurt children from indigenous communities in Canada.

The final report of the Commission included a series of calls to action to Canadian institutions and citizens to redress the wrongs committed:

"Call to Action #70 called upon the federal government to provide funding to the Canadian Association of Archivists to undertake, in collaboration with Aboriginal peoples, a national review of archival policies and best practices. The Canadian archival community heard this call to action. In September 2015, the Steering Community on Canada’s Archives (SCCA), representing the Canadian Council of Archives, the Association of Canadian Archivists, Library and Archives Canada, l’Association des archivistes du Québec, and the Council of Provincial and Territorial Archivists, established the Response to the Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Taskforce (TRC-TF) – its mandate to address Call to Action #70 specifically, and the other 93 Calls in spirit."

"With mandate in hand, the Taskforce spent the next four years conducting a review of archival policies and best practices extant across the country, and identifying potential barriers to reconciliation efforts between the Canadian archival community and Indigenous record keepers. The TRC-TF then worked in collaboration with Indigenous communities, heritage professionals and organizations across Canada to create an actionable response to this research which would become the foundation for a reconciliation framework for Canadian archives."

"The document, 'A Reconciliation Framework for Canadian Archives,' is the result of this collaborative work."