Almost 40,000 residential school records will be destroyed. Not all survivors think they should be

WARNING: This story contains details of experiences at residential schools.

Geraldine Shingoose says she suffered a heart attack while testifying about the abuse she experienced at residential school.

The Saulteaux Elder attended the Muskowekwan Indian Residential School in Saskatchewan from 1962 to 1971. But it wasn’t until many years later, testifying in the Independent Assessment Process (IAP) as part of the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement, that she first disclosed the extent of what had happened to her at the school.

“I'd never shared it before. And when I shared it, it was really hard on me,” she said. "It impacted me physically."

Years later, Shingoose learned that testimony could disappear. The Supreme Court of Canada ruled in 2017 that the almost 38,000 records of residential school testimony collected through the IAP will be destroyed in 2027, unless individual survivors request their own records be preserved.

In a unanimous decision, the top court said the collection of accounts for independent compensation assessment was meant to be a "confidential and private process" and that "claimants and alleged perpetrators relied on the confidentiality assurance."

Some survivors and people involved in the IAP agree that the records should be destroyed, as the survivors who testified were promised confidentiality. Others feel the records are an important part of Canadian history and worry survivors haven't been properly informed about the destruction.

The news came as a shock for Shingoose.

“I was thinking, that’s my story," she said. "It was like, they’re getting rid of my truth."

'Like my story doesn’t mean anything': Shingoose

IAP records contain survivor testimony about sexual, physical and emotional abuse, along with transcripts, medical information and other documents.

Shingoose said the process of testifying during IAP hearings was traumatic. She said survivors recounted highly personal and at times horrific experiences in graphic detail, only to be further questioned by IAP adjudicators, who at times seemed to doubt their stories’ credibility.

“I don’t know how many times I broke down,” she said.

After going through that process, Shingoose said learning her testimony could be destroyed was devastating.

“Almost like my story doesn’t mean anything. Like it’s not worthy, or important to Canada,” she said.

Shingoose was able to retrieve her own record, as can any survivor who takes the steps to do so. But she said the plan to destroy the broader archive feels like another erasure.

“It’s almost like it’s going to be a secret again,” she said.

For Shingoose, the IAP records are a critical part of Canadian history that need to be shared. She noted some survivors who died before the Supreme Court ruling was announced "weren't given the choice.”

According to the ruling, only survivors themselves, not their children, other family members or loved ones, are allowed to retrieve IAP testimonies.

"The destruction of records that some claimants would have preferred to have preserved works a lesser injustice than the disclosure of records that most expected never to be shared," the ruling says.

The promise of privacy 

Not all survivors believe the records should be preserved.

Former Assembly of First Nations national chief Phil Fontaine said in a 2014 affidavit that, although he had spoken publicly about his own experience of abuse at residential school, he had never publicly disclosed the details contained in his IAP record.

“This is because I consider my story to be private,” he wrote, explicitly requesting that his record be destroyed and warning that disclosure could perpetuate intergenerational harm.

“Within our communities, such knowledge even in future generations would continue the legacy of dysfunction and trauma that was created by the residential school.”

The Supreme Court acknowledged the conflict in 2017.

“A perfect outcome here is, in these circumstances, simply not possible,” the ruling said.

Confidential by design

Daniel Ish, the IAP’s first chief adjudicator who now lives in Saskatoon, said confidentiality was fundamental to the process.

The understanding had been that “the files for IAP claimants would not be maintained, full stop," he told the CBC.

Ish said that, unlike the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), which collected testimony as part of its broader mandate for public education and healing, the IAP was primarily designed to compensate survivors.

Survivors were promised confidentiality, he said. Changing those terms after they had testified could be what he called “a gross breach of trust.”

Kathleen Keating, an IAP adjudicator who conducted more than 500 hearings across Western Canada and the North, remembers making the promise of confidentiality to claimants at their hearings.  

“To me, that was a solemn promise that I made to each one of those people,” Keating said, adding that in many cases, survivors went as far as opting to have their hearings in hotel conference rooms far from home, so no one in their communities would know they were participating in the process.

“I know it’s been argued that Canada needs access to those stories,” she said. “But I don’t think we have that right.”

Did survivors get to choose? 

According to a spokesperson from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, fewer than 100 of roughly 38,000 IAP claimants have opted to retrieve their record to date.

Former CBC journalist Connie Walker said that number should raise concern over whether survivors have been adequately informed of the records’ pending destruction.

“I think it raises some serious questions,” she said. “There was meant to be a very robust notice program.”

Walker, who is Cree and grew up on the Okanese First Nation in Saskatchewan, said many of the survivors she encounters to this day still have no idea their testimony is scheduled for destruction, or that they have the option to preserve it.

Walker said the issue is even more crucial because of  a rise in denialism about the harms of Residential School.

"I think the best way to counter that is with the truth, with records and survivor testimony," she said.

Walker leads the Indian Residential School Records Project at the Toronto Metropolitan University. The project aims to create an archive separate from public court records, generated by lawsuits from survivors filed before the IAP began.

“We want to make sure that we’re giving agency back to survivors so they can manage their own records,” she said.

Her interest is personal. Walker is an intergenerational trauma survivor herself, and became aware of the planned IAP record destruction while investigating her father’s residential school history.

Her late father’s records, she said, transformed her understanding of her family’s past.

“It felt like such a privilege to be able to get access to that truth.”

A national 24-hour Indian Residential School Crisis Line is available at 1-866-925-4419 for emotional and crisis referral services for survivors and those affected. 

Mental health counselling and crisis support are also available 24 hours a day, seven days a week through the Hope for Wellness hotline at 1-855-242-3310 or by online chat.