Saskatoon Library Launches Read for Reconciliation Space
“Since the last of Canada’s Indian residential schools closed in 1996, the nation has been attempting to shape a response to the legacy of abuse that the residential school system—which removed native children from their homes and families—inflicted on its Indigenous Peoples. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), established in 2008, spent seven years assembling documentation from survivors and working to build awareness of these abuses, ultimately issuing a series of Calls to Action at the end of 2015. Since that time a number of institutions have implemented programs to advance the national movement toward reconciliation, including the establishment in 2015 of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR), hosted by the University of Manitoba, Winnipeg. In February 2016 the University of Saskatchewan joined eight other post-secondary institutions in partnership with NCTR to make some five million electronic records on the subject accessible.
Now Saskatoon Public Library (SPL), Saskatchewan, has become the first public library to incorporate a space permanently dedicated to truth and reconciliation. On November 21 SPL’s Frances Morrison Central Library opened the Read for Reconciliation reading area, which includes a full set of the reports compiled by the TRC over five years, plus a variety of books about Canada’s history of residential schools, as well as an extensive reading list on the history and legacy of residential schools in Canada on its homepage.”