The Federation for the Humanities and Social Sciences is posting this guest blog in support of the Sharing the Land, Sharing a Future project and in anticipation of this initiative’s launch on November 3, 2016.
Established in 1991, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) travelled across Canada documenting the issues and challenges facing Indigenous Canadians and their communities. Over its six-year mandate, RCAP amassed thousands of hours of recorded testimony and hundreds of thousands of pages of documents, culminating in the publication of the 1996 RCAP final report complete with a series of recommendations for a renewed relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal peoples in Canada.
Following the conclusion of the Commission, the entire RCAP archive was transferred to the National Archives of Canada, now Library and Archives Canada (LAC).
On November 3, 2016, LAC will launch a searchable database of select RCAP records, coinciding with the commemorative national forum.
LAC hopes that the RCAP database will renew interest in this important inquiry which remains so relevant today. Stay tuned to the LAC Blog for more details on November 3!
Photo caption: Cree students at their desks with their teacher in a classroom, All Saints Indian Residential School, Lac La Ronge, Saskatchewan, March 1945