Witnessing the Unspoken Truth: On Residential School Survivors' Testimonies in Canada

Abstract

Residential schools functioned from 1876 to 1996 in Canada in order to assimilate Indigenous children to Euro- Canadian culture. By implementation of Indian Act (1876), the Indigenous children were taken away from their parents and sent to these schools. The trauma that these kids underwent as a result of physical, mental and sexual abuse at these residential schools has not been discussed by the survivors for many years. Therefore, the current research will focus on ten testimonies by the survivors of residential schools which have been selected from YouTube in order to indicate how their school days experience was narrated to the listener. The survivors of residential schools were witnesses of those incidents and they need a listener to vocalize what remained unspoken for long. The concept of trauma by Judith Herman and testimony and witnessing by Laub and Felman will be discussed while listening to these testimonies by the survivors.