Healing & Reconciliation

In the early 1990s, beginning with Phil Fontaine, National Chief of the Assembly of First Nations, Survivors came forward with disclosures about physical and sexual abuse at residential schools. Throughout the 1990s, these reports escalated and more Aboriginal victims from one end of the country to the other courageously came forward with stories. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) confirmed a link between social crisis in Aboriginal communities, residential schools, and the legacy of intergenerational trauma.

Aboriginal people have begun to heal the wounds of the past. On January 7, 1998, the Federal Government of Canada issued a Statement of Reconciliation and unveiled a new initiative called Gathering Strength—Canada’s Aboriginal Action Plan. A strategy to begin the process of reconciliation, Gathering Strength featured the announcement of a $350 million healing fund.

On March 31, 1998, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation (AHF) was created. It was given ten years to disburse this $350-million fund beginning March 31, 1999 and ending March 31, 2009. In 2007, the AHF received $125M from the federal government extending the life of the Foundation to 2012. Since June 1999, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation has been providing funding support to community-based initiatives that address the intergenerational legacy of physical and sexual abuse in Canada’s Indian Residential School System.

In 2000, the Aboriginal Healing Foundation established the Legacy of Hope Foundation - a national charity whose mandate is to educate and create awareness about residential schools and to continue to support the ongoing healing of Survivors.

Through initiatives by groups such as the Aboriginal Healing Foundation and the Legacy of Hope Foundation, Canadians are learning this history and understanding the impact that it has had and continues to have on their communities. The AHF’s vision is one in which those affected by the legacy of physical abuse and sexual abuse experienced in the residential school system have addressed the effects of unresolved trauma in meaningful terms, have broken the cycle of abuse, and have enhanced their capacity as individuals, families, communities, and nations to sustain their well-being and that of future generations.