Marie Wilson | |
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Born | |
Alma mater | University of Western Ontario |
Occupations |
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Office | Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner (2009–2015) |
Spouse | Stephen Kakfwi |
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Marie Wilson is a Canadian journalist and public administrator who served as one of three commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). Born in Petrolia, Ontario, [1] Wilson holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in French language and literature and a Master of Arts degree in journalism, both from the University of Western Ontario. [2] She spent over 35 years working in journalism for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, including as regional director for CBC North and as adviser to the South African Broadcasting Corporation. In 2015, she served as a professor of practice at McGill University. Prior to her appointment to the TRC, she was employed by the Workers' Safety and Compensation Commission of the Northwest Territories as vice president for operations.
The sole non-Indigenous TRC commissioner, [3] she worked for over six years documenting the history and lasting impacts of the Canadian Indian residential school system. [4] Wilson has received multiple awards and recognition for her work. She was appointed to the Order of Canada and the Order of the Northwest Territories in 2017. [5] [6] In addition, she is the recipient of the Meritorious Service Cross, a Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal, the CBC North Award for Lifetime Achievement, a Northerner of the Year Award, the Calgary Peace Prize, [7] and honorary doctorates from St. Thomas University, the Atlantic School of Theology, and the University of Manitoba. [8]
Wilson has three children with her husband Stephen Kakfwi, former Dene Nation Chief and Premier of the Northwest Territories. [9]
The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous peoples. The network was funded by the Canadian government's Department of Indian Affairs and administered by various Christian churches. The school system was created to isolate Indigenous children from the influence of their own culture and religion in order to assimilate them into the dominant Euro-Canadian culture.
CBC News is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC.ca. Founded in 1941 by the public broadcaster, CBC News is the largest news broadcaster in Canada and has local, regional, and national broadcasts and stations. It frequently collaborates with its organizationally separate French-language counterpart, Radio-Canada Info.
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Nellie Cournoyea is a Canadian politician, who served as the sixth premier of the Northwest Territories from 1991 to 1995. She was the first female premier of a Canadian territory, first Indigenous female premier (Inuvialuk) of a Canadian province / territory and the second female premier in Canadian history after Rita Johnston of British Columbia.
Calvin Murray Sinclair was a Canadian politician who was a member of the Senate, and a First Nations lawyer who served as chairman of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission from 2009 to 2015.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada was a truth and reconciliation commission active in Canada from 2008 to 2015, organized by the parties of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement.
Peter Henderson Bryce was a public health physician for the Ontario provincial and Canadian federal governments. As a public official he submitted reports that highlighted the mistreatment of Indigenous students in the Canadian Indian residential school system and advocated for the improvement of environmental conditions at the schools. He also worked on the health of immigrant populations in Canada.
The Sixties Scoop, also known as The Scoop, was a period in which a series of policies were enacted in Canada that enabled child welfare authorities to take, or "scoop up," Indigenous children from their families and communities for placement in foster homes, from which they would be adopted by white families. Despite its name referencing the 1960s, the Sixties Scoop began in the mid-to-late 1950s and persisted into the 1980s.
The history of the First Nations is the prehistory and history of present-day Canada's peoples from the earliest times to the present day with a focus on First Nations. The pre-history settlement of the Americas is a subject of ongoing debate. First Nation's oral histories and traditional knowledge, combined with new methodologies and technologies —used by archaeologists, linguists, and other researchers—produce new—and sometimes conflicting—evidence.
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The Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement is an agreement between the government of Canada and approximately 86,000 Indigenous peoples in Canada who at some point were enrolled as children in the Canadian Indian residential school system, a system which was in place between 1879 and 1997. The IRSSA recognized the damage inflicted by the residential schools and established a C$1.9-billion compensation package called CEP for all former IRS students. The agreement, announced in 2006, was the largest class action settlement in Canadian history. The conduct of certain class action lawyers resulted in criticisms of unethical and exploitative practices, including calls to re-evaluate the codes of conduct of the legal profession by the Canadian Bar Association.
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Tanya Talaga is a Canadian journalist and author of Anishinaabe and Polish descent. She worked as a journalist at the Toronto Star for over twenty years, covering health, education, local issues, and investigations. She is also the owner of the media company Makwa Creative. She is now a regular columnist with the Globe and Mail. Her 2017 book Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death, and Hard Truths in a Northern City was met with acclaim, winning the 2018 RBC Taylor Prize for non-fiction and the 2017 Shaughnessy Cohen Prize for Political Writing. in 2024 she published The Knowning a retelling of Canadian History and residential schools through an Indigenous lens, beginning with the life of her great-great grandmother Annie Carpenter. Talaga is the first woman of Anishinaabe descent to be named a CBC Massey Lecturer. She holds honorary doctorates from Lakehead University and from Ryerson University.
Rebecca Jamieson is a Canadian Tuscarora educator and education administrator. Since the late 1970s she has worked to improve access to education on Six Nations of the Grand River, the most-populous First Nations reserve in Canada. Jamieson helped to found Six Nations Polytechnic (SNP), an indigenous educational institution, and has been its president and CEO since 2009.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation is the archival repository for all of the material collected by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, purposed to compile the complete history and legacy of Canada's residential school system.
Melanie Delva is the Reconciliation Animator for the Anglican Church of Canada.
The Canadian Indian residential school system was a network of boarding schools for Indigenous children directed and funded by the Department of Indian Affairs. Administered by various Christian churches and funded by the Canadian government from 1828 to 1997 Canadian Indian residential school system attempted to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian culture. Over 4,000 students died while attending Canadian residential school. Students' bodies were often buried in school cemeteries to keep costs as low as possible. Comparatively few cemeteries associated with residential schools are explicitly referenced in surviving documents, but the age and duration of the schools suggests that most had a cemetery associated with them. Many cemeteries were unregistered, and as such the locations of many burial sites and names of residential school children have been lost.
A statue of Egerton Ryerson by Hamilton MacCarthy was installed on the grounds of Ryerson University in Toronto, now known as Toronto Metropolitan University, from 1887 until 2021.
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