 We're sort of animators for you. If you have any doubts about what the Royal Commission did, well, the results are sort of in front of you. Actually, there are five volumes on the stage, but there are only four volumes of the five volume report that are on the stage. I have actually, I'm probably one of the few people in the country that has two complete sets and this is the set I have in my office. And I normally, well, I lent out volume five, which is called Perspectives, which dealt with women, elders, youth, Metis and Northern Perspectives, and also had a chapter on implementation. I lent it out to someone who's here, a Janney, because she was starting her research and she, of course, used it well and returned it and I was so excited to get it back. I took it home. So when I looked for my copy this morning of volume five, I realized I was at home, but you can see the extent of the output of the commission, which is not very well known. This is like a massive undertaking in terms of research. That's one of the things that Royal Commissions do. Most of the research was not published in hard copy. Really only a few of the studies, one of them was based here actually at Carlton in the School of Public Policy and Administration, were actually published in hard copy. The rest were put into the groundbreaking technology of the day. They were mounted in a hypertext software platform and were produced in a CD-ROM, which no one can read today because there's no computer that will read it, right? Life has gone on. So there's this incredible, all of the testimony, all of the research is on this. I've got one. But I can't do anything with it. However, there's good news for all of us. Library and Archives Canada as part of its honoring of the 20th anniversary of RCAP has taken on the job of resuscitating the research. And so there is a technology that will enable translating the old CD-ROM into contemporary technology. It will now be resident in Library of Archives Canada and Library of Archives Canada has committed to disseminating it very broadly in Canada as part of its commitment from the TRC. So all of you who are on the cusp of your research programs or our continuing research programs, I encourage you to await the re-release of the RCAP research in the fall of this year. So that's why we're here. Let me now introduce my colleagues on the panel. And I'm just going to give a very brief introduction. Some of you may know them by reputation or in person. On my far left is Karen Green. Karen is from Tyana-Nega-Mohawk territory. She is someone who worked at RCAP as an advisor and a writer particularly on women's issues but also on other things as required. And Karen is also a lawyer. She practiced and worked in the Department of Justice for many years and we are very fortunate that Karen is now here at Carleton as the Director of Equity Services here. So Karen is a colleague today as well as 20 years ago. Karen is also very active in the community, active with Odawa, active with Community Foundation of Ottawa. On my immediate left is Don Kelly. Don was a communications person, a staff person with the Royal Commission and finished off in the day as Senior Communications Officer for RCAP. He was around when there was no one else in the offices. He didn't quite turn the key at the end of the day but he was around for a very long time doing communications work. Don has continued very actively in the communications field since then working in media. So some of you may know Don from his program on CBC radio and Don is currently the Director of Communications with the Assembly of First Nations. Others of you, if you like comedy clubs, comedy festivals, whatever, you may have heard of him. It's my evil twin. It's the evil twin, it's the evil twin. Don Kelly. And on my right is Alan Moskovich. Alan is also a Carlton colleague, being a senior member, including Director of the School of Social Work here at Carlton for many years. Alan is an economist turned social worker. You may object to that description but that's, but also very much interested and engaged in the world of social policy. And Alan was a research person working with the commission on social policy issues and he actually ended up writing the report on welfare social assistance that appears in the RCAP report. So all of us had very different contexts for our experience at RCAP and so we're going to reflect from those different contexts. We got together before today and we sort of cooked up five things that we thought you might be interested in talking about with us and again I wanna emphasize it's talking about with us so don't hesitate at any point and Karen, Don and Alan will also maybe ask you questions. I'm not the gatekeeper here. This is about a bit of a dialogue. So I'm gonna start, I'm gonna preface the first question by a little bit of a funny story. At least I think it's a funny story. The RCAP offices were downtown in Ottawa in one of the inevitable Ottawa high rises, right? I think we occupied the fifth and the sixth floor of the Minto building downtown. And one morning I was going into the office and got into a very crowded elevator with people, the great 830 suck-in of people to the upper reaches of those towers. And the elevator stopped at the fifth floor and as the elevator was slowing down I heard someone at the back of the elevator car say, oh yeah, that's the floor where they get to smoke dope. Have you ever smelled it when they open the doors on that floor? That's the floor where they get to smoke dope. And of course, periodically there would be smudging going on, right? And so what was the association? It says something about, in a sense, the bubble that RCAP was at that time even in downtown Ottawa. But that leads me to our first question. And I think as researchers, as people who are interested in First Nations-mated Inuit issues, it's important to maybe reflect what it was like to work in this kind of a hot house environment. So I'm gonna throw out the first question and just to ask each of you to reflect for a couple of minutes on what it was like to work at RCAP. I describe it as heaven and hell, but you may think otherwise, okay? So I continued to work at Indian Affairs and finally I had the opportunity to leave. They were doing a big downsizing and I met with my boss who said to me, you're bright, you're indigenous, you're outspoken, you're never gonna make it here. So I decided to leave. And so the day that I was leaving, or the day before I was leaving, I thought, gee, I better find a job. I'm a single parent, I need to work. So I faxed my resume over to RCAP. And that afternoon I had a meeting with the head guy, Tony Reynolds, at the time. And he said, you're hired. But then the woman that I was gonna be working with was Dr. B. Medicine, an indigenous scholar from the States who was fantastic. And she was very upset that he had hired me because she wanted to see if I was the real deal. And so I had to go back and meet with B and we hit it off and we had a great working relationship. So when I got to the commission, I started that Monday, so I had Friday off before I started my new contract, a three month contract, which ended up being for two years. But I came in later, I came in in 1993, fall of 1993 where a lot of the research projects and the consultations had been done. So there were 16 things that the Royal Commission were going to look at. And number 13 was about Aboriginal women. And that was the one area I was kind of hoping I wouldn't get because you're always on the fringe looking in, looking out. So it wasn't a sort of one substantive area alone. So I remember my first presentation to the commission was around the fact that indigenous women's issues needed to be integrated into every single issue because every issue was an indigenous women's issue. And we reported to a, there was a commission, there were seven commissioners co-chaired by an Aboriginal person and a non-Aboriginal person and then there were five other members, three of whom were indigenous. And during that presentation, it was kind of like going to court. It was very, you never knew what to expect. And you're very well prepared, you've written the paper, you think you have all the answers and then you go in and you're grilled. And my first appearance before the commission was four hours. And a lot of this was about whether we should have indigenous issues alone or as part of something else. And I remember the one co-chair at the time, the indigenous co-chair was like, so you're gonna have one woman counselor, one man counselor. He was just really livid about that issue, something that I thought was just common sense. And the former Justice Bertha Wilson was also one of the commissioners. And she kept saying, George, you're being ridiculous. And so they were kind of fighting among themselves and with me. And I think that experience kind of characterizes my relationship with the commission and that it was very exciting. It was an honor to be there. It was a huge responsibility. But it was, I think Catherine's exactly right. Everyone should be able to experience, have the privilege of experiencing something like that in their career because it really is life-changing to be involved in that. So that's my short spiel on the commission. I was working with CBC as a writer-broadcaster at the time. And that's what actually brought me over the wall into the communications end of things. I remember very much Catherine, just kind of a bit of the sort of mentality at the time. I don't know that it's gotten tremendously better, but I remember the incident about people saying, oh, they're smoking weed in the building. And there was one guy in a connected building that was insistent that we were always smoking dope in the building to the point where the police would show up and the police eventually told us, they said, look, the policy is when we get a call like this, we have to investigate. We can't just say, oh no, we know what's going on. So one of my colleagues in communications who actually did a lot of these smudging in the office, Alan Gabriel, not Alan Gabriel, Alan Gabriel, I just don't want to confuse that, took it upon himself to go talk to this person because he was always, and he was even sending nasty emails like, you Indians gotta stop, you know, I don't care what your traditions are. So he went over and explained to the guy what a smudge is. And among the things he said was, he said, you know, here's what we put, we use sweetgrass, we use sage, and it's nothing, you know, it's the same thing you would use when you're making spaghetti. We use sage, he showed them all this stuff, and he said, this is not religion to us, this is our culture, this is our life, you know, this is who we are about. And they had a good conversation, very positive. The guy sent an email to his colleagues, early days of email, and he copied Alan on it, and Alan showed it to me. And the email said, he explained to me what it's about. They use herbs like sage in their ceremonies, and when they make spaghetti, and if they don't do this, they'll die. That was the explanation. And my mixed reaction was, yeah, well, I guess I was over all that, well, he's trying, he's trying to get it, you know? But really, that awareness just wasn't there, like I say, I think we still need more of that awareness, but this was the early days, like smudging in an office in Ottawa, was just simply, you did not hear about this. So I guess for me, coming from CBC, where I was based in Winnipeg, and I didn't cover exclusively Aboriginal issues, but that was sort of one of the beats I covered, and I came into RCAP in Ottawa. I was looking for a change, basically, at the time, and I heard of, as Karen mentioned, Oka and then Meach Lake, and you got a sense that our issues were really happening. When I heard about this Royal Commission, I thought, well, I'm gonna throw my name and just see what happens. I didn't even apply for a specific position, it was just in the early days, they were setting it up. And I was hired in communication, so I came in having worked, covered some Aboriginal issues, I thought I had a pretty good handle on the scene and the landscape, but I knew the issues, and I really quickly realized how little I knew about any of the issues, and anyone up here on the stage, and I'm sure you all know, you can take any specific issue in Indigenous issues or First Nations issues, whether it's land claims, for example, and just drill down, and there's just so much detail and any specific claims, then get into certain specific claims, and there's just so much to know on any one issue. So it was intimidating, but it was also really inspiring to meet all these people, Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal, from all over, who were professionals and experts in all of these different areas, and just be connected to this amazing group of people and thinkers. And then the other thing that was a real privilege was RCAP had a very extensive public consultation, public participation, it was called process. They visited about 110 communities over three rounds of hearings, and a communications person was assigned to most of those hearings, so I got to do a lot of travel. I got to see a lot of the country places I never would have gone to, not because they're not beautiful or interesting or unique, but just, I never would even thought of, so to get to go to Kispiox BC, which from a boy who grew up mainly on the prairies was just mind-blowing and beautiful and getting there, and then going a little out east to the north, and then just seeing the whole variety and diversity of people and cultures and issues and priorities was a real tremendous learning experience, and then being involved in some of the writing, I mean, on volume four, I helped hold the pen on that volume. There was a chapter on women, as Catherine mentioned, and Karen did work into that, but of course that covered all issues, but volume four perspectives and realities was a little bit drilling down a bit more into some more specific or unique issues that weren't covered elsewhere. There was a chapter, the youth and elders chapters were the ones where I probably did the most work on, but in all cases, there was a lot of research done that fed into that. I wasn't doing the research, I had to go through with it, and I think really the approach in trying to reflect the voices of the people and the perspectives was a real challenge and an honor to work on, and as Karen mentioned, as well, working with the seven commissioners was tremendously interesting, and in communications as well, we had a real challenge because there's more awareness now, we still need a lot more awareness, but there's much less awareness then, both in terms of the public and in the media, so we really had our work cut out for us, and but again, I think I learned as much as anything from the experience as anything I may have been able to contribute to it. So in that sense, it really was a unique, you know, like Catherine says, always have one Royal Commission if you can, but I mean, this was a really unique Royal Commission, probably one of the broadest mandates, one of the most extensive mandates, and that's why you get the report that you have in front of you there, which by the way, I've got a box in my basement at home, I don't have two copies, but I've got every English language publication that the Royal Commission put out, not all the research, but every publication, including the ethical guidelines, so if my basement floods, that archive is gone. I don't want to be doing that, yes. So that was sort of the first blush of my experience there, okay? My involvement was a little different from the other two. I actually got involved when I took a plane trip, I can't even remember where I was going exactly, I might have been, I think I was on a commute from Ottawa to Toronto at the time, and I met, sitting beside me, one of the senior researchers for the commission, and we got to talking, and it was from that that she then got back to me and said, we'd like you to do some writing for the Royal Commission. Now, my background was that I came off working on, not exactly a Royal Commission, but something similar in Ontario on welfare in the early 90s. I was appointed in 1990, and our commission went on until mid-93, and I'd had a lot of contact with Indigenous administrators of welfare, and they certainly, in a couple of meetings, set me straight about how these things should operate. So I learned a lot from that process, and actually Hugh Shull, who's here as part of the committee, was the author of what became a parallel report to the main report that we wrote from that commission. So that was, I was coming off my involvement in a very intensive involvement in how welfare systems, how social assistance systems operated in every possible detail, and it was Dara Culhane who asked me to get involved writing a background study on welfare, which I did, co-authored with Andrew Webster, who was then a former student, now an employee at the ministry. It's now called the Ministry of Indigenous Affairs. And then later on, this was in the last days when there were very few employees around. I think Don was still there, but it was kind of empty. Fred Ween called me and said, we have this chapter we've been trying to write on welfare for the final report and it's not going anywhere. Would you be prepared to come in and work on it? So I said, fine. And I spent several days in the office working with a staff journalist and we produced a draft. We started over again really and produced a draft report. And then I had the pleasure of meeting with the commissioners to explain what it is that we were suggesting go into that chapter and what the recommendations would be coming out of it. And they were after, I don't think a meeting that lasted two or three hours, just on that one chapter, they were willing to go with it. And so that's how that chapter came to be. I guess maybe we should reflect a little bit on the relationships among the commissioners themselves. And on tomorrow night, Paul Chartrand, who was one of the commissioners, is going to be here lecturing on the commission so you'll get something from his perspective. I should know if that Paul Chartrand was the one commissioner who would speak to staff. No other commissioner, you'd walk in and the commissioner would be around sort of a square table and you'd go to the end of the table and you would present and then you would be cross-examined. But Paul would talk to us. He was a really nice man and it came through. But the commissioners themselves did not hold back, did they? Oh my goodness. I mean, when you were in there, you were on the hot seat, but they were in the inferno, right? Yeah, when we were doing the final report, you would go in with your chapter. This is in the late stages and they would go page by page through the chapter and you had to defend everything. And you know, really, like you would just, I actually, there was a, I remember one person who came out in tears because they thought, they basically thought, I don't know, actually that wasn't you, so I don't know two people who came out in tears. The other one was me. No, I can't do that. But I know you learned early on, like it was easy to feel like, oh, this is me and because you've done some work on this, you feel it's your work. But really, they were trying to get the best report possible and challenging ideas. I remember in the youth report, there was a number of references to empowerment and they were really challenging. What does that mean? It's an easy word to say. You gotta define that. You can empower people to disempower them. So you couldn't just kind of coast, which was where you get that tribunal court-like setting. But again, you realize they weren't going after you. This was their names going on this chapter. So they had to be able to support, defend and speak to every word, every recommendation being made. So that was the sense I got, having to go in there a few times and I'm really thankful again, going back to the people who actually did the work. Because I mean, holding the pen was just trying to get a bit of a consistent voice. It wasn't, okay, I am now going to write this chapter and say what I think is needed. So in that sense, having that really solid foundation, I think was very helpful. I still today, 20 years later, look at Yellow Stickies and think of one of the co-chairs of the commission because he would read and he was like an intense reader. And he would use Yellow Stickies to mark the pages where he wanted to really grill you or grill his colleagues. And I would always look to see how many stickies are there. How many hours are we going to be here? Are there any questions or thoughts or anything that we've said that you would like us to pursue a little bit? It's sort of not quite a trip down memory lane, but it is a little bit, but. I think part of the work of the commission and why the commissioners were so hard on us because the mandate was so broad, but so pure. It was like we wiped the slate clean and we were just starting fresh and everything was on the table. Yeah. And so I think, and plus, it's not like there was one answer or one view. So it was very complex. And I think that that's why they challenged us to the extent that they did. And it was harrowing, but I can see why they did it. And one of the things that we've been thinking about as we prepare for our national forum is asking the question, if the Royal Commission were to be reconstituted today, what would be the terms of reference and what would be the relative emphasis on things? So for example, two examples, just as examples, you know, women and urban, they were there. There were cross cutting themes in the research and they sort of emerged throughout the first four volumes, but they ended up with their little chapter in volume five. What would be the relative emphasis on things like that today? So Derek, you had a question? Yeah, I'm really interested in the process is really interesting to me. And I was just curious if these were, is there transcripts available? I guess they weren't recorded necessarily, but if there's, you know, just being able to kind of witness that process of sitting there with the commissioners. Oh yeah. I think there were minutes. Yeah, there were minutes. I nodded because all the hearings were recorded and transcribed. I remember those poor court reporters they hired who would sit there the whole day and some of them spoke into the court reporting. Some of them took really good shorthand. There were video recordings, but the actual meetings with commissioners, I think there would just be minutes, yeah. But you will be able to get access to all of the testimony in the fall when the Library in Arkhouse, Canada does its thing. So make a note. I wanted to mention something about Greg Coy's film, No Turning Back. Sorry, it's an NFP film. Greg Coy's is a M.A.T. filmmaker. He's based at Edmonton at the moment. He traveled across the country with the Royal Commission. He shot, took a film crew with him, shot 300 hours of footage, boiled it down to a one-hour documentary, NFP documentary called No Turning Back. And which I've shown to students over the years. It gives you a sense of what that was like. And you get a sense when you're talking about the interchange between commissioners, you got a sense of the real frustration among the people who were asking questions. They wanted answers and people didn't give them answers. They wanted the opportunity to speak. They wanted the opportunity to put their experience on the record, which they hadn't had before. And seeing George Erasmus just throwing his hands up and saying, this is what we're doing this for. We want to know how to go forward. And people aren't giving us those answers. They say, we want you to know how this felt. And I guess the TRC was doing something similar. But that film is there. It's called No Turning Back. You got, when they were interviewing some of the young workers, people such as yourselves, they were saying, this is the last chance. Like if we don't get this right, who knows what's gonna happen. There might be another OKA. Like you guys have got to get this right. But I remember when the report came out, 96 and $50 million that a lot of people just said we could have spent this money a lot better. I remember the major response was, well, we can't move on most of these recommendations because they cost too much. So there was a real sense that it was put on the shelf. And also when you're talking about the hard copies, and I remember talking to Jonathan Dewar about this in connection with what the Healing Foundation was doing. Was the Healing Foundation built into their budget money for producing hard copies? You could at least take a look at the film. Didn't have any answers at the end. But it gave you a sense of what that process was like. Well, RCAP did, of course, have recommendations, many, many of them. And the link, you drew the link between RCAP and the TRC. Just to name a couple, the whole paradigm of a nation-to-nation relationship, or from an Inuit perspective, a nation-to-crown relationship, was something that emerged from RCAP. That was where it was articulated, and oh boy, was that a hot one. I was told, actually, I could never say community again. But I learned to say it again. The second thing is actually the whole residential schools issue. The Royal Commission basically said this is an area that requires much more work, for lack of a better word. There needs to be a real understanding of what happened, and Canada needs to reconcile. So just two areas that, and so the link, and so RCAP is coming forward, and a lot of the research that was done propelled RCAP in the directions that it eventually went. So that takes us, it's a segue, I guess, to our next question, which I'm gonna start with you, Ellen, and that is what was the relationship of the research agenda for RCAP to your role? I mean, you were a researcher. To the research agenda of the commission to our role as individuals? So how did it, I mean, you were a researcher, you were part of that, right? So research was number one for you. For me, research was number one. I certainly, I mean, it gave me an opportunity to learn an enormous amount. I learned about some amazingly obscure pieces of government, not law, but actual, but nonetheless, where the mandates came from for the social assistance on reserve that we have had since the 1960s. So I learned an enormous amount by doing it, and what I liked about it was that it gave us free rein to think about how things could be different. And so the background study, and then eventually the chapter in the report allowed us to think, as they say these days outside the box, think about how things could be radically different and serve much better people who were in some cases, in some ways, subjugated by social assistance. Maybe this sounds obscure to lots of people, but when you think of Northern communities especially, welfare is much of the economic activity. It's much of the support that goes into the community. So this was not in fact for those people an obscure topic, but it was actually an extremely important one. It may, that may be one of the reasons why it got left to the very end because it was so controversial, so difficult to deal with that it was just put aside until I know Fred told me that there were only two or three chapters that had not yet been finalized at that point, and this was one of them. Don? Well, in communications of course the research I said earlier was really key because we're by nature in communications generalists, so unless you're working for a very specific organization, you're kind of like a stone, you skip across the surface and hope there's people who can really support what you're saying if you need to pull the information. So in that sense, and communications as well, we're supporting the overall agenda. We're not creating the agenda. There's a political agenda or there's a social agenda or there's an organizational agenda and our job is to support that and the objectives. So it was really key having that kind of really good research to draw on, to inform us, to talk about where we were going. One thing the Royal Commission did because in the early stages, Professor Ryan is right, even then there was all this skepticism about, oh another inquiry, another commission, they're gonna talk, talk, talk and nothing's gonna happen. One thing the commissioners wanted was a pretty robust communications plan to feed out a lot of, here's the mandate, here's what we need to hear about and then even between each round of public hearings we would feed out interim reports on what the findings were so far, they really wanted to try to bring people along because it was such a big mandate dealing with some really fundamental issues. So in that sense, I think the research was really key to that and it was a really well, I think coordinated and strategized research agenda to get to some of that information. Again, one thing Professor Ryan said that I do remember as well, there was, I remember Commissioner Erasmus and others during some of the public hearings, asking people who would speak to some higher level concepts like giving life to the spirit and intent of the treaties and we entered into these as partners and he would always say and others would respectfully, okay, I agree, what do we do tomorrow? What do we do next month? What do we do next year to bring this down to a level where we can start working on it? And those are big questions, that's really what the report is all about and that's why one of the final volumes was this 20 year plan for implementation so it wouldn't just leave all these big concepts and 440 recommendations kind of just sitting there just like here's now how we can do this and finance it. So I think that's what that report is all about is what do we do at the time next week, next month and next year? So in terms of communication, it was actually very useful to help us explain how we could actually tackle some of these issues that had been sort of really holding all of us back for too long and actually working on the report, I mean that research for me is someone who really did not have any depth of knowledge that the people I was working with had on these issues, it was really important and essential to have that kind of work to draw on. Here? Yeah, so I came into the commission, as I said, a little bit later and a lot of the research had already been done and was ongoing and my role sort of evolved when I got there, I didn't know what it was going to be but then all of a sudden I was writing a women's chapter and commenting on a whole bunch of other chapters and being a person who was working there, all of the documents for all of the teams were available to every staff person or every contractor and so what became my agenda because I felt so passionate about it and saw it as like a lifetime opportunity, I took it upon myself to read everything and I would try to go to every meeting of the commissioners and I remember the chief commissioner of ASMAS laughing at me because all the time I'd be walking into meetings and I would have all these colored tabs on everything and have all of these questions and clarity so I think what I found my role was to be is just to keep it as real as possible and to make sure that everything what you were referring to Dawn is that how did this play out at a community level and I just give you an example of that, I remember the determinist of health was a big paper and I was working on parts of it and people were talking about many things about they were gonna put in special fitness programs and this kind of thing and I'm like, nobody's got a gym so it was just that kind of a let's keep it as real as possible but again, I wasn't really connected to the broader agenda, I did do peer reviews and did some research myself, my own more connection was basically trying to read everything that I could and provide comments as I went along. So the commissioners were appointed by the government of the day, when the decision was made to have a royal commission retired chief justice Brian Dixon was asked by the government to consult and draw up the terms of reference for the commission so there's actually a pre-commission phase when Brian Dixon consulted and he asked for input I remember a group of colleagues and I wrote to him indicating what we thought would be important terms of reference and so on so Dixon came up with the terms of reference for the commissioners, the original commissioners were George Erasmus and Justice Rene Duceau as the co-chairs, so George very active Dene politician from the NWT and Mr. Justice Duceau was from Quebec and they were there together to the end. The other commissioners were Paul Chartrand, Metis, Viola McMillan, from Robinson, excuse me, Viola McMillan is a scandalous mining promoter. Can we turn the cameras off for you? Yeah, yeah, yeah, I just want to correct that for the record. Yes. How did she get in there? Well, she mined in the north. Viola Robinson, Mary Sillett, who had been head of the Inuit Women's Association. Alan Blakely, former Premier of Saskatchewan and Alan Blakely actually resigned from the commission and he got frustrated with the pace of activity and he wanted the commission to move forward more quickly. He was replaced by Peter... Mekison. Mekison who had been a Deputy Minister of Intergovernmental Relations in the government of Alberta and an academic. Madam Justice Bertha Wilson, first Female Justice of the Supreme Court, Ardent Scott. And I think I've got everyone. I've got everyone. Seven, yeah. So that was the crew. So they were very diverse. They were not cronies before, during, or after. But they had together a mental horsepower that would probably raise the roof of this building. And a commitment. And a commitment. They were all very committed. And as Don said, they knew it was their name that was going to go on the report and they wanted to do the best for Canada that they could. It was actually the Mulroney government that made the appointments. And of course the report came out in 1996. So that was at the time when Jean Caratien was Prime Minister. And as a comms guy, remember when Commissioner Blake and he resigned, he did it late in the day so he had to work late. That's the main thing I remember. Very inconsiderate when he did that. But he was, in a sense, the Western voice and Peter Mikasunzi. And as Catherine said, things weren't moving quickly enough. And that was as he wanted to get things done. And I think there really was a sense. It reflected some of the feeling that was out there in the Indigenous and non-Indigenous community. People wanted to get drive towards recommendations and that was really his frustration, I think, in leaving. I can't speak for him, but that's what he had told us. And so, you know, one of the things that we will want to bear in mind about the legacy of the commission, and especially in the context of the TRC's calls for action and the current government's announcements about sort of a new policy era, is what about time? How long will this take? We're now forging a new nation-to-nation relationship. How long will it take us to work through what that really is? So it's history, in a sense, repeating itself. Yesterday, on one of the panels, Genevieve Dubois-Flynn talked about the origin of sort of research ethics in the context, particularly of the health field in the context of Indigenous research ethics. I would tentatively, but not timidly, suggest that in terms of Indigenous research ethics, Canada, through its granting councils, is a leader in the world. And one reason for that is because of some of the things that the Royal Commission did. Do any of you want to talk about that? I think the research guidelines were quite amazing and they really appreciated and respected Indigenous knowledge and oral traditions and input from the community and giving back and establishing relationships. And I felt as an Indigenous person that, not that there weren't differences that came out in terms of values and opinions, but that on the whole, you could, as an Indigenous person, you could be who you were and say what you needed to say. And that also seemed to be the spirit of the commission, although as I said, you know, everybody wasn't always on the same opinion for a variety of reasons that may or may not had to do with ethics and may have more to do with knowledge. So there were, as I said, two co-directors of research, Marlene Bradcastelano, whose name I have mentioned before, and David Hawks, who was, he actually was at Carleton prior to becoming the co-director of research, but he had a long history with the government's Saskatchewan prior to that. And they, but particularly Marlene, were determined that the Royal Commission would do research differently. And so the guidelines that Karen mentioned were a product of her and others of like-mind trying to think through how to do research of the kind of research with the breadth of research that the Royal Commission had to do and would want to do, and the breadth of consultation that the Royal Commission had to do and would want to do in as ethical a way possible. And there were really no, you know, there was nothing to start with, right? So my version of history, essentially, is that Marlene Bradcastelano wrote the guidelines for research for the Royal Commission and convinced, and I don't think it was a heavy slog to convince, that's maybe the wrong word, got the commission to adopt them. And if you look at the chapter nine of TCPS, Tony's favorite chapter nine, a lot of the work that went into chapter nine, a lot of the discussions that informed chapter nine are grounded in those ethical guidelines that the Royal Commission developed and promulgated. And as staff of the commission and as researchers for the commission, we had to cleave to those guidelines. And that was a first. I mean, it was, in a sense, aside from people's sort of personal anchors that may have induced them to do research in a good way or not, prior to the Royal Commission, that was the first sort of set of standards and tests around indigenous research ethics. And so that alone is a significant contribution of our cap. So I don't know if anyone has any questions or any comments about that, but this idea of respecting indigenous knowledge, the idea of informed consent even, was something that was really significant. Yeah, you had a comment for me? I've heard a lot of research and public research was, I'm just wondering about, maybe, if I'm jokingly done that, wondering about the implementation process and how that's been going. So I work for a new organization that did their own commission in the Backing Region 2004, 2007 on the development of the Backing Region. And out of that commission came all 25 recommendations based on any terms, what any of the recommendations should be. And there was, the commission did really good consultations, they used books to everybody in the same manner as some of the guys did. But now we're getting into the discussions of implementing the recommendations. You can talk great about how great research was and it was done, but how do we ensure that zero research is useful? What has been that process of monitoring and continuing that implementation of the work? I think that's a very important question. Because a lot of the RCAP research has not seen a lot of light. A lot of people have never seen the work that was done and the work that was done was significant. I do think that one of the commissioners preoccupations though was to link their deliberations to the research. So what's in the case of, we're doing research and that's very interesting, we hire a bunch of eggheads and they go and do their thing and then we'll really decide what we're gonna do. I think the commissioners took the research seriously in coming up with their recommendations. What I see now is sort of a, the circle is coming around again. Because the research largely disappeared and because the report of the Royal Commission under the new Kretchen government, as Alan mentioned, received pretty short shrift. It took a year, there was a consultation that the government itself undertook and then they published a document called Gathering Strength which was really a response light. Like it was response on a starvation diet, actually. And nothing really happened and everything dissipated. But part of the reason why we're doing this now is because it seems to be an appropriate time with the TRC directly referring back to RCAP in its report to go back and dig deep again. So sometimes research takes a while to either age well or gestate or whatever word you wanna use. But there are things there. And one of the heartening things, I think, is that we have signals for this current RCAP anniversary initiative that the government of the day is very interested in what is happening and wants to try and use and I don't mean appropriate, but use the work that is going to be done to inform itself. So it's like the government has to shake its head and say, okay, what do we really know now? It's sort of like, I don't know, unearthing a dinosaur or something like that and learning from that. So from my perspective, and I ask my colleagues to comment, frankly, aside from what the researchers themselves took away, I took away a huge professional and personal benefit from the research that I did for the commission. And aside from the fact that the Royal Commission actually did launch sort of a new generation of First Nation, Baytie, Inuit scholars as well as non-indigenous people who are interested in indigenous issues, the research did not have a direct public impact to the extent that it maybe should have. I don't know what you- Can I comment on that? Yeah. Okay, here's the part of the story that maybe hasn't been told before, very clearly. Because Andrew and I were concerned with dissemination, with getting the story out. We took our background study, this was, I guess, about a year or two later. We took it to the assembly and met with some of the senior staff and with some of the officials. And they decided in their wisdom to send a copy to every member across the country. So it went up to about 650 communities. So that when, for example, I happened to be in Moose Factory, and I went in and met with the band administrator, he'd already seen the report, he knew about it. So I knew it was getting around. And we also met with what was then called the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. And the president at the time was so impressed with the report that he read large sections of it into the transcript when he appeared before a parliamentary committee. So the material was getting around. And one consequence of that was, this is the ripple, right, that you're trying to create. I think this is partly in answer to your question about how you get this to be a bigger project, a broader knowledge. One consequence of all that was that the auditor general then did a report on Indian affairs and castigated the department over their record keeping. So because we were using the departmental data, it was no question that anybody could say, well, you invented that stuff or you're wrong about the numbers. We were using departmental data that came out of the departmental books. So if the data was wrong, it was because the department had poor record keeping. So Auditor General of Canada castigated the department quite significantly. And my colleague Andrew was hired by Indian affairs to, it wasn't our intention that he should get a job out of this, but that was not why we were doing it. But he was hired by Indian affairs to deal with the record keeping problem and he did an intensive review of the data and did show actually that there were some significant problems with the data. I like to think that that did actually help to improve the record keeping in the department. But this is just some of the ways in which it got out. And then eventually, and this was not, it wasn't our intention to generate something as small, I think, as what happened, but eventually the department initiated a social assistance reform project which really consisted in the end of providing relatively small amounts of money for individual communities to try experimental pilot projects. That wasn't really what we had in mind. We were looking at something much bigger than that, but it appears paying attention. The government was paying attention to the fact that our background study and the chapter of the report was calling for some significant reform in the way in which welfare was being administered. Even in these minor ways, what started as a background study, a piece of research was able to have some ripple effects even though the broad report itself, as Catherine said, didn't get much of a response. Yeah, a couple of questions at the back or comments. Yeah, so I just, when I think about ethics, I often think about accountability, and I was wondering if you thought there was enough accountability built into the framework of this research, and if not moving forward, what would your recommendations be to increase that accountability so that when we do have recommendations or calls for actions, they're not being halted or lost throughout time? I guess it was, you made a commitment to adhere to the principles, and I guess largely the assumption was that if people made the commitment, then the commitment would be met. It raises the question of what the applications of a breach of commitment would be. I honestly can't remember any instances of breaches through the commission. In terms of the research ethics process, generally as it's evolved since, we have community research ethics boards in the north, there are territorial and other regional research ethics boards. There is an accountability there. And again, I suppose in a way, it's a complaints-driven process. It's possibly difficult to think of doing it any other way. And I think that the emphasis necessarily has to be on the front end to get people to understand why it's important to do research this way. And also, as Gilbert Whiteback said yesterday, to try and give communities the opportunity to reflect on their experiences and come to their own judgment as to whether or not research is being done in a good way. I would just jump in to say, and those of you who do research in the room would probably know more about this than I do. But there is a standard called OCAP that you probably have heard of, Ownership Control Access Possession, which when you look at it and you look at how it came, it's the First Nations Information Governance Center. Sorry, FNIGC. And again, how valuable it is, again, those of you who do research would have a better sense. But I think it's fair to say that was largely informed by the work of OCAP and the ethical guidelines that were developed. And it's, you know, when you see it now, you'll often see the little trademark, the registered trademark. And the reason is it's a certification standard now that people doing research can apply to Meet and then people reviewing that research or reading it or using it know that it met these standards. And it does deal very much with those principles around it, that First Nations have the ownership and also can possess, have access to that research that was done, that it's not, it was a response really, and which OCAP flagged, which is, you know, so often we've been studied to death or people come in and study, then run off and really conclude whatever they want or they'll study one thing and dismiss all the oral testimony they heard in favor of this and you come out with this sort of poor research, basically, to put it bluntly. So in that sense, that's another legacy and another way that at least you can see that this research met this standard that's been developed by this center. And I think- So it was a good thing that we had Jerry Lenewett here yesterday. Okay, there you go, yeah. And I just wanted to say that I think we did the, I think the commission was accountable to the people it talked to in the early days. They did 178 days, I think, of hearings and they visited 96 communities. So I think the commission was accountable to those people that they talked to and I think they took that to heart. And so there may not have been any official reporting back. There certainly was the intent to really speak to those voices of the people that had taken the time to talk with the commission. If you read the report, I mean, I totally agree with Karen. It's filled with quotes and excerpts from testimony and written submissions. Of course, the commissioners have their own writing but there's a real attempt to reflect back and say this, we listened and we heard and it wasn't just sort of cherry picking the best quotes, it was really trying to reflect back that this was the voices and the direction that was given to the commission. You have a question? Yeah. Briefly, as a researcher, an outside researcher, our accountability was to the staff, indigenous and non-indigenous. It was also to outside reviewers. You may not be aware but the commission research went to anonymous reviewers. In a similar processes you might find in for academic work, for example. And then thirdly, our responsibility was to the commissioners themselves. Accountability can be to principles but it's also enforced by people. And so our accountability was triple, to the staff, to the outside reviewers and to the commissioners themselves. So we have another comment and then I'd like to move on to what will be our final question and that concerns RCAP and the future. I wanted to, I guess, share a bit about how I've been using RCAP. I work for the Federation of Canadian Municipalities and our program is building relationships between local municipal governments and First Nations neighbors. So it's that government to government and huge amount of education. And RCAP has been amazing as a tool for that. One thing we've done in the last year or so is using the principles for positive relations. There's four principles for positive relations articulated in RCAP and we put them on sheets of paper and have groups of elected officials read them together and say, okay, what can this look like here now? And yeah, we've done that in about, I think eight places in Canada over the last year and it's some beautiful, beautiful conversations come from that and some beautiful ideas that can come to life in places all over the country. So I think it's really exciting to hear there's gonna be a big RCAP now. And I think I've also had a city councilor particularly in BC Thursday, oh, that's old or beyond that. And it's so much good work has been done. How do we bring it to life? We're not beyond it. We haven't even gotten to it, but I think how we can bring that to life in the work that we do is a really important question. So I wanted to. Can I throw one thing in? Because it just, it reminds me, Karen will remember this as well when we're talking about research and ethics and accountability. This too I don't think is really ever sort of come out, but the Royal Commission did a special report on suicide in February of 95, I believe it came out. So this would have all happened in probably more like November of 94. The report, really good research again and it was written and this is not a criticism of the people who wrote it, but it used the research and the clinical language. And there was an in-house, I don't wanna say rebellion and but it was a lot of the indigenous people were really concerned that this report on suicide that sadly and tragically far too many of us have had direct personal experience with was just, it talked about completed suicides and incomplete and successful suicides and incompleted suicides and things like this, which was the accepted language at the time from a research perspective, but a lot of the staff, even the policy and research people thought, this is really clinical and dry and in no way captures the impact this has on people and the idea isn't to make people cry or lament when they read it, but you need to give a more human touch to this really important emotive issue. So people were going to, while there were I think resignations threatened, I remember Karen particularly, well I don't wanna, anyways I remember and myself, a number of people wrote memos to the executive director and others expressing concerns and to the credit of everyone involved, they agreed to a rewrite of the report. They still wanted recommendations because that was the point was to talk about how you deal with this issue or try to deal with this issue, but it was a real sense of where the two weren't aligned and I think it speaks as well to the culture, actual culture as well as the different sort of cultures people come from, bureaucratic policy, communications, the sort of front line, people who've done front line work, people who've looked at it more from a research angle, that the real mix that was going on in the Royal Commission and it was a real interesting moment that, I don't know that you would have seen anywhere else. Karen, you remember that. I do remember that and that was an amazing discussion. In fact, I think I remember being the spokesperson for the indigenous staff on that issue because it almost was a revolt and there was loud voices, there were loud voices and it was very, very contentious but also I think very principled because we wanted to speak as indigenous people to the humanity and the impact of that issue versus making it clinical and so there was a really impassioned debate and as Don said, it did get resolved and everybody was maybe not happy with it but they weren't unhappy as they had been initially but that was a real trigger issue, yeah. And I would say it's public and you mentioned he's here tomorrow, Paul Scharter and actually wrote, I would say a dissenting report and he did not sign on to that for a number of issues and he may speak to that, he may not but I remember that as that was a real human component. It was all human and it touched all of us but that one was really hit home for a lot of us. Yeah. Okay, let's just conclude by turning to the future. So we've talked a little bit about today's moment, right? Where we are with a change in government. I'm tired of saying new. With changing situations across the land. So I'd like to ask the three of you and the rest of you in light of the conversation we've had so far, given what you know now about RCAP and the evolution, what do you think it holds for the future? What is it gonna be another moment of light and then back into the tunnel again or is there something there there? Well, I wanted to quote some chief from BC from the RCAP report and he spoke to the commissioners and he said, whatever the words of your final report and recommendations maybe they will mean little if they are not met with the political will, the knowledge and the ability to achieve their intent. And I think back then we didn't have any of those things but I think maybe we do have them now. I mean, I don't wanna be overly optimistic but I think we're in a better place now but I think the recommendations and the work that our RCAP did are just as relevant now as they were then and they're really going to contribute to this conversation moving forward. You know, one of the defenses politicians use against recommendations is, oh, this is going to cost too much. And some cases, recommendations are calling for more money but certainly in the commission, in this commission and other commissions I've been involved in, that's not the only issue. In the case of RCAP, it's not just about money. It was about carving a new set of relationships in a whole variety of ways. And that can be done without having to spend an awful lot more money. It's not really about money. It's about changing the nature of the relationship in law and in reality and then moving forward from there, setting a framework for how things can be done differently in future using the same money but in a different way. And I hope that it's possible for the present government to come to some understanding that you can make a lot of changes without having to change the budget. I think, you know, one of the things about RCAP when it came out, which was in some ways a credit to the work of the commissioners, the researchers, everyone who worked there, was I think it really blew people's minds to put it in a colloquial way. It really did introduce some concepts that a lot of people had even thought of like nationhood. And the indigenous people are nations. All I know is collections of reserves and how does that work? And Metis, that's a nation. And so it really, I think, opened up a lot of big ideas that I don't know a lot of people could even get their heads around, even though they were pretty meticulous talking about the recommendations. So now we're in a much different legal context. We've had things like Delgamot, Chilcotin decision, any number of big Supreme Court decisions that are sort of compelling change, different even in some ways demographic concept that we have even more younger, faster growing population now, the social context of the internet and people getting connected and talking to each other. So we are at a moment, I think, a change with the new government will see what happens, but they're saying some of the right things. They're talking about nation to nation. I think that's where RCAP is still really valuable, even with those changes. It talks about how you can give life to a nation to nation relationship. I think it puts out some ideas that are still relevant. Even some of the less sexy stuff in there, like for example, how do you change the machinery of government from a bureaucracy that's set up to administer the Indian Act to one that's set up to actually facilitate a nation to nation relationship. It talks about a Department of Aboriginal Relations with a Crown Treaty Office. That sparked other ideas that we're hearing about, like the Office of a Treaty Commissioner, a Section 35 Auditor General, those sorts of concepts. I've all grown from the Royal Commission. So I think in that sense it still has, even with things like the TRC and its 94 calls to action, the endorsement of the UN Declaration, all of those have really good ideas and principles. I think the Royal Commission still has a lot of good ideas and again, part of them are those sort of essential, fundamental, but also practical changes that can really put life to these words and concepts that people are talking about. Any other thoughts from you? I was wondering about the discussions we had today about respecting indigenous knowledge here in Canada. Have there been any comparative discussions with you for what has happened in New Zealand with their respect for indigenous knowledge and intellectual property? Because they actually have a connect about that. Do you have any comments? Well, there is actually, as you may be participating in it, I have from time to time, there's a lot of connection between scholars in New Zealand and here, right? And what strikes me is that in some respects it's a very easy relationship. We're working in different contexts, but I think there's a similar foundational will, perhaps less so from other countries with significant indigenous populations. But there is a lot of connection. The Royal Commission itself, it did some international scanning, if you like, and the commissioners were particularly interested in Greenland and the home rule there. But again, what strikes me is interesting about the Royal Commission is that it was really focused on what was going on within Canada, primarily. Darlene, I think you had something, and Michelle? In terms of going forwards and the legacy of our cabinet, significant influence on the Prime Council policy statement, the EZPS, from my work that I've been doing in research ethics and research proposals and international research, what I do know is that other countries are looking to Canada for advice because, as was pointed out about the report on suicide and many other interdisciplinary introductions to research ethics, it was very much fit in the clinical and in psychology and not so much in social sciences and humanities and that's what RCAP actually did for disciplines outside of the more clinical nature and now, of course, the TCPS is also having an influence on the mattress sciences and engineering in terms of its interaction with human beings in many different facets and I know that South America and Africa and also I think some of the Middle Eastern countries are now looking to add Canada's TCPS along with some of the work that has been done in Australia to guide them because our researchers have to conduct themselves in that way and so there's a growing awareness through our research, the international research but these kind of guidelines exist here so I think moving forward, Canada can actually be continuing to be a leader in this way and it's a way that we can actually be at the former. Michelle. I just, I wanted to share a thought that I had, I've really been reflecting on Gilbert's words from yesterday. She pointed out the fact that he was willing to be here and share with us in spite of the, you know, the events that had taken place within his community and I really felt the impact of his words and I've reflected on, it's just the privilege that we have to be here in this place. The fact that we get to spend time inside of our intellectual minds instead of doing other practical kinds of tasks and I mean sort of day-to-day living tasks, there are so many people within communities everywhere that just don't have the luxury of being able to go there and take that energy and reflect because there are, you know, there are children to be taken care of, there are meals to be prepared, there are things happening that really require so much energy and so I wanted to ask that the people on the panel about perhaps you have some advice for us as researchers just related to how we can bridge into communities in a meaningful way where what we do and the recommendations that we're making and the relationships we're building really truly have meaningful value in communities because even now with the discussion we're having, I still feel impacted by the fact that there was so much energy from so many people that went into this report and yet, you know, it's ruminating. Like you say, Catherine, it's coming full circle but for those people who are sitting inside of communities and dealing with all of the many complex issues that are there, how can we bridge that and really make it into something meaningful? Anyone care to comment on this? I think that always realizing that what the community needs are may not meet what your research needs are and so doing work based on what the community needs should be a priority and also I think understanding that the community has the knowledge, it may not be academic knowledge or it may be but it may be indigenous knowledge and I think we have to have great respect and humility for what we know and what we don't know and so I think that those things are important in addition to the whole relationship establishing issues so. I just know from a communications and I shouldn't say I know but I mean what I've observed is I think he hit on it is actually getting into the community and finding out about the community. I mean too much of our history has been outside individuals or governments making decisions on what's best for us based on paper or memos or other things they've seen or read without actually being there and living it on a daily basis. So it does take a little time. I think it requires the proper advance work which is one thing the Royal Commission did a lot of before any hearing we had people going in in advance talking to people about here's what they wanna hear about here's what they wanna know about feel free to talk about this or that. So then doing the work on the ground and then like Karen says I think really the most effective solutions are the community driven ones that have come forward and sometimes those service models for other communities that can then adapt them or tweak them to their needs or use them as is in some cases. If you look at the I always look at the MiGMA school board out in Nova Scotia the MiGMA Education Authority they're getting 88% almost 90% graduation rates and the kids aren't just graduating knowing as much math history and science as their peers do but they're graduating knowing their language and their cultures. And it's not to say that's the one solution that should now go everywhere it's to say that's a community driven they built that and worked hard to build that. The last thing I would say is it's also what I always like to feedback and say here's what I've heard here's what I'm thinking based on what I've heard what you wanna do is this right? So at all points check always check back in with the people that you're dealing with on that and get their thoughts and input and voices into it as well. I had the privilege of teaching off campus teaching our social work program off campus at the request of the community. This was in Kidigan Zeeby and at the time Gilbert Whiteuck was then the director of education and to show his commitment to the program and to model being a student for other people in the community he took the course so he was one of my students at the time. And what I found was that I could of course I could tell people about the big picture but they were certainly the experts on how life was lived in their community and so between us we were able to put together a picture of how things fit together from their knowledge and their experience and from my knowledge of the outside conditions and circumstances. And I had a it was a learning opportunity for us all. We've come to the end of our time. I wanna thank my colleagues on the panel and I wanna thank you. I think hopefully we've tweaked your interest and you'll go out and learn more. There's no exam on the RCAP report but I'll leave the volumes at the back table for the rest of the day and you can leave through it if you want to. But thank you very much. We're going to adjourn now for lunch. I'd like to thank this panel. RCAP was marked the beginning of something change and to go a little bit out on a limb here because I could be misquoted. Canada is on the verge of taking a giant step backward all the way back to the point at which Europeans came here and I for one did not know whether I would live to see the day at the process really truly began but it's beginning and you, every one of you, every one of us are part of it, this giant step backward.