Thank you, Mr. Speaker. My question is to the Minister of Education, Culture and Employment. I want to ask the Minister, has this department ever done an inventory as to the exact number of residential school survivors in the Northwest Territories?
Thank you, Mr. Yakeleya. The Minister of Education, Mr. Lafferty.
Mahsi, Mr. Speaker. This is an area that we’ve collected information on the residential school survivors of the Northwest Territories. We’ve compiled that information and we worked very closely with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission when they first started off with their programming and voicing all those across the nation and national events, and even in the Northwest Territories, Inuvik. We do have that information. I can share that detailed information with the Member.
I look forward to that information. The Minister has been collecting this information so if I go to the Sahtu and would know how many survivors are actually in Tulita, Fort Good Hope, Tuktoyaktuk…(inaudible)…any other communities, I would know the exact number of survivors that either passed away or that have gone into schools in the early 1900s. Is that what I’m hearing? You have the numbers and I’d be able to get those numbers?
The information that we’ve compiled, obviously with consent from the clientele as well as the survivors and even the families of the survivors, obviously we have work if we can release those names. But surely, I’ll be working very closely with the Member if we could allow that to happen and then provide that information to the Member.
I respect the survivors’ anonymity or the privacy of the survivors, so some of the information in the Northwest Territories, we know how many survivors or how many, say, students are in a school right now without having them consent to releasing that number. I want to ask why it’s so different with the survivors. If there are some survivors in our community, we can do our own. For example, in the Grollier Hall residential school, from the Roman Catholics report there were 2,500 students that went to the Grollier Hall Residential School, the highest amount of survivors in one residential school.
I’m asking the Minister, is there something like that that he can share, saying in the territory right now there are 6,000 to 8,000 survivors right now?
In the Northwest Territories the number that we do have as part of the claimants is around 5,500, which gives us an idea of the issues that we have to deal with in the territory. We do have a breakdown by community, so I can provide that information to the Member and also other Members, as well, if they wish.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. Final, short supplementary, Mr. Yakeleya.
Thank you, Mr. Speaker. I look forward to that from the Minister. I appreciate the flexibility to share, because that is a very important number for our communities.
I want to ask the Minister, based on that number, are the appropriate programs there to support the survivors today with the programs that we have within the GNWT?
Yes, 2010 we’ve developed a residential school curriculum that we wanted to focus on those residential school survivors to hear their stories, and we have reached out to them. We’ll carry on their stories for generations to come. That’s part of the Grade 10 curriculum within the high school. It’s mandatory. They need to have the Grade 10 residential curriculum before they graduate. That’s just one piece that we’ve developed as part of our programming to deal with residential schools, and there will be plenty of others that I will be addressing with the leadership at the…(inaudible)…of education next month in Banff. I’m leading the task on Aboriginal education, so I will be presenting that to them as well.
Thank you, Mr. Lafferty. The Member for Hay River North, Mr. Bouchard.
