Residential Schools

By Ninah Hermiston

If you want to report on residential schools, you have to understand that the records are never just records.

They are names, places, letters, complaints, warnings, deaths, court files and fragments of stories families and communities have been carrying for generations.

I don’t say that only as an Indigenous affairs reporter at the Investigative Journalism Foundation (IJF), although that definitely informs how I approach this work

I also say it as an Indigenous person with residential school survivors in my own family, and as someone who has spent time speaking with elders, survivors and community members about histories that are still very present.

For me, reporting on residential schools has never felt like looking at something sealed off in the past. 

The impacts are still alive in families, in communities and in the stories people choose to share when they trust you enough to tell them.

Why the IJF’s Residential Schools Database matters.

The database, Residential Schools: The Hidden Stories, contains thousands of searchable pages of documents related to Canada’s residential school system. 

Most of the records were created by the Canadian government and gathered through access to information requests by Ed Sadowski, a retired researcher at the Shingwauk Residential Schools Centre in Ontario.

Inside the database, journalists can find historical documents connected to residential schools across the country, including reports of abuse, disease outbreaks, unsafe and unhygienic conditions, letters from parents, court records and other documents that help show how the system operated.

The bulk of the database is made up of Independent Assessment Process, or IAP, narratives.

These were created to help resolve claims of abuse made by residential school survivors. 

For most schools included in the database, there are two versions of the narrative: one from Crown-Indigenous Relations and Northern Affairs Canada and another from the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation.

That matters because the records are not always identical. Different versions can have different redactions, and information missing from one document may appear in another,

There are also addendums to dozens of school narratives that include information about staff members who were charged or convicted for abusing children.

In other words, this database is not just a place to search one word and pull one document.

It is a place to build a reporting map.

Turning documents into reporting 

One story where the database became especially important for me was my reporting on the RCMP Native Indian Residential School Task Force in British Columbia, Canada’s first and only province-wide police investigation into abuses at residential schools.

The IJF made the task force’s final report public through the Open by Default database, and from there, I worked on a story about survivors who came forward after years of silence, trauma and pain.

But the reporting did not end with one document.

Using the Residential Schools database, I was able to search specific schools named in the task force report, including St. George’s, Alberni, Lower Post, St. Joseph’s, Kuper Island, Lejac and St. Mary’s. From there, I searched staff names, school names and keywords connected to abuse, charges and convictions

That process helped me understand the larger context around what survivors were describing.

For example, while reporting on Lower Post Residential School, I found letters in the database describing abuse by a “brother” at the school in the 1950s.

Because of redactions, the identity of the person described in those records was not fully clear. 

But the document still mattered. It showed there were written concerns about inappropriate behaviour involving children, decades before many criminal proceedings took place.

That kind of record does not replace survivor testimony; it helps contextualize it.

In the same story, the database helped identify records connected to staff members who worked across multiple institutions. It also helped me trace allegations, charges, court outcomes and school histories that would have taken far longer to piece together by searching through scattered archives or individual reports.

That is where the database becomes useful for journalists.

It can help you move from one document to a larger pattern. 

It can help you verify dates, spellings, positions and school names. 

And it can show whether a staff member appears in more than one school narrative. It can also point you toward new questions.

Who knew what, and when?

Were concerns documented before charges were laid?

Did staff members move between schools?

Were there records of deaths, disease outbreaks or unsafe conditions connected to a specific institution?

The database will not answer every question. Sometimes it raises more.

But that is also the point.

Where to start your search 

For me, the most important reporting still happens outside the database. It happens in conversations with survivors, elders, families and community members. 

It happens when people explain what a record cannot show: what a school felt like, how a family was changed, what was lost and what they have carried ever since.

The database is a starting point, not the whole story.

If you are a journalist using it for the first time, I would recommend starting narrow. Search the name of a specific residential school. Then try the community name. Then try staff names, if you have them.

From there, search keywords that might lead you toward specific themes.

It is also worth searching for different spellings. School names can appear in slightly different forms and the same is true for communities, staff members and students. If you are looking at a specific school, check both the CIRNAC and NCTR versions of the narrative when they are available. Do not assume one document gives you the full picture.

I would also recommend reading around your search result. A keyword may bring you to one page, but the pages before and after it often provide the context you actually need.

And most importantly, treat the records with care.

These documents often contain distressing details. They are not just evidence in a story. They are connected to real people, many of whom are still living, and to families and communities who have had these histories extracted, studied and retold for generations.

Reporting with care

As an Indigenous reporter, I feel that responsibility every time I work with these records. The goal is not just to find something shocking. The goal is to understand what happened, verify it carefully and report it in a way that honours the people connected to the story.

The Residential Schools database can help journalists do that work more responsibly. It makes records easier to find, compare and understand.

It can save hours of archival digging. It can surface details that may otherwise remain buried.

But the real value of the database is not only that it makes documents searchable.

It helps journalists find the people, patterns and questions behind them.

And in reporting on residential schools, that is often where the story begins.