Ninety-four gestures to stitch a country back together

For generations, First Nations, Inuit and Métis children were taken from their families and sent to residential schools. According to the federal government, at least 150,000 students went through this system. Many lost their language, their ties and sometimes their lives.

In 2008, under the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, the largest class action settlement in the country's history, a Truth and Reconciliation Commission was created. Chaired from 2009 by Justice Murray Sinclair, it travelled across Canada for six years. It received more than 6,750 statements from survivors, their families and witnesses. Its final report was made public on December 15, 2015.

The report does not merely describe the past. It proposes 94 calls to action: for children and youth, language and culture, health, justice, but also for churches, the media, sports, business and even newcomers. In other words, it is addressed not only to survivors or governments, but to everyone.

It is a deeply Ubuntu idea: a wound inflicted on one part of the "us" concerns the whole "us." Healing, too, happens together, one gesture at a time.