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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
World
Olivia Bowden in Toronto

Canada’s residential school abuse survivors face fresh battle to stop testimony being destroyed

Crosses marking graves in a site near a residential school in Alberta, Canada
Graves near the site of the Ermineskin residential school in Maskwacis, a Cree community in Alberta, Canada, in 2022. Photograph: Patrick T Fallon/AFP/Getty Images

Cheryle Dreaver first heard her mother discuss what she had endured as a child in a Winnipeg courtroom in 2008.

Ivy Dreaver was one of tens of thousands of Indigenous people in Canada invited by the federal government to testify about their experiences of sexual, physical and mental abuse in the country’s residential school system.

“At that time … I didn’t know those things had happened to her until that very day,” said Dreaver. “I was in shock … there was a lot of abuse.”

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