There are family stories that relatives of Penny Irons didn’t want to talk about in the past. There’s one about a maternal uncle who died at the age of 10 because of injuries he suffered at an Indian residential school.

According to Irons, executive director of the Vancouver-based Aboriginal Mother Centre Society, her relations knew only what was told them by school administrators when the broken boy was returned to the family home in the town of Masset on the Queen Charlotte Islands.

“They said he fell off the roof and hit a fence,” Irons told the Georgia Straight. “They sent him home to die.”

Irons has two other uncles and two aunts who also attended residential school. They don’t openly discuss what they went through, although Irons pointed out that one aunt has no complaints about how she was treated.

If her relatives were abused, Irons noted, they “grew up thinking it was something they did that was wrong”.

She also said that it was only recently that her Haida Nation family started to piece together what its members experienced in the residential-school system, set up by the Canadian government to assimilate Native children.

Irons hopes that her kin and other aboriginal families will be able to have their stories heard by the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

The establishment of the commission was part of the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement between the Canadian government, former students who filed suits against Ottawa, churches that ran the schools, and Native organizations. The agreement is the largest out-of-court class-action deal in Canadian history.

Headed by Ontario Court of Appeal justice Harry LaForme, the commission has a five-year mandate to create a historical record of the residential-school system. It started its work on June 2.

According to the Assembly of First Nations, the first residential schools were opened in the 1840s and the last one closed as recently as 1996. Most of the approximately 140 schools operated in Western and Northern Canada and the Prairies.

The agreement also provides a $1.9-billion compensation package for survivors living on May 30, 2005. Former students are entitled to $10,000 for the first school year plus $3,000 for each following year. They can also claim additional damages for sexual and physical abuses.

According to Christina Selin, an Ottawa-based spokesperson for the federal Indian Residential Schools Resolution Canada, at least 92,000 applications for compensation had been received by the government as of May 26 this year.

In a phone interview with the Straight, Selin said that details are still being worked out regarding Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s scheduled delivery of a formal apology to former students on June 11 at the House of Commons.

“That’s a question I cannot answer at this time,” Selin said when asked why the federal government is delivering an apology now when aboriginal groups have been demanding one for years.

The settlement agreement doesn’t include a federal apology. In a May 15 news release, Minister of Indian Affairs and Northern Development Chuck Strahl stated that the apology is a “crucial step in the journey towards healing and reconciliation”.

Grand Chief Stewart Phillip, president of the Union of B.C. Indian Chiefs, told the Straight that he suspects the Harper government is merely trying to make up for the “huge embarrassment” Canada suffered on the world stage last year.

Phillip was referring to the country’s opposition to the adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples by the UN General Assembly on September 13, 2007. Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the United States were the only four countries that voted against the declaration, which was approved by 143 other countries.

The UN document states, among other things, that indigenous peoples “have the right to the lands, territories and resources which they have traditionally owned, occupied or otherwise used or acquired”.

In a phone interview, Phillip noted that the federal government didn’t even make an effort to consult with Native groups on how to shape the apology.

“Our reaction, by and large, will depend on the tone, nature, and quality of the statement of apology,” Phillip said. “Tragically, for many thousands of indigenous people who suffered through the residential-schools experience, the apology comes too late. Many of them have passed on.”