Former governor general tells Canadians to accept aboriginal issues as their own

Former governor-general Michaelle Jean voiced the need for all Canadians to embrace aboriginal issues as their own.

The Montreal Gazette reports Jean attended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Wednesday in Montreal.

The goal of the sixty million dollar project is to document the systematic torment by generations of aboriginals forced into Canadian residential schools.

The TRC launched in 2009 when Jean was governor-general.

Jean will be an honorary witness at the Commission while some of the victims speak out publicly for the first time.

From the 1930s to the 1970s, thirteen thousand children were sent to aboriginal boarding schools in Quebec.

Jean says the widespread poverty, depression, and suicide in First Nation’s people can be traced back to the residential school system.

The aim of the TRC is to allow survivors to begin a process of healing.

STORY WRITTEN BY: AISHA SAMU