Joseph Boyden pens Heritage Minute to illustrate horrors of residential schools

It was an ongoing fascination with the story of Chanie Wenjack, and especially a photo of him, that prompted Joseph Boyden to write Canada's most recent Heritage Minute about residential schools.

The Giller-winning author said the story of Wenjack, who died while running away from a residential school near Kenora, Ont. in 1966, has become "the stuff of legend."

"He's... this symbol for so many, especially Native people who suffered the residential school situation," Boyden told Metro Morning host Matt Galloway Thursday morning. "There's a photo of him in the Heritage Minute that's just haunting... this beautiful, sweet little boy with this shy smile on his face. That innocence lost is really what I think sparks people."

That photo is the only known image of the boy.

"It's not the Heritage Minutes of my youth necessarily, but I think it's a big step that people want to see it and asked to have it made," said Boyden.

Wenjack was sent to Cecilia Jeffrey Residential School when he was nine. At 12, he and several others ran away. After a week, his frozen body was found next to railroad tracks near Redditt, Ont. His death prompted the first inquest into the treatment of children at residential schools.

The Heritage Minute, narrated by Wenjack's sister, Pearl Achneepineskum, depicts life at the school, Wenjack's escape and death.

"It's a brutal story, but it's also so symbolic of so many residential school children's stories," said Boyden, who was an honorary witness of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and has also written a book about Wenjack, to be published in October. "He humanizes, for many of us, just exactly what so many families went through and were torn by. You see that picture of him, and it's just like, he could be your kid."

"This is something that I think we have to, as Canadians, come to terms with. This part of our history is a very dark one, and it is also the cause of such intergenerational trauma that continues to resonate so loudly in so many places in Canada."

Boyden said Wenjack's story, and the Heritage Minute it inspired, should help Canadians better understand the concept of reconciliation.

"I think people are like, 'What does that mean exactly?' And it means, to come to terms with what so many people went through," he said. "This reconciliation we talk of... it's not pointing fingers of blame anymore, it's, how do we come to terms with this and move forward as a nation?"