Crowd-sourced video project aims to make TRC report more accessible

TheTruth and Reconciliation Commission's executive summary includes six years of intensive research andweighs in at388 pages.

Now, you can watch the summary,as well as read it.

Dozens of indigenous and non-indigenous people from across Canadahave lent their voices to a digital archive of the report in a series of 68videos, shared online using the hashtag #ReadTheTRCReport.

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The project was the brainchild of Erica Violet Lee, aNhiyaw woman in Saskatoon. She, along with Zoe Todd, aMtiswriter in Edmonton, andJoseph Paul Murdoch-Flowers, an Inuk man in Iqaluit, askedpeople to upload a video of themselves reading a section of the report.To date, 68 videos had been uploaded to YouTube.

"I want to start this process of ensuring everyone in Canada has access to the report; to engage with it; to ensure its findings are mobilized," Todd said in the first video uploaded toYouTube.

"Let's keep this report from getting shelved like so many before it."

Ablogpost by Chelsea Vowel, aMtiswriter and educator living in Montreal, inspired the project. Published on Vowel's popular site,pihtawikosisn, the post criticizes journalists offering their opinions on the reportwhen, according to Vowel,it is "abundantly clear" they haven't actually read it.

She doesn't name any names in her post, but writes: "If you are going to write a piece in a national paper about what the TRC summary has to say, you'd better read it. You should not be given access to a platform otherwise."

Contributors range from an Inuk man in Iqaluit, to a first-generation Canadian lawyer in Toronto, to a PhD candidate in Saskatoon. Many begin their video by acknowledging the treaty territory it was recorded on, or by greeting the viewer in their indigenous language.

While all of the report's sections have been completed and uploaded,Todd and others behind the project are asking more people to contact them about uploading videos of themselves reading one of the commission's94 recommendations.