Maine Wabanaki-State Child Welfare TRC

Truth
Uncover and acknowledge the truth about what happened to Wabanaki children and families involved with the Maine child welfare system
Healing
Create opportunities to heal and learn from the truth
Change
Collaborate to operate the best child welfare system possible for Wabanaki children and families

Once you were children. Then you were victims. Then you were survivors. Now you are warriors."
Sandy White Hawk, TRC Commissioner, from her poem, "Once You Were Children"
To listen to a witness is to become a witness."
Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
We can work together to make sure that everyone simply follows laws and policies, or we can go deeper to figure out how to make changes because it is the right thing to do."
Denise Yarmal Altvater, Passamaquoddy
The past has a way of returning to you. It doesn't go and lie down quietly."
Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu, Chair, TRC of South Africa
Rather than a revolution, we need an evolution – an intention to be family."
gkisedtanamoogk, TRC Commissioner
There can be no keener revelation of a society’s soul than the way in which it treats its children."
Nelson Mandela, Nobel Peace Prize laureate
Truth isn't always beauty, but the hunger for it is."
Nadine Gordimer, South African writer, activist and 1991 Nobel Prize laureate in Literature
There's so much power, beauty and strength in our stories. That will be the overreaching strength of this."
Sandy White Hawk, TRC Commissioner
I pray that I'll have forgiveness so that this will not have control over me for the rest of my life."
Anonymous, Basket prayer offered to the TRC

Truth