When religion and politics merge, it would be difficult to fight for personal rights. Residential schools in Canada were founded to assimilate Indigenous children into Euro-Canadian society. The Canadian federal government and the churches were responsible for Indigenous children at the residential schools. However, children suffered from physical, mental, and sexual abuses by the Fathers and principals at the residential schools. Lack of food, hygiene, scientific experiments, suicide attempts, escapes from school and many other issues were not authentically reported either by the journalists or by the inspectors. Years later, for the first time, those who expressed themselves, like Chief Phil Fontaine, paved the way for other survivors to share their experiences. By testifying, the witness not only narrates what he has lived, recorded, and remembered, but also he commits himself to what goes beyond the personal. He would engage history or the truth of an occurrence. The testimony cannot be narrated by another person as the witness has the legal pledge of what is saying. Therefore, Rhonda Kara Hanah's Sleeping Children Awake (1992) would be a proper example of appealing an oath to historical moments regarding the residential schools in Canada which were misrepresented or not well represented. In this paper, I seek to explore how Hanah's documentary pictures the past, involves various witnesses and stands as a voice for the dead, who never had the chance to express themselves.
Keywords: Witnessing, trauma, residential schools, censor, testimony
