Canada's residential school system ran for over a century, removing Indigenous children from their families under the Indian Act of 1876 and holding them until the last school closed in 1996. Survivor Roberta Hill walks through the empty classrooms of the Mohawk Institute Residential School, where she arrived at age six, and recalls the abuse she witnessed there. Bud Whiteye describes being picked up off a public road as a child and later returns to the school's boiler room, where he was assaulted by a staff member. Former RCMP officer Ron Short recalls how assimilation was built into daily routine rather than taught in lessons: English only, Christian church, Euro-Canadian dress. The film draws on testimony gathered by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, launched in 2008, which spent six years collecting accounts from survivors across the country. Estimates put the death toll at around 6,000 children, with some researchers suggesting the real number could be triple that.