After a long time away from the documentary world, I’ve stepped back into the fray to help research and produce a film for Al Jazeera about Canada’s Indian residential schools. “Canada’s Dark Secret” looks at the forced cultural assimilation and abuse of indigenous children who attended those schools for over a century.

The film is directed by Lebanese filmmaker Rania Rafei (above right) and highlights the experiences of a pair of indigenous survivors of the former Mohawk Institute Indian Residential School, in Brantford Ontario.

The doc also features Ron Shortt, a former officer of the RCMP who recently went public to admit he’d helped an Indian agent take a pair of young girls away from their family in Fort Smith, in the Northwest Territories, in the mid-1960s. The work of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR) in Winnipeg will also be included in the film (Senator Murray Sinclair, the former TRC commissioner, makes an appearance).

Details to come.