It's been 20 years since the stories of abuse at Indian residential schools started surfacing in the territory through radio and television productions by Northern Native Broadcasting Yukon.

It was perhaps the first public glimpse into the tarnished and horrific misgivings former students were exposed to.

It wasn't until a handful of years later in the early 1990s when Phil Fontaine a prominent aboriginal politician at the time and currently the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations spoke of the abuse he suffered at residential school that people starting recognizing there was painful blight festering in the closet of Canadian society.

Ottawa is expected to pay out $5 billion over the coming months in compensation provided under the recently adopted Indian Residential School Settlement Act.

By all accounts, however, it is just as important today to tell the stories as it was back when the shroud finally fell in the mid-1980s.

A number of former students attending this month's conference on residential schools in Whitehorse spoke of the need to keep talking about their experience, to help with the healing process.

Sharing the stories will help the children of former students, and grandchildren, understand what happened. It will help Canada understand.

Not all was bad. As some testified, residential schools provided the opportunity to learn the three R's, or become exposed to religion.

For others, it was the darkest of times in their lives, having been victims of sexual and physical abuse.

But for many, there was an emotional disconnect, having to leave your mom and dad, siblings, at a tender young age.

'We were so young,' Stan Peters told the audience that remained several hundred strong throughout the three days. 'We did not ask for what happened.

'We had our hearts broken in two,' Peters said.

He said he did not want to leave his parents at the age of six, so much so that he asked the priest to take his older brother instead, because his brother wanted to go.

'But I never forget the picture of my mom and dad and my youngest sister standing on the side. They could do nothing. Just watch.'

Now 62, Peters told of how he nearly drank himself to death until the early-morning hours of March 16, 1982, when he poured the rest of the Vodka down the sink drain.

There was hearty applause when he announced he's not had a drink for 25 years and seven months.

Peters said he's been across Canada, into Alaska and down to Mexico spreading his stories of residential schools through his words and songs.

It is important, he emphasized, to speak up.

'Let them hear our cries together.'

Peters said the former residential school students are overcoming what they experienced.

'Yes, we are overcoming .... Let the healing begin with us today.'

Cathy Johnsen, manager of justice programs for the Council of Yukon First Nations, said it was clear at the end of the three days that former students want to meet again, real soon.

Just shy of 400 registered officially, but it's estimated that peak attendance last week at Yukon College exceeded 500 at times, Johnsen said.,

She said former students want to have a student reunion next summer out on the land, with an attempt to make it even larger by spreading the word to capture students who have moved away from the Yukon.

They also want to have another forum like last week's. Only next time, Johnsen said, they want to include their children and their grandchildren 'so they can understand what they experienced, so they can start healing.'

Though the devastation of residential schools has be talked about more and more openly over recent years, Johnsen believes the true healing is just beginning, as the court process and compensation matters are now coming to an end.

It's widely accepted that not only did residential schools directly affect former students, but also the generations that came behind.

One of the toughest things for some former students is learning the ability to love, the audience heard.

Territorial court Judge Karen Ruddy moderated the forum. She told the audience that she sees the legacy of generational dysfunction left by residential schools on a regular basis in her courtroom.

And no matter how hard she's tried, how much material she's read, she'll never be able to fully grasp what former students experienced, the judge said.

Lisa Meeches invited former students to share and record their stories with her.

So far, said Meeches, she and her colleagues have recorded some 600 stories from across Canada, of which 42 or 43 were shared by former Yukon and northern B.C. residential school students when her video and interview crew was here last February.

Meeches is from a reserve in Manitoba that has also been plagued by the aftermath of residential schools. Her father went, though he never spoke of his experience, and Meeches was too young to understand or ask.

Periodically, she said, he would go quiet and climb into his own little world.

It was only years later, after her father's death, that she began to learn what he experienced when she started recording stories from men similar in age to her dad.

Meeches said 130 residential schools operated across Canada in what she described as the longest genocide in the history of the world.

Through sharing the stories, Meeches insisted, Canada's aboriginal people can show the world what happened, and can make sure nobody will ever forget.