This essay will discuss my journey with reconciliation. First, I talk about my own experiences with unearned privilege and what I feel I need to do to use that privilege for good. Next, I focus a lot on what I can do as a teacher. This includes my understanding of how important it is to incorporate indigenous culture and history into my class. Finally, I touch on why it is so important to acknowledge territory. For my aesthetic representation, I chose to do a cross-stitch of the medicine wheel. I describe why I decided to do the medicine wheel and why I like what it represents.

I grew up with a large amount of privilege. I am a white female who came from an upper-middle-class home. I never had a fear of being judged for my race. As I have grown older, I have learned about things like unearned privileges, racism, and colonial power. Now that I am on my journey to becoming a teacher, I am facing these problems more as I learn to make my environment a safe and inclusive space. I was reading an article, and something the writer said reignited with me. “Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress and violence.” (Mcintosh,1989) I can never relate to what it is like for any student who isn’t white to go throughout school, society, and life in general as a person of colour. The important thing is that I educate myself to understand how my students may feel and make an effort to put their culture into my classroom and teachings, so they feel connected and seen. I know I have unearned privilege in life, and I want to make sure that I use it for good to help raise the people around me.

“Participants can brainstorm about how to use unearned assets to share power; these may include time, money, energy, literacy, mobility, leisure, connections, spaces, housing, travel opportunities. Using these assets may lead to key changes in other behaviors as well, such as paying attention, making associations, intervening, speaking up, asserting and deferring, being alert, taking initiative, doing ally and advocacy work, lobbying, campaigning, protesting, organizing, and recognizing and acting against both the external and internalized forms of oppression and privilege.” (Mcintosh, 1989) I don’t want to sit by and do nothing to help the student in my life. I want to look at myself as a teacher and say that I am inclusive, understanding, and always learning how to better myself. I know I need to be a leader of change in my classroom.

What do I feel my duty is as a teacher teaching? My responsibility is to educate, and I don’t just mean curriculum. I am teaching future adults, and I want them to be as kind and understanding of their classmates as best as I can. “They (teachers) recognize that infusing Indigenous histories, cultures and perspectives into educational curriculum is a way to contribute towards the goal of reconciliation by providing students with an opportunity to learn about the Indigenous people with whom they share the land, and on whose ancestral territories all Canadians currently reside.” (Freeman, 2018)

I feel that some teachers can have the best intentions to infuse Indigenous content in their classes, but there is a wrong way and a right way in how you do that. I will never practice the culture, but I will teach it. I will never dress or further a stereotype. The best way to further my understanding and my students is to bring an Indigenous person into my class. “doing nothing adds to the problem. When teachers do nothing, Indigenous children don’t see themselves in their classrooms, and non-Indigenous children do not learn about this land’s first – and continuing – inhabitants. Then, students implicitly learn that Indigenous people, knowledge, and perspectives are worthless, and they may continue to pass on the systemic injustices that have gotten us into this situation.” (Freeman,2018)

A big part of reconciliation is acknowledging territory. “Territory acknowledgement is a way that people insert an awareness of Indigenous presence and land rights in everyday life. This is a way we recognize colonialism and what occurred and is still being affected to this day.” (Jones, 2019) Here in Regina, we are in Treaty four. I spent my entire life in Treaty six until I moved to Regina. My grandparents came from Ukraine and England, so I am a colonist. I understand what was done to Indigenous people and how they were treated when colonialism took over Canada. I can’t imagine what it would be like suddenly lose the land you have always known and be treated the way they were.

 I took a Cree class in the spring, and my professor explained treaties in a way that made everything so much clearer to me. He described it’s like having an apartment, and suddenly you get a roommate. It’s okay, not too crowded, but then he starts bringing over more people, and your space gets smaller. Next, you leave a twenty-dollar bill out, and it goes missing. Your roommate finds it and is now claiming it is his. It’s your apartment and your money, but he is taking over, and soon enough, you are cramped into a corner of your own home. Suddenly everything you own and know has been taken and used by others. We need to explain things like treaties to children like this. It is an easy way to put yourself in someone else’s shoes to try and understand how they may feel in that situation. It can be a complicated conversation to have with students. Still, it’s essential that they not only know what happened to Indigenous people but also put what happened into the perspective of how they may have felt if this was happening to them. “I believe this is true as long as these acknowledgments discomfit both those speaking and hearing the words. The fact of Indigenous presence should force non-Indigenous peoples to confront their own place on these lands.” (Jones, 2019)

The visual representation I chose to make was a cross-stitch of the medicine wheel. Before taking this course, I didn’t know much about the medicine wheel. I looked more into the medicine wheel and what it represents and means. I like that it is about the individual and how that individual is influenced and a part of the community they grow up in. The four sections represent body, mind, emotions, and spirit.

The wheel has four directions beginning in the east. East represents the beginning of new life. South is adolescence, west is adulthood, and the north is elderhood.  Lastly, there are the seven stages of life following the diamonds. It starts with the good life, the fast life, the wandering and wondering life, the stages of truth, planting and planning, doing, and lastly, giving back life. I chose to make my diamonds orange to tie in orange shirt day. This brings in reconciliation for not only what the medicine wheel represents but for the people it represents. This includes the many lost lives due to residential schools in Canada.

Reconciliation will be an ongoing issue for my entire teaching career and beyond. I feel that we have only just tapped the surface of what we can do as colonizers. “It’s very important that teachers realize that the education system has been used to rob Indigenous people of their languages, their cultures, and their communities through the residential school system. This is why teachers have a responsibility to work with Indigenous people, families, and communities, rather than continuing to work in a system that speaks for Indigenous people.” (Jones, 2019) I will always continue educating myself so I can better myself. I never want a student to feel that they are not represented in my classroom. Reconciliation needs to be respected every day as I know I have gained unearned privilege from being a colonist. It will take a long time to heal and find a way to properly educate and understand the past, present, and future of what has happened to Indigenous people in Canada. I am interested to see where we go, but I am hopeful for what will come.