Reconciliation and Resurgence:
As a part of my journey to becoming an educator, I have been engaging in Indigenous Studies and History courses in order to learn about Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples and how it can be improved. I believe that as an educator, I have an obligation to make each of my students feel represented in my classroom and material and to teach about Canada’s complicated history in meaningful ways that uplift and include Indigenous ways of knowing.
For a long time, Indigenous perspectives have been left out of the classroom. This is a continued legacy of the oppression and assimilation Indigenous peoples have faced in Canada throughout our history through colonization and things like: Residential Schools, The Pass System, The Permit System, Enfranchisement, and Systemic Racism. The Canadian Government has apologized for its actions (see here) and created the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) in order to create an action plan to create reconciliation in Canada. The TRC created a report outlining Canada’s relationship with Indigenous peoples and the oppression Indigenous peoples have openly faced as well as 94 Calls to Action, tasks for the government to complete in order to create Reconciliation and honour the Treaties. As of August 2020, only 10 of the 94 have been completed.
The posts in this section will examine one of the main categories of the TRC’s 94 Calls to Action, specifically: Education. They will then discuss why these Calls to Action are necessary, what has been done to reconcile, what needs to be done, and what that can look like. Reconciliation requires systemic change, but the first step to that is educating ourselves about why that change is necessary and becoming advocates for it!
Further information about Canada’s history with Indigenous Peoples can be found by clicking on the links below:
- For detailed findings from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (including information on Residential Schools, the Pass System, etc.), click here
- For more information about the TRC and what has been done since their findings, click here
- To learn about the Pass System in detail and here first-hand accounts, click here