Most of my education about the Indigenous history of Canada did not start until grade nine and even then, it was not much. In elementary school, I had barely heard anything at all about the Indigenous peoples and their contribution to Canada. When my classes really started to get into Indigenous history was in my history classes in grades eleven and twelve and my grade twelve English A30 class. In grade nine is when I really started to learn about Residential Schools and in grades eleven and twelve, I learned a lot about the beginnings of Canada, pre-contact with the Europeans and the effects contacts with the Europeans had on Indigenous cultures and ways of life.

Through the media, I have not learned as much or the same kind of content as I did in school. What I have learned through media has been more focused on the diverse cultures of Indigenous people across Canada; what kinds of traditional clothing and food the people wear in the different regions of Canada, facts that the government often tries to cover up or not acknowledge, and different types of languages and experiences of the Indigenous in Canada.

There are many very important messages outlined in the Truth and Reconciliation Booklet that can help guide Canada down the path of truth and reconciliation. The booklet talks about how we need to start to listen and seek out the truth of what really happened and the horrendous wrongs that were done to the Indigenous population by the Canadian Government. Our country cannot continue blindly into the future without learning from our past. To do this, Canadians need to educate themselves on the truth; speak to survivors or relatives of survivors and ask, “what can we do?” The government is not doing enough, so the citizens need to take it upon themselves to do what needs to be done and to help reconcile and heal from the past.            

I personally think that a good call to action I could do as a teacher is to not just teach about the impact and history of residential schools but also teach about Indigenous culture, traditions, and history in Canada as a whole. It is important that people know the kinds of contributions that the Indigenous population had towards our country and that we acknowledge the kinds of positive things that Indigenous peoples did and that they still do in Canada.