Reconciliation is only beginning
The 2015 Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada addressed the context of residential schools in Canada, and accounted for nearly 7,000 heartrending testimonies and statements from survivors, families, and other community members. The voices that inform the report speak to the interconnected and interdependent emotional, spiritual, linguistic, and physical aspects of Indigenous peoples’ identities and world views, and the overall destructive force of European encroachment on Turtle Island.
The tone of the report is in some respects both retrospective and relative. In one way, it presents compelling evidence pointing to the ruthlessness of colonial ambition, power and politics. From a different angle, the survivors’ solemn testimonies not only underscore their strength and resolve but also invite us all into the broader conversation to which we are entrusted. That conversation is informed by the Report’s 94 Calls to Action, which endorse approaches to reconciliation that recognize the origins and contemporary implications of the residential school era. It is a conversation, therefore, that must include education; as commission chair Justice Murray Sinclair stated in 2015, “Education is what got us into this mess … but education is the key to reconciliation.”
Further, the realities of missing and murdered Indigenous women, youth suicides, and deplorable living conditions across remote reserves transition the conversation from the past to the ineluctable present. It should be recognized that public education, and more precisely kindergarten-to-Grade 12 educators, have arrived at particular interpretations of reconciliation, just over two years after the commission’s recommended calls to action. By inviting students to situate themselves in difficult and sometimes uncomfortable spaces, educators have insightfully, pragmatically, and incrementally encouraged students to examine aspects of Canadian history that traditionally and largely have been ignored. Especially successful are the many school board administrators, principals, and teachers who first positioned themselves in these same uneasy spaces and reflected upon their own interpretation of the historical present. As a result, teachers taking the lead from Indigenous partners and participating in the conversation with their students are doing so from more informed perspectives.
Though not necessarily experts on the topic of reconciliation, such educators are committed to sharpening students’ critical awareness of power and conflict, as well as advancing students’ acute perceptions of Indigenous peoples’ strength and resilience. The conversation becomes more strenuous when one considers the political complexity of teaching, as educators are tasked with increasingly diverse responsibilities while fulfilling their roles and responsibilities during times of unprecedented levels of accountability. Yet, these educators seek to honour the Indigenous voices that have been silenced for too long and to connect their students to broader social movements. While the conversations manifest differently in each classroom, the commonality rests upon the fact that educators have accepted the responsibility of re-articulating the historical narrative by recognizing Indigenous peoples’ victimization and underscoring their unique social, cultural, and epistemic foundations.
But the conversation about reconciliation is only beginning. These and other initiatives represent a modest step to “getting out of the mess” and eradicating the legacy of the residential school system. There is concern that the demands placed on teachers will hinder the development of the respective calls to action. Educators will need to be steadfast and resolute to sustain and advance these and other substantive projects. The provincial ministries of education and the federal offices responsible for First Nations education across Canada will need renewed strategies that are responsive to the inequities and gaps experienced by Indigenous students. Educators will have to continue to apply their own learning and culturally relevant pedagogy efficiently and accurately. By following the counsel of the same elders, Indigenous advisers, and community members who have been instrumental in nurturing the conversations, principals and teachers will have to facilitate learning opportunities for children and adolescents in curiously appropriate ways so that the tensions and ambiguities of the past can serve as tools of introspection and heightened awareness.
Perhaps only then will students, as prospective critical citizens, be willing and able to comprehend how missing and murdered Indigenous women, narratives of youth hopelessness, abhorrent living conditions, disputed treaties, and contentious environmental concerns have embedded meaning, and conversely, how the collective traditions, knowledges, and spirit of Indigenous peoples develop and complement our own experiences on this land.
Dr. Lorenzo Cherubini is a professor and former director of the Tecumseh Centre for Aboriginal Research and Education at Brock University.