Teaching Toward Reconciliation
How can teachers use their positions to listen, shift power dynamics, and take steps towards Truth and Reconciliation with their students? My personal experience aligns with other non-Indigenous educators who feel anxious, are fearful of cultural appropriation, and are uncertain about how to cover this content respectfully.
The Call to Action #92 reads,
“We call upon the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, in consultation and collaboration with Survivors, Aboriginal peoples, and educators, to make age-appropriate curriculum on residential schools, Treaties, and Aboriginal peoples’ historical and contemporary contributions to Canada a mandatory education requirement for Kindergarten to Grade Twelve students.”
In response to this call to action, the curriculum has been updated; these changes are clearly visible in the Grade 1-3 Social Studies Curriculum, the Grade 7 & 8 Geography and History Curriculum, and Grade 10 History. In addition, there are other opportunities for teachers to embed Indigenous knowledge and ways of knowing into other areas of the curriculum. The challenge is how to get the support we need to teach Indigenous content in a culturally safe way.
Yet, despite these curriculum updates, many educators face significant gaps in preparation and support. Leddy and Miller (2024, p. 6) note that training and support in this area were never provided during our teacher training, and those of us who have more recently attended a Faculty of Education would likely have received only introductory preparation. Yet, we need to find a way to ensure that this is not a barrier to integrating Indigenous content respectfully with our students.
This begs the question: Where do we begin?
When I was a Grade 5 Home Form teacher or a Middle School science teacher, I believed that I needed to project confidence and convince my students that I was the expert in the room. Considering my role and responsibilities as a non-Indigenous person in this educational space centred on Call to Action #92, I adopted the mindset that this was an opportunity to show humility to the students and embark on a new learning journey alongside them.
I continue this journey today and have recently been joined by three students on a similar pursuit. We meet monthly to discuss our personal learning plans related to Indigenous education. We have centred our discussion on how our thinking has been transformed by experiences that we have had both in our school context and in our current lives. A trip to the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto is on the horizon, and it will be an opportunity to gain a better understanding of Toronto's history from an Indigenous perspective.
I recently attended a course at OISE, University of Toronto, titled Introduction to Aboriginal Land-centred Education: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives. The instructor, Indigenous scholar Dr. Sandra Styres, centred the student focus on unlearning. This required us to examine the biases we have inherited from our formal education and life experiences, and to know the limits of our knowing. This requires openness to understanding Indigenous worldviews and challenging our own.
When we model this for our children, we begin creating a culturally safe space for learning and fostering a lifelong commitment to understanding residential schools, Treaties, and Indigenous peoples' historical and contemporary contributions to Canada. Like the Medicine Wheel, learning is a circular process that emphasizes depth, reflection, and relationship. As we know, the path to character isn’t linear, and our collective commitment to Truth and Reconciliation is grounded in the recognition that this is complex and difficult work.
References
Leddy, S., & Miller, L. (2024). Teaching where you are: Weaving Indigenous and slow principles and pedagogies. University of Toronto Press.
Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. (2015). Truth and reconciliation commission of Canada: Calls to action. https://nctr.ca/records/reports/
