Observed annually on Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation coincides with a time of year when parents trepidatiously watch their little ones scurry off to school. It also intentionally signifies the time when thousands of Indigenous children were taken from their parents and forced to attend residential schools.
Many experienced unspeakable traumas.
Others never came home at all.
Robyn Bourgeois, Vice-Provost, Indigenous Engagement and Associate Professor of Women's and Gender Studies at Brock, says it's important to contextualize that Indigenous families are only a few generations removed from the closure of Canada's last residential school in 1996.
"Not only is 1996 not very long ago, but the intergenerational trauma associated with the residential school system doesn't just end with the person who attended. The impact reverberates through families including my own," she says.
Through her research, Bourgeois a mixed-race Cree woman whose Cree family comes from the Treaty 8 Territory focuses on violence against Indigenous women and girls and Indigenous women's political activism and leadership.
She is also the granddaughter of a residential school survivor and says those lived experiences cause "ripple effects that last for generations."
"We live with this every single day," she says. "We need to have conversations about our history and lived experiences with our kids, too, because if this was another place or time our kids would be the ones who were taken."
Sheila Cote-Meek, Director of Indigenous Educational Studies Programs and Professor of Educational Studies, researches the lasting impacts of colonization and how Indigenous scholars and students navigate the education system today.
"We must consider that residential schools were built around the mentality that Indigenous Peoples were lesser than and less than human and needed to be trained,' which was also threaded across society and other school systems of the day," she says.
From the Teme-Augama Anishnabai and a member of the Temagami First Nation, Cote-Meek says the loss of language because of assimilation practices at residential schools had a "profound impact" on her family.
"Language is really critical to maintaining culture and tradition, and I felt a deep sense of loss and grief when I reconciled with not being able to connect with my own language on a deeper level," she says.
Progress toward reconciliation has been made since the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action in 2015, she says, but it's still critical to integrate the impact of colonialization throughout the entire curriculum, starting in kindergarten.
"As educational institutions, we have to continue to create accessible pathways for success for Indigenous learners and teachers, especially instructors or teachers who plan to return to live and work in their communities afterward," she says.
As well as her work investigating bias in the health-care system, Sherri Vansickle, Assistant Professor of Educational Studies and a Six Nations Band Member from the Onondaga Nation in the Eel Clan, connects traditional knowledge keepers with the resources they need to build cultural capacity within their communities.
She considers it a "gift and a privilege" to do this work, such as sourcing difficult-to-obtain materials for traditional headdresses or facilitating opportunities to host workshops in communities and schools.
"When we look historically at the Indian Act and how it banned our ceremonies and prevented us from gathering in groups, that makes it very hard to disseminate knowledge," she says. "Relating that back to the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Canadian government needs to reconcile its intentional cultural genocide of Indigenous people: This is what they've done wrong, where they can improve and how they can do better."
Connie Schumacher, Assistant Professor of Nursing and a mixed-heritage Anishinaabe woman of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation, teaches about Indigenous Methods and Ethics research in her nursing courses.
She integrates the Calls to Action related to systemic racism within Canada's health-care system into her teaching. Doing so, she says, better prepares nursing students to provide culturally competent care.
"I use story work and incorporate examples of this across the courses that I teach," she says. "I believe the true work of seeing the TRC actions realized involves reflecting on how we do things through a decolonized lens, only then can we make progress."
All four scholars also agree that true reconciliation will only come by collaborating with but not relying on Indigenous Peoples.
"This is a moment where we all come together and reflect on the lives lost and the lives that continue to be lost. Any success we have in our reconciliation and Indigenization efforts moving forward will only come when we work together," says Bourgeois.
