Weaving Knowledge Systems Resource Materials

An edited volume. It comprises selections from the Aboriginal Healing Foundation’s Truth and Reconciliation Series: Vol. 1 From Truth to Reconciliation; Vol 2. Response, Responsibility, and Renewal; and Vol 3. Cultivating Canada.

Presented by Dialog, in collaboration with The School of Community and Public Affairs, The First Peoples Studies Program, and The Department of Political Science, Concordia University. [From Website]

A Venn diagram with accompanying description developed by Lorna Andrews based on her interpretation of the concepts from the open access BCCampus textbook: Pulling Together: a guide for Curriculum Developers. [From Author]

Welcome to GarnetsJourney.com, where you will meet Garnet Angeconeb – an Indigenous man who has survived a long journey – from the trap line, to residential school, to the city – all in his lifetime. On this site, Garnet will tell you stories from his life, in his own voice, in about 30 brief videos, plus one 21-minute biography. It’s like reading a book, except in this case the author is speaking to you. This website was created in 2012, so you will notice some differences between then and now – such as terms, names of organizations, policies, and current affairs. The power of Garnet’s story remains the same, and is as important today as it was then. [From Website]

The essays in Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision spring from an International Summer Institute on the cultural restoration of oppressed Indigenous peoples. The contributors, primarily Indigenous, unravel the processes of colonization that enfolded modern society and resulted in the oppression of Indigenous peoples." "In moving and inspiring ways, Reclaiming Indigenous Voice and Vision elaborates a new inclusive vision of a global and national order and articulates new approaches for protecting, healing, and restoring long-oppressed peoples, and for respecting their cultures and languages. [From Publisher]

BC Federation of Teachers Statement of Principles for incorporating Indigenous ways of knowing and being into the curriculum.

The Aboriginal Lens is a guide for those who work in education and are committed to taking up the “Calls to Action on Education” as stipulated by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. This framework is designed to help educators challenge the current, established systems of belief that support Eurocentric practices that have silenced other ways of knowing and being. The lens focuses our efforts and can be used to examine and assess policies and practices. The framework also works to address the needs of the collective and the community, as well as providing common reference for teachers. [From Website]

The treaty negotiations process provides a framework for the three parties: Canada, BC and First Nations – to work towards the common goal of reconciliation, and building a new relationship, through constitutionally entrenched government-to-government-to-government understandings.

Some of the major components integral to modern treaty making in British Columbia are:
aboriginal rights; self-government; land and resources;
financial issues; fishing; forestry. [From Website]

This course promotes an increased understanding of Indigenous people and their place and space in Canada, past and present. Words like Reconciliation and Indigenization are becoming common place and are often followed by questions such as, “What do these words mean? Why do we have to do this? How come I didn’t know about Residential Schools?”. The course will provide you with foundational knowledge of Indigenous people in the hopes that as the true history and contemporary reality of Indigenous people is more broadly known, Reconciliation can begin. A marketing tag line This history is our history. But how well do we know it? [From Website]

Prompted by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action (2015), there has been widespread response throughout Canadian educational institutions to facilitate reconciliation through education. In the context of Ontario, some Faculties of Education have responded to the calls with requiring Aboriginal education for teacher candidates, to ensure all graduating teachers have knowledge of Aboriginal histories, cultures, and worldviews. Nevertheless, there is a difference between teaching about reconciliation and teaching through reconciliation. This embodiment of reconciliation as a curricular and pedagogical praxis – a praxis of reconciliation – lies at the heart of this research in initial teacher education. This study draws upon case study methodology in an Aboriginal teacher education course in Ontario and a Treaty of Waitangi teacher education workshop in New Zealand, through an investigation of the question: In what ways do Settler teacher education programs facilitate and engage a praxis of reconciliation? The findings of this thesis propose a reconceptualization of reconciliation in teacher education by identifying the ways in which reconciliation is manifested in teacher education (a possibility of reconciliation), and the ways in which reconciliation is hindered (a challenge to reconciliation). In addition to identifying the possibilities and challenges, this research study also deconstructs the safe space metaphor in favour of ethical space and ethical relationality in initial teacher education. [From Author]

Resistance, resilience, and reconciliation are three under-recognized themes in response to British colonizations global imprint. Britain developed its methods of colonization in Ireland, and used further refined methods in Canada such as the Indian Residential Schools (IRSs). Colonization and repeated trauma continue intergenerationally for Indigenous peoples in multiple ways, as do also resistance and resilience that can lead to reconciliation through the generations with stories, family life, and spirituality. The Three Rs (resistance, resilience and reconciliation) are identified as Indigenous contributions to peacebuilding in Ireland and Canada. This study addresses the long-term social legacy of colonialism in conflict, in relation with potential positive peacebuilding within Peace and Conflict Studies (PACS). [From Author]

This anniversary arrives at a critical moment: Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs and other Indigenous peoples are challenging dispossession and environmental racism; the Black Lives Matter movement is demanding foundational change; Japanese Canadians are seeking BC restitution for the attempted ethnic cleansing of the province; and the fight against racisms associated with COVID-19 is broadening in response to systemic racism. 150 Years and Counting (150YC) is a new open-access, multi-media resource that documents how this recent cycle of anti-racist activism is part of a broader history of Indigenous, Black and other racialized communities challenging white supremacy for over 150 years – particularly since 1871 when BC joined Canada. Co-authored by activists & scholars from diverse communities, this resource will assist anti-racist educators, teachers, scholars, and policymakers in piercing the silences that too often have let racism fester in communities, corporations, and governments. 150YC is co-produced by the UVIC History project Asian Canadians on Vancouver Island: Race, Indigeneity and the Transpacific and the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives – BC Office. [From Website]

Confederation College launched its Diversity, Equity and Indigenous Lens, a tool that will help ensure Confederation’s policies, programs and practices are free of elements that knowingly or unknowingly enable the exclusion of Indigenous peoples. [From Website]

Over the past forty years, recognition has become the dominant mode of negotiation and decolonization between the nation-state and Indigenous nations in North America. The term "recognition" shapes debates over Indigenous cultural distinctiveness, Indigenous rights to land and self-government, and Indigenous peoples' right to benefit from the development of their lands and resources. In a work of critically engaged political theory, Glen Sean Coulthard challenges recognition as a method of organizing difference and identity in liberal politics, questioning the assumption that contemporary difference and past histories of destructive colonialism between the state and indigenous peoples can be reconciled through a process of acknowledgment. [From Publisher]

Presented by the SFU Woodward's Cultural Unit and the Vancity Office of Community Engagement

Glen Coulthard is an assistant professor in the First Nations Studies Program and the Department of Political Science at UBC. Coulthard has written and published numerous articles and chapters in the areas of contemporary political theory, indigenous thought and politics, and radical social and political thought (marxism, anarchism, post-colonialism). His most recent work on Frantz Fanon and the politics of recognition won the Contemporary Political Theory Annual Award for Best Article of the Year in 2007. He is Yellowknife's Dene First Nations. [From YouTube]

Jane Elliott presents a controversial workshop designed to show the systemic racism and discrimination suffered by First Nations people and other people of colour in Canada. Putting people with "brown eyes" in a position of power over a group of "blue eyes" to turn the tables on racism, Elliott then treats the "blue eyes" as "persons of colour," confronting and browbeating them, while treating the "brown eyes" with respect. Includes interviews with First Nations participants about their racist experiences, with the "blue eye" participants regarding their feelings about the workshop, and what insights participants from both "sides" brought away with them. [From Publisher]

Importantly, the implementation of the UN Declaration cannot be achieved through legislative reform alone. Bill 41 represents one step towards a renewed relationship between the Province and Indigenous Peoples. Ultimately, however, the principles enshrined in the Declaration can only be fully realized if the provincial government, along with non-Indigenous people residing in BC, are willing to commit to reimagining a new future in which Indigenous Peoples’ rights and decision-making authority are fully recognized and respected. [From Website]

150 Acts of Reconciliation for Canada's 150th birthday. Many of these are small, everyday acts that average Canadians can undertake, but others are more provocative and encourage people to think about Indigenous-settler relationships in new ways. [From Website]

Following the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Calls to Action, Canadian universities and colleges have felt pressured to indigenize their institutions. What “indigenization” has looked like, however, has varied significantly. Based on the input from an anonymous online survey of 25 Indigenous academics and their allies, we assert that indigenization is a three-part spectrum. On one end is Indigenous inclusion, in the middle reconciliation indigenization, and on the other end decolonial indigenization. We conclude that despite using reconciliatory language, post-secondary institutions in Canada focus predominantly on Indigenous inclusion. We offer two suggestions of policy and praxis—treaty-based decolonial indigenization and resurgence-based decolonial indigenization—to demonstrate a way toward more just Canadian academy. [From Author]

Comparisons to the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission haunt most post-1990s institutional attempts to address historical injustice, building on the wide familiarity and perceived success of that TRC. Comparing Canada and South Africa, Nagy (2012) notes that “loose analogizing” has hampered the application of important lessons from South Africa to the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission; namely, the discovery that “narrow approaches to truth collude with superficial views of reconciliation that deny continuities of violence.” This article adds to the conversation – which has thus far treated women tangentially, if at all – by gendering the continuum of Settler colonial violence in both locations, and by outlining the implications of these TRCs (and the potential for reconciliation) for Black and Indigenous women in particular. We argue that, in the Canadian attempt to grapple with the legacy of residential schools and the South African effort to deal with a history of apartheid, institutional approaches to ‘truth’ have been narrow and androcentric. In both locations, the Settler state’s narrative favoured extra-ordinary acts and historicity, denying structural injustice, lived relationships, and the colonial present – but the negative effects of such strategic epistemic constructions have not been equivalent for men and women. The simultaneous historical bounding and social consolidation of Indigenous experiences of abuse and injustice has thus produced a ‘double Settler denial’ in the case of Black and Indigenous women today. [From Author]

The settlement of the residential school system class action and the creation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada have renewed discussions on the relationship between peoples and the Crown as part of achieving reconciliation. This article argues that promoting reconciliation in Canada requires addressing the underlying issue that led to the residential school system: the unilateral imposition of colonial law with the goal of assimilating Indigenous peoples. The best way to prevent such actions in the future requires realizing Indigenous peoples right to self-determination. The U.N. Declaration, with its recognition of Indigenous peoples' right to self-determination, provides a framework that can be used to work toward reconciliation and reset the relationship between Indigenous peoples and the Crown. [From Author]

This paper discusses the practical implementation of consent-based decision making, and emphasizes the difference between consultation between governments before a decision is made, and a genuine joint decision. It explains three basic models of implementing consent between Crown and Indigenous governments, and notes the increase in proper recognition and implementation of Indigenous jurisdictions. [From Website]

The paper discusses the effects of an emergency such as the COVID-19 pandemic on human rights generally, and Indigenous rights specifically, recognizing the unforeseen effects of COVID-19 on various vulnerable populations, and the ways previous emergencies have affected these populations. It addresses the questions about the process of reconciliation, and ways that the priorities of reconciliation may need to change in order to continue moving forward. [From Website]

The seventh paper in the UNDRIP paper series is a commentary on the federal government’s proposed legislation (Bill C-15) to implement the UN Declaration. This legislation was made public in December 2020 and has spurred much dialogue and debate. [From Website]

This paper discusses how the recent pandemic due to COVID-19 has reinforced the importance in the recognition, implementation and right to self-govern. This paper works to form proper connections between Indigenous communities and Crown jurisdictions, laws and levels of government. As we prepare for possible pandemics similar to COVID-19 and attempt to strengthen governance in times of distress, this paper serves as a jumping off point in the right to self-governance and reconciliation. [From Website]

This paper is about the purpose and interpretation of the definition of “Indigenous Governing Bodies” in the context of DRIPA. By making observations about the inclusion of the definition in DRIPA, it helps to build understanding in this area of speculation. It also discusses the distinction between the questions of the proper Title and Rights holder and who represents the proper Title and Rights holder. [From Website]

This paper addresses questions about the application of the UN Declaration to the laws of British Columbia. It explains the importance of using a human rights lens with the implementation of the UN Declaration by recognizing the impact of colonialism on marginalized communities, and not only the collective matters of land and governance. [From Website]

This summary report examines some of the past and current efforts that have been made to transform Crown-Indigenous relations across Canada, along with providing critical considerations for implementing the UN Declaration in British Columbia. The report also focuses on achieving the broad and systemic shifts that are needed in order to support the ongoing work of Indigenous self-determination and self-government. [From Website]

This summary report highlights some of the issues raised at a dialogue session on Implementing the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UN Declaration) in British Columbia in November 2019. The session brought together First Nations leaders, lawyers, community members and those working in government to discuss potential challenges in implementing BC’s Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act (DRIPA), using the UN Declaration as a framework for reconciliation. [From Website]

This paper addresses challenges in co-operative approaches to addressing conflicts in government, and explains the way DRIPA helps advance these approaches. It also discusses the shift to a focus on the recognition and implementation of Indigenous rights, and the emphasis is being placed on moving away from adversarial forums and modes of engagement to new, principled, modes of co-operation. [From Website]

Our free Indigenous Peoples: A Guide to Terminology ebook includes explanations of 43 different terms in use today in building Indigenous relations. It provides some great insights into usage and best terminology and also has links to videos and more. [From Website]

The survey conducted by Indspire focused on students’ experiences on campuses across the country post-Truth and Reconciliation. This report reflects the feedback students provided and is structured in a way that moves between the very personal lived experience of “I” tied to the words of individual students to a more collaborative “we” in the body of each section. This represents Indspire’s commitment to ensure the power of student voice resonates in a way that individual perspectives feed into a broader, collaborative and inclusive reflection of the Indigenous students who were part of this conversation. [From Author]

Indigenous storytelling is connected to our homelands and is crucial to the cultural and political resurgence of Indigenous nations. According to Maori scholar Linda Smith, “the talk’ about the colonial past is embedded in our political discourses, our humour, poetry, music,
storytelling, and other common sense ways of passing on both a narrative of history and an attitude about history” . For example, when conveying community narratives of history to future generations, Nuu-chah-nulth peoples have relied on haa-huu-pah as teaching stories or sacred living histories that solidify ancestral and contemporary connections to place. As Nuu-chah-nulth Elder Cha-chin-sun-up states, haa-huu-pah are “What we do when we get up every day to make the world good.” [From Author]

Museums as colonial institutions are filled with the tensions and contradictions of competing discourses. This makes them complex sites of public pedagogy and informal adult education and learning. But they are also becoming important spaces of counter-narrative, self-representation, and resistance as Indigenous artists and curators intervene, and thus key spaces for settler education and truth telling about colonialism. My study inquires into the pedagogies of Cree artist Kent Monkman’s touring exhibition Shame and Prejudice: A Story of Resilience through the lens of my own unsettling as I engage autoethnographically with the exhibition. I highlight the unsettling pedagogical potentials of Monkman’s exhibition and contend that, as a site of experiential learning that challenges Euro-Western epistemologies and pedagogies with more holistic, relational, storied approaches, the exhibition offers much to unsettle and inform public pedagogy and adult education theory, practice, and research within and beyond museums. [From Author]

With its energetic pace and stunning HD landscapes, 8th Fire propels us past prejudice, stereotypes and misunderstandings, to encounters with an impressive new generation of Indigenous people who are reclaiming both their culture and their confidence. We meet the emerging leaders, artists, activists and thinkers. We explore the best ideas for change. Above all, 8th Fire examines the way forward to a second chance to get the relationship right. Comes with accompanying Teacher Resource Guide. [From Website]

Purposes of Act: The purposes of this Act are as follows:
(a)to affirm the application of the Declaration to the laws of British Columbia;
(b)to contribute to the implementation of the Declaration;
(c)to support the affirmation of, and develop relationships with, Indigenous governing bodies. {From Act]

Since time immemorial, Indigenous people have used formal protocol to acknowledge their surroundings, which is meant to honour their spiritual beliefs. This acknowledgment is often spoken in their own language. Indigenous people believed and understood that they are only one aspect in the great diversity of life on the land. They use a common expression such as “all my relations” – words that resemble an all-encompassing meaning – when acknowledging the people of the land, such as tqeltkúkwpi7 (Secwepemc version of Great Spirit). Their acknowledgement includes or specifies water, ancestors, animals and plant life, all of which are considered to be alive and therefore having a “spirit.” [From Author]

Arts of Engagement focuses on the role that music, film, visual art, and Indigenous cultural practices play in and beyond Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission on Indian Residential Schools. Contributors here examine the impact of aesthetic and sensory experience in residential school history, at TRC national and community events, and in artwork and exhibitions not affiliated with the TRC. Using the framework of “aesthetic action,” the essays expand the frame of aesthetics to include visual, aural, and kinetic sensory experience, and question the ways in which key components of reconciliation such as apology and witnessing have social and political effects for residential school survivors, intergenerational survivors, and settler publics. This volume makes an important contribution to the discourse on reconciliation in Canada by examining how aesthetic and sensory interventions offer alternative forms of political action and healing. These forms of aesthetic action encompass both sensory appeals to empathize and invitations to join together in alliance and new relationships as well as refusals to follow the normative scripts of reconciliation. Such refusals are important in their assertion of new terms for conciliation, terms that resist the imperatives of reconciliation as a form of resolution. This collection charts new ground by detailing the aesthetic grammars of reconciliation and conciliation. The authors document the efficacies of the TRC for the various Indigenous and settler publics it has addressed, and consider the future aesthetic actions that must be taken in order to move beyond what many have identified as the TRC's political limitations. [From Publisher]

The handbook provides a variety of Indigenous perspectives on the history of colonialism, current Indigenous activism and resistance, and outlines the path forward to reconciliation. Contributors include Bev Sellars, Taiaiake Alfred, Glen Coulthard, Russell Diabo, Beverly Jacobs, Melina Laboucan-Massimo, Arthur Manuel, Kanahus Manuel, Jeffrey McNeil-Seymour, Pamela Palmater, Shiri Pasternak, Nicole Schabus, Senator Murray Sinclair and Sharon Venne. [From Publisher]

Education is stated as the number one priority of the Government of Nunavut’s Sivumiut Abluqta mandate. The Nunavut education system is seen by many as failing to provide Inuit with the promise of supporting Inuit economic and social well-being. Today in Nunavut, there is a growing awareness of the effects of past colonialist polices and the need for individual and group healing. However, within the current education reforms, there is little discourse that reflects this colonialist history and how it continues to shape education in Nunavut. [From Author]

This thesis offers a critical discourse analysis of the Canadian government’s 2008 apology to the former students of the Indian Residential School system. The Indian Residential School apology claims to begin to pave the way for healing and reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and other Canadians, and, I argue, it makes this claim while reiterating colonial narratives of settler innocence, entitlement to land, and moral-ethical superiority. The apology claims to right wrongs that are discursively situated in a remote and distant past, without addressing ongoing colonial violence or the historic and contemporary benefits both the state and its citizens have inherited from colonialism. I contend that the apology enables a celebratory national narrative that allows the state and its citizens, and not the Indigenous peoples to whom it was putatively addressed, to recover from (and re-cover) a violent and traumatic past (and present) while repudiating responsibility on both an individual and state level. [From Author]

Since the 1980s successive Canadian institutions, including the federal government and Christian churches, have attempted to grapple with the malignant legacy of residential schooling, including official apologies, the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples, the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement, and the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). In Residential Schools and Reconciliation, award winning author J. R. Miller tackles and explains these institutional responses to Canada's residential school legacy. Analysing archival material and interviews with former students, politicians, bureaucrats, church officials, and the Chief Commissioner of the TRC, Miller reveals a major obstacle to achieving reconciliation – the inability of Canadians at large to overcome their flawed, overly positive understanding of their country's history. This unique, timely, and provocative work asks Canadians to accept that the root of the problem was Canadians like them in the past who acquiesced to aggressively assimilative policies. [From Publisher]

Whereas the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples provides a framework for reconciliation, healing and peace, as well as harmonious and cooperative relations based on the principles of justice, democracy, respect for human rights, non-discrimination and good faith;

Whereas the rights and principles affirmed in the Declaration constitute the minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of Indigenous peoples of the world, and must be implemented in Canada;

Whereas, in the outcome document of the high-level plenary meeting of the General Assembly of the United Nations known as the World Conference on Indigenous Peoples, Canada and other States reaffirm their solemn commitment to respect, promote and advance the rights of Indigenous peoples of the world and to uphold the principles of the Declaration; [From Preamble]

The Government of Canada is committed to
achieving reconciliation with Indigenous peoples
through a renewed, nation-to-nation, government-to-government, and Inuit-Crown relationship based
on recognition of rights, respect, co-operation, and
partnership as the foundation for transformative
change. [From Author]

The recognition that things needed to change to help Indigenous students enter post-secondary education.

"In 1973, the Supreme Court's historic Calder decision on the Nisga'a community's title suit in British Columbia launched the Native rights litigation era in Canada. Legal claims have raised questions with significant historical implications, such as, "What treaty rights have survived in various parts of Canada? What is the scope of Aboriginal title? Who are the Métis, where do they live, and what is the nature of their culture and their rights?" [From Publisher]

A Back Pocket Reconciliation Action Plan is a starting point for individuals to think about how to make reconciliation part of their lives. These cards are designed to be portable and shareable.

In 2008, Canada established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission to mend the deep rifts between Aboriginal peoples and the settler society that created Canada's notorious residential school system. Unsettling the Settler Within argues that non-Aboriginal Canadians must undergo their own process of decolonization in order to truly participate in the transformative possibilities of reconciliation. Settlers must relinquish the persistent myth of themselves as peacemakers and acknowledge the destructive legacy of a society that has stubbornly ignored and devalued Indigenous experience. A compassionate call to action, this powerful book offers a new and hopeful path toward healing the wounds of the past. [From Publisher]

Intended for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal learners, this course will explore indigenous ways of knowing and how they can benefit all students. Topics include historical, social, and political issues in Aboriginal education; terminology; cultural, spiritual and philosophical themes in Aboriginal worldviews; and how Aboriginal worldviews can inform professional programs and practices, including but not limited to the field of education. [From Website]

Of the 94 Calls to Action within the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) Final Report, almost one-fifth focused on matters of education. This represents a strong belief that formal teaching and learning can positively impact the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada. However, there is no established framework for such education. Reflecting on the report and drawing on critical pedagogy scholarship, I work towards a better understanding of the necessary pedagogy required for education for reconciliation. Recognizing the ways in which the work of “reconciliation” is situated in particular cultural, historical, and social realities, I outline an approach to education for reconciliation that is attentive to the Canadian context. Drawing on both critical pedagogy and Indigenous knowledges, this framework attempts to honour the TRC Final Report, offering an approach that is both pointedly critical and deeply relational. [From Author]

Celebrate the book launch of How We Go Home: Voices from Indigenous North America, a new book edited by Sara Sinclair from Haymarket Books and Voice of Witness, with a roundtable conversation about Indigenous sovereignty today.

How We Go Home shares contemporary Indigenous stories in the long and ongoing fight to protect Native land and life. In myriad ways, each narrator’s life has been shaped by loss, injustice, resilience, and the struggle to share space with settler nations whose essential aim is to take all that is Indigenous. [From YouTube]

In late 2015, Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future, the Executive Summary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s (TRC) final report, was released. In response, the Canadian Association of Social Workers pledged to move Canada forward from recognition of truth, to reconciliation, acknowledging this with the statement: “the profession of social work recognizes the very specific role and responsibility it has in supporting the implementation of the TRC recommendations with emphasis on those specific to Child Welfare.” The BC Association of Social Workers (BCASW) also announced its support for the 94 Calls to Action in the report, and it is now up to us to take meaningful action as the agents of change. [From Author]

Two key tenets of Sherene Razack's scholarship are that racialized violence is always an identity-making practice and that settler violence against Indigenous people, in particular, is a violence that reassures white settler subjects that they rightly occupy Indigenous lands. With reference to Razack's idea of the "spatiality" of racialized violence, I argue that regimes and ideologies of private property remain central to the psychic life of colonial power, settler emplaced subjectivity, and the violence committed by settlers against Indigenous peoples. I also contend that the broader context of reconciliation within Canada is significant for analyzing settler subjectivity and settler violence. To illustrate my theoretical claims, I draw from three recent homicides committed by white male settlers, where settler misrecognition of Indigenous persons as trespassing upon (or stealing) settler private property seems central to the violence. [From Author]

Between 1867 and 2000, the Canadian government sent over 150,000 Aboriginal children to residential schools across the country. Government officials and missionaries agreed that in order to “civilize and Christianize” Aboriginal children, it was necessary to separate them from their parents and their home communities.

For children, life in these schools was lonely and alien. Discipline was harsh, and daily life was highly regimented. Aboriginal languages and cultures were denigrated and suppressed. Education and technical training too often gave way to the drudgery of doing the chores necessary to make the schools self-sustaining. Child neglect was institutionalized, and the lack of supervision created situations where students were prey to sexual and physical abusers. [From Publisher]

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada believes that in order for Canada to flourish in the twenty-first century, reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canada must be based on the following principles. [From Website]

For over a century, the central goals of Canada’s Aboriginal policy were to eliminate Aboriginal governments; ignore Aboriginal rights; terminate the Treaties; and, through a process of assimilation, cause Aboriginal peoples to cease to exist as distinct legal, social, cultural, religious, and racial entities in Canada. The establishment and operation of residential schools were a central element of this policy, which can best be described as “cultural genocide.” [From Author]

In order to redress the legacy of residential schools and advance the process of Canadian reconciliation, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission makes the following calls to action. [From Author]

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada believes that in order for Canada to flourish in the twenty-first century, reconciliation between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canada must be based on the
following principles. [From Author]

A 6-Week Massive Open Online Course (MOOC)
Engage with Indigenous knowledge keepers, educational leaders, and resources to enhance your understanding and knowledge of practices that advance reconciliation in the places where you live, learn, and work.
This course will help you envision how Indigenous histories, perspectives, worldviews, and approaches to learning can be made part of the work we do in classrooms, organizations, communities, and our everyday experiences in ways that are thoughtful and respectful. In this course, reconciliation emphasizes changing institutional structures, practices, and policies, as well as personal and professional ideologies to create environments that are committed to strengthening our relationships with Indigenous peoples. [From Website]

At its seventy-first session, the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (“the Committee”) decided to embark upon the task of drafting a new general recommendation on special measures, in light of the difficulties observed in the understanding of such notion. At its seventy-second session, the Committee decided to hold at its next session a thematic discussion on the subject of special measures within the meaning of articles 1, paragraph 4, and 2, paragraph 2 of the International Convention on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (“the Convention”). The thematic discussion was held on 4 and 5 August 2008 with the participation of States parties to the Convention, representatives of the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, the International Labour Organisation (ILO), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and non-governmental organizations. Following the discussion, the Committee renewed its determination to work on a general recommendation on special measures, with the objective of providing overall interpretative guidance on the meaning of the above articles in light of the provisions of the Convention as a whole. [From Author]

Today the Declaration is the most comprehensive international instrument on the rights of indigenous peoples. It establishes a universal framework of minimum standards for the survival, dignity and well-being of the indigenous peoples of the world and it elaborates on existing human rights standards and fundamental freedoms as they apply to the specific situation of indigenous peoples. [From Website]

Indigenous Canada is a 12-lesson course during which students can expect to acquire a basic familiarity with Aboriginal/non-Aboriginal relationships. This Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) aims to expand the understandings held by many Canadians about these relationships. [From Website]

Many experts on student-centered online learning agree that the discussion board is the place where some of the most learning can happen. But as teachers and facilitators, we have to find ways to support students in "driving" that learning.[From Author]

In this chapter, the author draws on personal experiences as pedagogical advisor and as a doctoral student, to consider how recognizing voice, family, and vulnerabilities may assist in developing a sense of accountability in academia. Reflecting on the Canadian context of reconciliation, the author considers how moving from an intercultural to an equity paradigm may melt the cultural iceberg. [From Author]

This chapter describes the development and impact assessments of an online, co‐curricular intercultural communication course that weaves together material addressing reconciliation with Indigenous communities in Canada with material about cultural difference and communication across cultures. Considerations for inclusive online course design and for the sequencing of core intercultural communication concepts are described. [From Author]

Building Indigeneity into the curricula at Canadian post-secondary schools requires more than just introducing Indigenous history and knowledge. To ensure systemic change, we must have the courage to engage in uncomfortable conversations with ourselves and in every classroom, boardroom, library, breakout room and theatre within the post-secondary system. [From Website]

The Indian Residential School History and Dialogue Centre recently held a dialogue on implementing the UN Declaration through Bill C-15. The dialogue included 12 political, expert, and legal panelists offering perspectives on the proposed federal government legislation to implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Facilitated by Dr. Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond, Aki-Kwe, and Dr. Roshan Danesh, QC, the dialogue included diverse perspectives and discussions. For those who were not able to attend, the video of the event is now available, as well as a summary report highlighting the key themes of the discussions. [From Website]

The National Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada has challenged governments and school boards across Canada to acknowledge and address the damaging legacies of residential schooling while ensuring that all students gain an adequate understanding of relations between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous peoples. This article explores the dynamics and prospects for effective change associated with reforms in elementary and secondary education systems since the release of the Commission’s Calls to Action, focusing on the policy frameworks employed by provincial and territorial governments to guide these actions. The analysis examines critically the overt and hidden messages conveyed through discourses within policy documents and statements. The key questions we address include: What do current education policy frameworks and actions regarding Indigenous Peoples reveal about government approaches to education and settler–Indigenous relationships in Canada? To what extent is effective reconciliation possible, and how can it be accomplished in the context of institutional structures and discourses within a White settler colonial society? The findings reveal that substantial movement towards greater acknowledgement of Indigenous knowledge systems and incorporation of Indigenous content continues to be subordinated to or embedded within Western assumptions, norms, and standards. [From Author]

The NCTR is a place of learning and dialogue where the truths of the residential school experience will be honoured and kept safe for future generations. The NCTR was created as part of the mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC). The TRC was charged to listen to Survivors, their families, communities and others affected by the residential school system and educate Canadians about their experiences. The resulting collection of statements, documents and other materials now forms the sacred heart of the NCTR. [From Website]

While reconciliation seems like a vague or unattainable concept, RTS breaks it down into small but impactful steps for everyone and anyone. Our work focuses on learning from the past, gaining the tools to make change in our present and being empowered to create a better future. [From Website]