00:00:46.260It's absolutely asinine that we just would limit it to that day.0.86
00:00:50.140What I do like doing within that day, rather than just implementing it into individual curriculum and having individual classes, speak about the history of residential schools, speak about what we have done and the way the Canadian government and the Canadian culture has committed a cultural genocide against these people in this country, what we have done, how we've done it, and how we need to reconcile and promote justice going forward.
00:01:41.420How do we have meaningful conversations so change happens?
00:01:46.040because you can hand out a bunch of information and they can learn about residential schools and
00:01:50.480the 60s scoop, and they can learn about the damage that was done and the cultural assimilation
00:01:56.880that was perpetrated by our government and the culture of our past. But unless we talk about it,
00:02:04.360unless we engage, unless we sit as a community, nothing's going to change.
00:02:08.520So today at Metro Prep, I kind of upended things.
00:02:12.460So I've spent quite a few years doing workshops and educational information sessions talking about what a residential school was, talking about how our government set up this structured system in order to assimilate Indigenous children that were stolen from their homes and forced into boarding schools for 10 years.
00:03:21.380Because if I don't as an educator, if I don't find out how to get at students and to be
00:03:28.120honest, faculty and parents in a different way, then I'm not changing anything for the
00:03:33.980future. That I'm just paying lip service for the day and then I'm moving on till tomorrow. Well,
00:03:39.060I'm not interested in that. So not only do we talk about the history here, but this year I
00:03:47.000decided to do something a little bit different. And I started Truth and Reconciliation Day actually
00:03:52.060last week. And I started by the shirts that I'm wearing. And if you're listening to it, I'm wearing
00:03:58.240a t-shirt that is one of my students has very artistically painted Tecumseh over the chest of
00:04:06.460the shirt. And I had my entire school working on individual shirts all last week. And all of the
00:04:16.120names that we put on these shirts were then given to students. And individual students, their job
00:04:23.700was not only to wear the shirt and create the shirt, their job was to research the individual.
00:04:29.880Because I'm not just interested in researching the past. I'm not just interested in researching
00:04:34.360the damage and the violence and the assimilation and all of the horrific things that the Indigenous
00:04:42.500population in Canada has had to go through. That is important. Absolutely. But I also want my
00:04:49.580students to know how powerful, how amazing the trailblazers of indigenous people in this country,
00:04:58.520what they've accomplished, what they've done, what they continue to do, the brilliance in their mind,
00:05:04.120the beauty of their art, the power of their music. Because they're not just a victim of our
00:05:11.880government and of our culture. They are survivors. They are warriors of it.
00:05:18.840The fact that their culture has survived this, the fact that the language has survived,
00:05:25.880battered and bruised, yes, but survived, the fact that families have survived, the fact that now
00:05:31.240we're starting to see empowerment of indigenous people and culture and nations
00:05:37.360is the most important thing. So I want my students to understand
00:05:43.620that as we study their history, it didn't end there. As we study the pain and the suffering
00:05:50.640that they were forced to endure, it didn't end there. They lived through that. Not all,
00:05:59.100I understand. And we mourn and grieve for those who didn't. But for those who lived through it,
00:06:06.660for those who survived, for the warriors that thrived through it, I want to pay honor to those
00:06:13.780people today. And I want my students to understand that. I want my students in this day, in the days
00:06:22.640moving forward, to understand the power that indigenous people possess, the strength, the will,
00:06:31.420the genius. And I want them to understand different communities and different languages
00:06:38.680and different foundational spiritual senses of all Indigenous nations within Canada so they can
00:06:46.600start gaining a true appreciation. Because if we do not educate our students, if we do not teach
00:06:53.900them. They will never truly be able to respect and understand Indigenous people across Canada.
00:07:02.840They just won't. It has to come through education. It has to come through seeing the truth of the1.00
00:07:10.940full scope of the many peoples that live in this country and that have endured what they've
00:07:19.480endured at the hands of our government and the people of the past and of today.
00:07:26.720So today, when my students walked in, they all had their shirts on, they all went to class,
00:07:31.620they were supposed to research their person, and the day went on. We filmed some videos,
00:07:38.180you heard people speaking about it, to some degree. Each class, though, which I thought was
00:07:43.480amazing. Each teacher, no matter what the discipline, whether it was math, science, art,
00:07:49.800biology, chemistry, it doesn't matter, politics, history, of course, the teachers were tasked with
00:07:56.760incorporating Indigenous peoples and ideas into every single different discipline.
00:08:05.420So my students gained an understanding that there are brilliant Indigenous mathematicians.
00:08:10.520There are brilliant chemists and biologists and doing incredible work in studying the trauma response, for example, that has now been coded genetically into people.
00:08:26.220And the idea that a lot of indigenous people have always had, which is blood memory, is now actually being proven by science, scientific study.
00:08:36.020and my students start to become aware that a lot of the ideas that the indigenous population have
00:08:42.380had over the years and and their traditions and their rituals and their thought process
00:08:48.140is it's like the rest of the world is catching up it's like they're becoming aware of all of
00:08:54.460these important things not to mention of course environmental
00:08:59.300causes, animal rights, activism, all of these things that we should be doing that make sense,
00:09:07.620that are rational, that are human, that are beautiful ways of existing, we are now becoming
00:09:15.440aware of because of the empowerment and the elevated voices of indigenous communities.
00:09:23.480And so we went through the whole day and kids got different lessons from different teachers. And then
00:09:29.020I sat them all down in the same room. Was it loud? Sure. We're kids pushing in. Sure. But we all sat on the floor because I hate them fighting over chairs. It's just ridiculous. We all sat on the floor. We got as relatively sort of close as possible so we could hear each other speak. And then we did.
00:09:50.000We voiced what we learned. We voiced what we knew. We asked questions when we didn't.
00:10:00.100We used the time to empower and to support and to provide empathy for the things that
00:10:07.140Indigenous communities have gone through. I listened to these young students say the most
00:10:15.300incredible, beautiful things about justice, about equity, about fairness, about how we move forward
00:10:24.400and what we need to do. And guys, I don't know if you know teenagers, but for the most part,
00:10:31.980they're not going to do or say anything they don't believe.
00:10:36.800But this is a thing I find that touches most of them, that most of them truly believe in,
00:10:44.320that when you start talking about it and when you start explaining it and when each student
00:10:50.840brings up a piece of history they've been taught or they remember or they thought was
00:10:54.960important and we do it as a collective, the amount of empathy and awareness in that room
00:11:03.520and in that space magnifies to something bigger, to something more powerful.
00:11:11.360And when I'm listening to them, I know for a fact they're going to do better than we did.
00:11:18.040I know for a fact they're going to listen better.
00:11:21.200I know for a fact that if we give them the right tools and we trust them to speak and we allow them to say what they think,
00:11:31.700that the youth of this nation will lead us down a much better path of justice
00:11:39.680than previous generations could ever imagine.
00:11:44.900Because as my students have said today, it's not about money, it's not about apologies,
00:11:49.400it's about change. If we don't change, it doesn't matter. If the educational system doesn't change,
00:11:55.880the apology doesn't matter, if the justice system doesn't change, then the money will be wasted.
00:12:06.620If our healthcare system and our environmental policies don't change, then the lessons fall
00:12:17.380empty. And all these kids are saying it. They're saying it loud and they're saying it proud with
00:12:25.740their full chest because I know that they understand what will change the world. And
00:12:30.840the only thing stopping them is us, us saying it can't be done, us saying it's too hard,
00:12:36.520us saying it was, you know, what's past is past. You can't fix anything. What?
00:12:44.700If you listen to students for more than five seconds, you'll realize that they have a vision
00:12:49.980of this world that is more about equity, diversity, and empowerment of everybody because they
00:12:58.560understand that's what makes the world a better place. That's what makes their country a better
00:13:02.760place. And that is actually what justice looks like. Justice requires change. First, you have
00:13:14.260to listen. Really listen. Then you have to question. Then you have to have conversation.
00:13:21.980And then you have to come up with authentic, incredibly important ways of enacting change
00:13:30.240in our society so that we move forward differently. And that's what our youth does.
00:13:38.700And every year I'm amazed and impressed and I feel empowered and uplifted when I listen to those students and I listen to what they have to offer and I am amazed.
00:13:55.140You know, they talked very passionately today about one particular topic, and that's language.
00:14:01.700language. These kids, I have kids who are bilingual, trilingual, and they talk very,
00:14:10.760and this is what happens when you have a diverse school, right? When you have a school where kids
00:14:15.080come from all over the world and they speak different languages, they are able to articulate
00:14:21.140how important language is to them. And our kids here, the domestic kids who maybe only speak
00:14:27.380English, start to get an understanding of what that means. And so they talked very eloquently0.86
00:14:36.780about the importance of language and how we should fund and how we should back and improve
00:14:44.180and allow Indigenous societies all over the country to bolster, to strengthen, to educate
00:14:52.140surrounding their language, because that is the first step at actually protecting their culture,
00:14:58.300their ideas, their tradition, and most importantly, their oral history.
00:15:04.200I looked at all the kids who, let's be honest, they didn't always want it. They didn't all want
00:15:08.200to wear an orange shirt. They didn't all understand it in the beginning. But by the end of the day,
00:15:15.340when they were so quietly listening to the horrific nature of residential schools or the
00:15:23.60060s scoop where Child Protective Services would unjustly take Indigenous children from their homes
00:15:31.900and put them with white homes, or when they listened to the criminalization of potluck
00:15:36.420ceremonies and dancing rituals, when they listened to the striking down of political organizations
00:15:44.960that were Indigenous and protests that were Indigenous.
00:15:50.440And we talked about the I don't know more fight.
00:15:54.640And we talked about how there's only reason that justice has happened at all
00:16:01.320to any degree is because Indigenous communities have come together
00:16:41.600My students also are very aware of how to hold space, and I realize as I'm sitting here, I am not indigenous in any aspect, but how, if I can, I will hold space, and I will be loud until somebody needs my microphone, and I will hand it to them in order to speak their truth, speak their identity,
00:17:10.860speak their history so we can all change.