Education Day in Saskatoon best attended one of four [TRC Event]

Education Day in Saskatoon at the fourth national event hosted by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission June 21 to June 24 had the largest number of youth in attendance yet.

Nearly 2,000 Grade 7 and 8 students from city schools spent June 22 hearing stories from Indian residential school survivors, taking in displays and asking questions.
Eugene Arcand, an Indian Residential Schools Survivors Advisory Committee member, held up a photograph that he carries around with him. It shows the 32 kids he started with at St. Michael’s Indian Residential School. Today, of that class from Duck Lake, Sask. in 1957-58., he knows where only 10 of those students are.

“Every day there was a threat of physical violence against us. Every day there was some pervert or deviant who wanted to take advantage of us as little kids,” said Arcand. “I want you to stop every time you come to some kind of display or level of learning and say, ‘What would I have done if that had happened to me?’”

“I couldn’t bear to think of when I was five or six (years old),” said Samantha Regier, a Grade 8 student at Pope John Paul II.

The day also included a nine-student panel discussion groomed by the International Centre for Transitional Justice.

It’s important for youth to share their opinions on how Canada should address the legacy of residential schools, said Valerie Waters, program coordinator for the ICTJ. Her organization worked with Saskatoon teachers to prepare the students for the TRC event.

“We were all part of the hurt. We all have to ensure that we are all going to be part of the healing,” said Diane Boyko, president of the Greater Saskatoon Catholic School Board.

That commitment has been made concrete by the governments of the Northwest Territories and Nunavut. This past school year, the education departments of the two territories worked with a handful of schools in N.W.T. and Nunavut to pilot curriculum resources on Indian residential schools.

In 2012-2013, select schools across the two territories will be using the unit and receiving 15 to 25 hours of instruction. It is the goal of the two territorial governments for the Indian Residential Schools unit for the lessons to become mandatory learning for all high school students.

“I’m aware that there are historical connections between the department I’m responsible for and many of the events, the experiences occurred, that we’ve been sharing,” said N.W.T. Deputy Premier Jackson Lafferty and Minister of Education. “From now, all people who go through the Northwest Territories and Nunavut school systems will know what has happened, what has caused our people to be in the situation we are currently in.”

TRC Chair Justice Murray Sinclair has often said that as education was used as a way to change the Aboriginal way of life, education is also key to renewing culture, language and identity.

“It is critical that we continue along this journey educating Canada about the history of residential schools and the impacts it has had on Aboriginal children and their families,” said Phil Fontaine, who, during his terms as national chief of the Assembly of First Nations, helped negotiate the Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement.

Fontaine now serves as special advisor for RBC and it was in that role that he delivered an Expression of Reconciliation at the TRC national event on behalf of the financial institute.

“We together, as fully engaged partners, work closely with Aboriginal communities to move along a path of learning and understanding with the sheer goal of making a positive difference,” said Fontaine.

To that end, RBC has committed $100,000 over the next two years to support Education Day. The money was used in Saskatoon and the balance will fund Education Day for the national event in British Columbia.

“It’s through education and awareness of the injustices and harms experienced by Aboriginal people that we can help support their needs for continued healing and to build a positive future,” said Fontaine.