Wilfrid Laurier University Library – Statement Recognizing the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

The Wilfrid Laurier University Library recognizes the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. We stand in support of and are committed to, the process of reconciliation with Indigenous communities. We acknowledge that our work takes place on the Haldimand Tract, the traditional territory of the Neutral, Anishnaabe (Anish-nah-bay) and Haudenosaunee (Hoe-den-no-show-nee) peoples. This land is part of the Dish with One Spoon Treaty between the Haudenosaunee and Anishnaabe peoples and symbolizes the agreement to share, protect our resources, and not to engage in conflict.

This year, September 30th, marks the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, which the Government of Canada designated to honour First Nations, Inuit, and Métis survivors of the residential school system, their families, and communities, and to ensure the public commemoration of their history. The Laurier Library joins all of Canada in observing September 30th as a day to reflect upon this history and to encourage education about the residential school system and reconciliation.

In recognition of the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, the Laurier Library would like to highlight some key resources for the Laurier community to engage with this important issue.

Relevant Video Resources

• The nature of healing : surviving the Mohawk Institute
  • The Nature of Healing is the spoken truth of seven courageous people who survived the Mohawk Institute, Canada’s first and longest running “Indian” residential school. From victim to survivor, to activist, this is a story of resistance, resilience and a healing path.
• Can-Core: Academic Video
  • This resource contains a collection of videos about reconciliation (do a keyword search for reconciliation) n in recognition of this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (Orange Shirt Day) on its launch page
• Truth, Reconciliation & Colonialism
  • A playlist of 19 videos, such as The Grandfather Drum
• Treaties Recognition Playlist
  • A playlist of 13 videos, such as The Impact of Colonialism in Canada
• National Film Board of Canada
  • Featuring a collection of films on the topic of residential schools
• Bellrichard, Chantelle. 2018. #Beyond94 – Canada’s Cultural Genocide of Indigenous Peoples. Toronto: Canadian Broadcasting Corporation
  • The Truth and Reconciliation Commission spoke to thousands of survivors and found that what took place in residential schools in Canada amounted to the cultural genocide of Indigenous Peoples. So, what changes have been made since then?

Electronic Books

• Implementing the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action: Teach for Canada
• Honouring the Truth, Reconciling for the Future: Summary of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada. 2015. Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
• Angel, Naomi, et al. 2022 Fragments of the Truth: Residential Schools and the Challenge of Reconciliation in Canada. Durham: Duke University Press. 
  • In 2008, the Canadian government established a Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) to review the history of the residential school system, a brutal colonial project that killed and injured many Indigenous children and left a legacy of trauma and pain. In Fragments of Truth Naomi Angel analyzes the visual culture of reconciliation and memory in relation to this complex and painful history. In her analyses of archival photographs from the residential school system, representations of the schools in popular media and literature, and testimonies from TRC proceedings, Angel traces how the TRC served as a mechanism through which memory, trauma, and visuality became apparent. She shows how many Indigenous communities were able to use the TRC process as a way to claim agency over their memories of the schools. Bringing to light the ongoing costs of transforming settler states into modern nations, Angel demonstrates how the TRC offers a unique optic through which to survey the long history of colonial oppression of Canada’s Indigenous populations.
• MacDonald, David Bruce. 2019. The Sleeping Giant Awakens : Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.
• Miller, J. R. 2017. Residential Schools and Reconciliation : Canada Confronts Its History. Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press.
  • "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."--Provided by publisher. 
• They Came for the Children Canada, Aboriginal Peoples, and Residential Schools. 2012. Winnipeg, Manitoba: Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.
  • "For over a century, generations of Aboriginal children were separated from their parents and raised in overcrowded, underfunded, and often unhealthy residential schools across Canada. They were commonly denied the right to speak their language and told their cultural beliefs were sinful. Some students did not see their parents for years. Others, the victims of scandalously high death rates, never made it back home. Even by the standards of the day, discipline often was excessive. Lack of supervision left students prey to sexual predators. To put it simply the needs of tens of thousands of Aboriginal children were neglected routinely. Far too many children were abused far too often. But this story is about more than neglect and abuse. Those painful stories rightfully have captured national headlines. They are central to the story this book tells. But there is more to tell."
• McFarlane, Peter, and Nicole Schabus. 2017. Whose Land Is It Anyway?  : A Manual for Decolonization British Columbia: Federation of Post-Secondary Educators of BC.

Print Book

• Chrisjohn, Roland David., Sherri Lynn Young, and Michael. Maraun. 1997. The Circle Game : Shadows and Substance in the Indian Residential School Experience in Canada Penticton, BC: Theytus Books.

Articles

Louie, Dustin William. (2024) "Barriers to Engaging with Reconciliation in Canadian Education: Confusing Colonial and Western Knowledge" Canadian Journal of Education. v47 issue 2 pp. 466-491.

[Author's abstract]

In this article, I examine truths and misunderstandings of colonization. An interrogation of the conflation between colonial and Western practices is explored through established literature and in practical examples of relationships to time, the Indian Act, and the term "Settler." By first establishing accessible and shared definitions of reconciliation and colonization, common misconceptions and predictable pitfalls in Indigenous movements can be resolved. By attending to the confusion of terms the circle can be expanded ever so slightly to welcome more allies into the movement. Intentionally deceptive narratives position the work of reconciliation, or any social justice movement, as being anti-White and divisive. In the pursuit of equity and healing, it is essential to maintain the core values of care and dignity in methods of emancipation and resist succumbing to colonial tactics of delegitimizing any knowledge system, even those of our oppressors.

Dussault, Catherine (Wendat, Nation huronne-wendat), Molgat, Marc, Tolley, Mona (Anishinabekew, Kitigan Zibi First Nation), Vanthuyne, Karine, (2024) Widening the circle: assuming differentiated responsibilities in the Indigenization of university education. AlterNative: an International journal of Indigenous peoples. v. 20 issue 3 pp.419-427.

Since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Canadian universities have pledged to Indigenize education and hired Indigenous Curriculum Specialists to implement this commitment. These new higher education employees, however, face limited resources for, and resistance to, their work. To move forward, Indigenous Curriculum Specialists are calling for fruitful dialogues between them and their interlocutors at all levels of decision and policy making. This article exemplifies and promotes such dialogues, by presenting a written version of the sharing circle the authors had about their experiences with implementing an Indigenous Curriculum Specialist-led Indigenization initiative. Readers are then invited to draw on the circle’s main themes—positionality, responsibility, and Indigenized practices—to reflect on the differentiated responsibilities they are themselves called upon to assume in Indigenizing post-secondary education from their own position. It is only through engaging all beings in this conversation that we will contribute to shared understandings and responsibility for the world.

"Complementary Worldviews aligning: A relational approach to STEM education." 2024. Native American and Indigenous Studies v. 11 issue 2. pp. 95-127.

Educators in Canada face federal and provincial mandates arising from the TRC Calls to Action (2012) to incorporate First Nations, Métis, and Inuit (FNMI) perspectives across the curriculum. Yet it is not uncommon to hear K–12 educators as well as some university faculty asking, "How do I incorporate Indigenous culture into science? Is it even possible?" This paper not only describes how it is possible but also explains why it is necessary, providing a theoretical framework and practical examples of how Western approaches to science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) knowledge can be braided with Indigenous treatments of these knowledge categories and disciplines. Historically, Niitsitapi (Blackfoot) and other Indigenous worldviews have been systematically and systemically dismissed by the sciences and primarily confined to the humanities. Therefore, to move beyond merely learning about Indigenous cultures and lean into learning from them (i.e., learn through the lens of Indigenous cultures), we must (1) teach Niitsitapi and other Indigenous stories beyond the humanities classroom; (2) better engage the etiological, ontological, epistemological, axiological, and practical traditions of Niitsitapi and other Indigenous Peoples; and (3) operationalize pedagogical and methodological models that acknowledge, respect, and embody Indigenous ways of knowing and being in STEM education.

“Reconciliation” in undergraduate education in Canada: the application of Indigenous knowledge in conservation  

Littlechild DB, Finegan C, and McGregor D. 2021. Facets: a multidisciplinary open access science journal 6 665-685 

Both the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) and the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) explicitly emphasized the role of educators in “reconciliation.” Alongside this, conservation practitioners are increasingly interacting with Indigenous Peoples in various ways, such as in the creation and support of Indigenous protected areas and (or) guardian programs. This paper considers how faculty teaching aspiring conservation practitioners can respond appropriately to the TRC and MMIWG Inquiry while preparing students to engage with Indigenous Peoples in a way that affirms, rather than questions Indigenous knowledge and aspirations. Our argument is threefold: first, teaching Indigenous content requires an approach grounded in transformational change, not one focused on an “add Indigenous and stir” pedagogy. Second, we assert that students need to know how to ethically engage with Indigenous Peoples more than they need knowledge of discreet facts. Finally, efforts to “Indigenize” the academy requires an emphasis on anti-racism, humility, reciprocity, and a willingness to confront ongoing colonialism and white supremacy. This paper thus focuses on the broad change that must occur within univer- sities to adequately prepare students to build and maintain reconciliatory relationships with Indigenous Peoples. 

Truth and reconciliation cinema: an ethico-political study of residential school imagery in contemporary Indigenous film 

T Stewart, AlterNative, 2021, 17(2), 1174-1740; DOI: 10.1177/11771801211012450 

This article explores an important facet of the New Wave of Indigenous filmmaking in Canada: residential school system history and imagery, its place in the historical archive, and the way it is being retold and reclaimed in films like Rhymes for Young Ghouls (2013), Savage (2009), Sisters & Brothers (2015), Indian Horse(2017), and The Grizzlies (2018). While researching this topic, one unanswered question has left me feeling sometimes frustrated and often troubled: Is there a risk of producing pan-Indigenous readings, or worse, repeating the original propagandistic intentions of the original residential school photographs when they are used in new media? 

"I want to move forward. You can move forward too." articulating indigenous self-determination at the truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 

Vanthuyne, Karine, Human rights quarterly, 2021, Vol.43 (2), p.355-377 

The proliferation of truth and reconciliation commissions has raised serious concerns about the potential that "speaking truth to power" must transform dominant power relations. Critics argue that by employing corporal metaphors of shared wounds in need of healing for the good of the nation, these human rights instruments compel participants to speak solely about suffering and identify primarily as victims. However, drawing on ethnographic field work conducted at the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, I challenge this assessment. Testimonies were not merely expressions of pain from victims of colonialism; they were also articulations of self-determination from decolonizing Indigenous subjects. 
 

The challenges of structural injustice to reconciliation: truth and reconciliation in Canada 

A Eisenberg, Ethics & global politics. , 2018, Vol.11(1), p.22  DOI: 10.1080/16544951.2018.1507387 

Catherine Lu’s Justice and Reconciliation in World Politics clarifies the normative principles and subjects of reconciliation and injustice while providing a compelling account of what is at stake for victims and perpetrators in reconciliation... I mention this variety by way of contrast with my own path into this material, which is specific and narrowly focused on recent efforts by the Canadian state to address a legacy of settler colonialism towards Indigenous peoples through Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC). Here I follow Lu’s analysis to illustrate how the TRC addresses what Lu calls ‘interactional’ and ‘structural’ injustice. The distinction between these two types of injustice is helpful at clarifying both the normative significance of the TRC’s recommendations and some of its shortcomings. At the same time, I show that the case of the TRC highlights three challenges to addressing structural injustice in the context of reconciliation. 

Changing the Subject: The TRC, Its National Events, and the Displacement of Substantive Reconciliation in Canadian Media Representations . James, Matt, Journal of Canadian studies, 2017, Vol.51 (2), p.362-397 

 The findings and recommendations of the Indian Residential Schools Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC, 2008–2015) offer Canadians and their public institutions an opportunity to better confront the ongoing injustice of their colonial relationship with Indigenous peoples, but this task requires also assessing the specific contributions of the TRC. The specific contribution in which this article is interested is the discourse of reconciliation that the commission has made Canada’s master keyword for debating Indigenous-settler relations. The article analyzes representations of reconciliation in the mainstream Canadian print media before and over the life of the commission, concluding that the commission during its national events did much to promote a relatively quiescent notion of reconciliation that in fact displaced conceptions with more substantive connotations of the return of land, jurisdiction, and resources. This finding has implications for how Canadians discuss reconciliation in the future and for the broader literature interested in the role of reconciliation discourse in truth commissions and other enterprises of transitional justice. 

Contested places: Addressing the TRC in higher education. Styres, Sandra, Research in education. , 2021, Vol.110(1), p.3, DOI: 10.1177/0034523720937322 

Using a Community-First Land-Centered Framework this article reflects on an analysis of the research findings of a SSHRC funded research project. The project examined the ways two universities were interpreting and taking up the TRC report and its 94 Calls to Action. This is a crucial time in Canada's relationship with Indigenous Peoples and the results of this research demonstrate that reconciliation remains a complex and challenging endeavour that has no quick fixes and further, that universities play a key role making the meaningful changes that are urgently needed to to make higher education welcoming and supportive for Indigenous Peoples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR] 

Responding to the Findings of Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission: A Case Study of Barriers and Drivers for Change at a Small Undergraduate Institution.  Aitken, Avril, Donnan, Mary Ellen. Manore, Jean, International Journal of Learning in Higher Education; Jun2021, Vol. 28 Issue 1, p97-111, 15p 

Canada's Truth and Reconciliation Commission emphasized an important role for education in the rebuilding of relationships between settler and Indigenous peoples. This article strives to contextualize efforts to serve Indigenous students equitably and aspirations towards reconciliation with an examination of the scholarly and normative milieu in one Canadian university. A combination of survey and focus group data reveals barriers to change at a small-sized undergraduate university as well as drivers for changing its institutional culture, curricula, and processes of education.