Working with Students: The Truth

Teachers are strongly encouraged to explore the website National Centre of Truth and Reconciliation (NCTR).

Truth & Reconciliation Week - NCTR

While the truth that needs to be told and learned about Canada's shared history with Indigenous peoples begins with colonization, the focus of this packet is on Canada's residential school system and

• its impact on more than 150,000 Indigenous children taken from their families and communities between 1831 and the closure of the last school in Saskatchewan in 1996
• its pervasive impact on families and communities then and for generations that followed
• the trauma passed on as its legacy from generation to generation
• the resilience of the Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island to reclaim their personal and collective identities including their respective languages, cultural teachings, and ways of being and knowing.

Context for Teachers and Students

Refer to the following folders in this link to support building your knowledge about the residential school system in Canada and about Shubenacadie Residential School in Nova Scotia:

• Messages from Mi'kmaw Services Branch, NS EECD
• Info about Orange Shirt Day
• For Teachers_Info About Residential Schools_including Shubenacadie Residential School

Pre-teaching Vocabulary

Survivor

In this context, an Indigenous person who attended residential school and lived through the experience.

Activation of Prior Knowledge

Invite students to begin the conversation about residential school.

• What do you know about the residential school system? About Shubenacadie Residential School?
• Confirm or add to the student's knowledge by providing details from Facts About Shubenacadie Residential School. Refer to folders in this link.
• Talk about where the former school site is in reference to the Mi'kmaw communities from which children were taken.

The following prompts may be used to facilitate continued discussion, to identify areas in need of more information, and to pose questions for further study:

• Discuss the time period in Canadian history in which residential schools in operation in Canada.
• Discuss the reason the Canadian government gave as to why it established residential schools.
• Discuss the intent of residential schools and the lasting impacts.
• Discuss the meaning of intergenerational impacts, as related to the legacy of residential schools. Examine the influence certain government policies had on the establishment of residential schools and their impacts today.

Pre-teaching Vocabulary

Resilience:

in this context, the ability for Indigenous peoples to persevere, survive, and overcome the impacts of colonization and the multitude of government-driven policies and systems, including residential schools, and to thrive despite the barriers, trauma, and ongoing challenges in multiple forms.
Synonyms: strength; resistance; survival

Working with Students: Resilience

Build a common understanding of the term resilience. The following suggestions may be of help.

• Ask students to discuss their understanding of resilience as described using the context above.
• View two segments of Resilience and the Power of One: from the beginning to 6min and from 13:00m to the end. Cree and Lakota author Monique Gray Smith shares her concept of the Four Blankets of Resiliency. https://youtu.be/edMcljKndEQ
  • Ask students to share one message about resilience they heard in this video.
  • Monique Gray Smith speaks about the Four Blankets of Resiliency.
  • Ask groups of students to discuss one of the “blankets” in terms of an Indigenous student's experience at residential school.
  • Invite thoughts on the importance of being resilient, for self, for family members, and for one's community.

Examples of Resilience

Note that the personal and community examples of resilience of Indigenous peoples are many, including examples from survivors. Mi'kmaw survivors Pi'kun Poulette and Rita Joe are two such examples.

Pi'kun Poulette: ECMA Winning Song Forgiveness

• With students in small groups, ask them to:
  • Discuss their thoughts and experiences with the term forgiveness.
  • Read the lyrics to Pi'kun Poulette's song Forgiveness and/or watch Pi'kun perform at youtu.be/TB1rjotkBZ0.
  • The following questions may help guide their discussions:
    • Discuss the experiences Pi'kun shares through his song?
    • In what ways is Pi'kun's resilience demonstrated?
    • Discuss the messages other residential school survivors may take from Pi'kun's song to help their healing?

Pi'kun Poulette was from Eskasoni First Nation. He was a member of the band Morning Star and won an East Coast Music Award (ECMA) for Forgiveness. Pi'kun Poulette passed away in 2013, leaving the gift of his music to help other Mi'kmaw survivors with their healing.

Rita Joe

Rita Joe was named a gentle girl and called the “Gentle Warrior.” She was a survivor of her gentle war.

Ask students to research other Mi'kmaw or Indigenous artists, song writers, poets, or authors to speak to how they inspire others and demonstrate resilience through their creative gifts?

Suggested Learning: Rita Joe

Rita Joe's Obituary

March 20, 2007
Rita Joe, Mi'kmaq poet
Born We'koqma'q / Whycocomagh, March 15, 1932; died Sydney, March 20, 2007

October Song, Rita Joe's last poem found on her typewriter.

“On the day I am blue,
I go again to the wood where the tree is swaying,
Arms touching you like a friend,
And the sound of the wind so alone like I am;
Whispers here, whispers there,
Come and just be my friend.”

One of Rita Joe's daughters once asked her about her ability to write poetry. “The words are floating through the air and I just catch them,” she replied. The gentle, soft-spoken Mi'kmaq poet's words touched many lives and brought her great acclaim and many honours, but she humbly described herself as a housewife with a dream to bring laughter “to the sad eyes of my people....”

Her journey from the reserve in Whycocomagh after she lost her mother at the age of five, included foster homes and the Shubenacadie residential school; lost years which she regretted in later life. “It was a time when you prepare for life, so that you're ready to face the world at 16,” says Murdena Marshall, a Mi'kmaq educator and long-time friend and confidant who lived near her home on Eskasoni First Nation. “She lamented in later life about missing those years, and poetry was a means of talking about it. But not in a mean way.”

An ability to convey her thoughts through words came early. Daughter Francis Sylliboy says that once, when she was asked by a nun and the principal at the Shubenacadie school where she got the words she had written on a piece of paper on her desk, Rita pointed to her head and her heart. Sister Dorothy Moore, a Mi'kmaq nun from Membertou First Nation, who along with Rita Joe was awarded the Order of Canada for her work as an educator, was at Shubenacadie School with her in 1943 and 1944 and remembers “a very gentle girl; you couldn't help but gravitate to her.”

She often used the poem I Lost My Talk (see next page) in her lectures to demonstrate how deeply the residential school experience touched young Mi'kmaq who often spent years away from their families and communities. Rita began writing poetry in the late 1960s, but she didn't tell her 13 children and her husband until her work was selected for an award. Her first book, Poems of Rita Joe was published in 1978. She published another six books of poetry and received several honourary degrees and an Indigenous Achievement Award for her work.

She wanted to portray her people in a positive way, says Francis. “She wanted to pass along the positive, gentle, loving image of the Indian....”

Note: Rita Joe died from complications due to Parkinson's disease. Despite the illness and its effects on muscle control, Rita Joe continued to write during her last days.

Rita Joe

Pre-teaching Vocabulary

Reconciliation:

In Canada, the process of Reconciliation is tied to the federal government's relationship with Indigenous peoples. The term has come to describe attempts made by individual and institutions to raise awareness about colonization and its ongoing effects on Indigenous peoples. Reconciliation also refers to efforts made to address the harms caused by various policies and programs of colonization, such as residential schools. Reconciliation in Canada - The Canadian Encyclopedia

Reconciliation

Build a common understanding of Reconciliation, using the explanation:

• Discuss why “truth” is needed in order for there to be Reconciliation.
• What role does learning the truth about residential school play in Canada's goal for Reconciliation?
• Post and discuss the following statement by the Honourable Murray Sinclair: “Words are not enough to address the cultural genocide of residential school on Indigenous communities… Reconciliation is not an Indigenous problem — it is a Canadian problem. It involves all of us.”

The TRC met with survivors and archived a collection of survivor testimonies:
  ◦ Why is this so important?
  ◦ What can be learned from this in support of Reconciliation?
  ◦ Why is it impactful?

In 2015, the TRC Calls to Action and the final report were released. Calls to Action 71–76 deal specifically with “Missing Children and Burial Information.” In May of 2021, 215 unmarked graves were identified at the site of the former Kamloops Residential school, sparking national outrage and international attention. View APTN News Report

APTN News

Share the story from APTN News link above, and offer the following points for students to discuss in small groups with whole class sharing to follow:

• Why did it take so long after the 2015 public acknowledgement of unmarked graves at residential schools for these remains of 215 Indigenous children to be recovered?
• How did these first 215 graves start a national conversation?
  • What was the impact on Indigenous peoples?
  • What was the impact of this on non-Indigenous Canadians?
  • What was the impact on you when you first heard this news story?
• Do you think this news story impacted how non-Indigenous Canadians viewed the survivor accounts told through the TRC report? Explain.
• When these first 215 remains were recovered, there was immense media coverage. The findings of the TRC say that there were thousands of deaths in residential schools, and through ongoing recoveries at former residential school since the news release from Kamloops, the number of unmarked graves is climbing.
  • Many have commented that the media coverage of news reports of unmarked graves is much less than since the Kamloops news story. What are your thoughts?
  • Is the social media attention the same? What are your thoughts as to why or why not?
  • What do you feel s the sentiment in Canada about residential schools now as compared to May 2021?

Committing to Reconciliation

Share and discuss the following video of students impacted to take action. Use it as a catalyst for acts of Reconciliation within your own class, whether individually or at the class or school levels.

• Invite students to consider what individual and collective roles they can play in Reconciliation
• As a class or in small groups, have students develop action plans to address what they will do to be part of Reconciliation. Ideas for student action could include:
• As a way of committing to learning the truth, conduct interviews and research to understand the lasting impacts of inter-generational trauma.
• Use primary and secondary sources to write accounts of a survivor's story or create portraits of survivors.
• Set a path for educating others about the truth of residential schools.
• Identify and enact ways to bring ongoing awareness to the continued recoveries of Indigenous children's remains on the sites of former residential schools.
• Students can research hashtags associated with residential schools, Orange Shirt Day and Reconciliation to analyse social media posts for what they are saying about the topic.
• Other ideas may come from the following links:
• https://newsinteractives.cbc.ca/longform-single/beyond-94??&cta=1&cta=1
• https://globalnews.ca/video/8190213/meaningful-ways-to-mark-canadas-first-ever-truth-and-Reconciliation-day

Working with Students: Where My Understanding Is Now

This next piece should be done as a closing and should follow other learning experiences in this package. It shouldn't stand alone; the background understanding gathered through any of the preceding learning experiences will give greater meaning to what is explored here.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation

Since 2013, September 30th has been observed as Orange Shirt Day, a phrase coined because of Phyllis Webstad, a survivor of St. Joseph Mission Residential School in British Columbia, having had her new orange shirt bought by her grandmother taken from her when she arrived at the school. It has become a symbol of the personal stories of the tens of thousands of Indigenous children taken from their families and communities, thousands of whom never were to return home.

Phyllis Webstad Orange Shirt Day Presentation

Beginning in 2021, September 30th will also be known in Canada as the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. Its name speaks to the importance of two necessary commitments all Canadians must make: to learn the truth about Canada's shared history with Indigenous peoples, including residential schools, and to act in ways that nurture ongoing relationships of Reconciliation.

National Day for Truth & Reconciliation

Canadian Geographic: Behind National Day for Truth & Reconciliation