What Can I Contribute to Meaningful Reconciliation? Teaching and learning about residential schools

This unit explores the causes and consequences of residential schools in Canada. Developed in collaboration with Grand Erie District School Board, Six Nations of the Grand River’s Education Department, and the Mississaugas of New Credit, this resource supports educators and learners in using a critical-inquiry approach to develop deep understandings of some of the complex, challenging, and painful events that have affected the relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada.

Format: PDF

Subject: Social Studies, History

Grade: 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12

Type of resource: Lesson Plans, Units

Language: English

Overview

Table of Contents

About the Collaborative Process

Developing a Resource for Your Community

Overview

This resource invites thoughtful and reflective explorations that move us beyond understanding the past and into our roles and responsibilities in the present. Through a learning journey where carefully considered decisions and empathic engagements are nurtured, learners are encouraged to develop genuine commitments and engage in meaningful actions that contribute to reconciliation. Designed for grade six and up, the fully-developed lessons include briefing sheets, image sets, suggested resources, and blackline masters to support student thinking and learning about reconciliation.

In June 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its 94 Calls to Action.

Calls #62 and #63 specifically called upon governments to consult and collaborate with Survivors, Indigenous Peoples and Educators to provide curriculum resources to support learning about First Nations-Six Nations peoples, the Inuit, and the Métis.

Grand Erie District School Board’s Indigenous Education team took these calls to heart. From the beginning, it was very apparent that our classrooms, our communities and all of our colleagues needed important resources to do the work being called upon us to do.

Within Grand Erie’s boundaries, only minutes from our Board Office is a daunting laneway lined with trees and secrets, leading to a building full of truths to be heard, stories to be told, and voices to be honoured. On these grounds stands the Mohawk Indian Residential School, a large and looming reminder of all the work that still needs to be done for all students within our Board. Our complex local history, so personally affected by this legacy, called for a local, context-specific response to guide Grand Erie educators and students on the path to reconciliation.

Connecting with our community partners - the Mississaugas of the New Credit, the Six Nations of the Grand River and the Woodland Cultural Centre - was paramount in ensuring we were doing this with true community consultation. Our commitment to developing a resource, grounded in local context, our community and critical inquiry, is the foundation for this resource.

Our intention is not only to teach the history, but also to engage our learners in the critical thinking process so it is no longer just the sharing of information, the critically thinking about what led us to this point in time, and intentionally planning for where we want to go in the future as we walk along the path to Reconciliation.

Reconciliation is both an individual journey as well as a collective journey. Our hope is that this resource will support our students in learning the history present within our community, create intercultural understanding of our complex communities, and help build the unknown future ahead.

To quote Senator Murray Sinclair: “Education is what got us into this mess. Education will be what leads us out.”

With this hope, we share the following resource with you.

Miigwech,

Sabrina Sawyer, Indigenous Education Lead-Teacher Consultant, Grand Erie District School Board

INTRODUCTION
About this resource
Overview of lessons
Guide to lesson format
Introduction to critical thinking

LESSONS
Launch lesson: What might meaningful reconciliation look like?
Line of inquiry 1: What is the relationship between Canada, Canadians, and First Nations, Six Nations, Métis, and Inuit?
Lesson A What powerful words and phrases best describe our relationships with each other?
Lesson B Which images describe our relationships with each other?
Lesson C How do we move forward from a challenging history?

Line of inquiry 2: What important lessons learned from past actions can help us contribute to meaningful reconciliation?
Lesson D Why did it happen?
Lesson E What were the consequences?
Lesson F What should we all know?

Line of inquiry 3: How might we contribute to meaningful reconciliation?
Lesson G How adequately have governments responded?
Lesson H What does it mean to reconcile?
Lesson I What can I do to support meaningful reconciliation?
Finale lesson: What might meaningful reconciliation look like?

Support Materials (Reproducible Activity Sheets and Learning Materials )
List of briefing sheets, activity sheets, image sets, and source documents

About the Collaborative Process

This teaching and learning resource was collaboratively developed by the Grand Erie District School Board and The Critical Thinking Consortium with feedback from our advisory committee and community members representing:

Six Nations of the Grand River’s Education Committee
Mississaugas of the New Credit
Woodland Cultural Center
Ontario Institute for Studies in Education

All members of the team were committed to ensuring that local history was centered and that respectful and developmentally appropriate approaches to the lesson content and design were honoured. An important dimension of the unit development was centering the voice of Indigenous perspectives and ensuring that forms of tokenism or appropriation were challenged. This was an ongoing consultative process that enabled all key stakeholders to have a strong voice in all significant decisions that were made.
Team members

Brenda Blancher, Director of Education, Grand Erie District School Board
Lorrie Gallant, Education Coordinator, Woodland Cultural Centre
Stacy Hill, Six Nations Native Advisor, Grand Erie District School Board
Audrey Powless-Bomberry, Chairperson, Six Nations of the Grand River’s Education Committee
Amanda Sault, Director of Education, Mississaugas of the New Credit First Nation
Karen Sandy, Board Trustee, Grand Erie District School Board
Sabrina Sawyer, Indigenous Lead-Teacher Consultant, Grand Erie District School Board
Sandra Styres, Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education
Usha James, James Miles, Susan Teed, Maria Vamvalis, Warren Woytuck, and Kara Zutz, team members from The Critical Thinking Consortium

It has been a real privilege for The Critical Thinking Consortium to be involved in this project. As an organization, we have been thinking about what we can contribute to meaningful reconciliation. Through our resource development processes, facilitation of professional development, and partnership building, we are aware that we are in a position to be inadvertently perpetuating colonial attitudes and systems. We are thinking about not just what we create but how we create. We know that we have much thinking and learning to do as we step forward into a process of reflection and action. Learning with and from our partners from the Six Nations of the Grand River and the Mississauga of the New Credit has been such an important experience for us. We were committed to co-constructing the resource from the ground up and learned to listen carefully and with an open mind and heart. We are very grateful for the opportunity and will continue on our own journey toward meaningful reconciliation.

Usha James, Executive Director, The Critical Thinking Consortium

Developing a Resource for Your Community

Funded by the Grand Erie District School Board, this resource was originally created in collaboration with Elders, Indigenous community members, and educators of their community to explore the relationships between Canada, Canadians, and First Nations, Six Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples. We can work with all stakeholders to tailor this resource, re-imagine this resource, or build a similar resource around a local issue or context.

The Critical Thinking Consortium aims to support teaching and learning for reconciliation as respectful, collaborative co-learners, not as experts. We seek to engage in deep and meaningful listening, collaborative conversations, and the careful consideration of perspectives and approaches in our efforts to make contributions to meaningful reconciliation.

Diverse school districts are committed to the profound responsibility of engaging in truth and reconciliation for all the learners they serve. Many non-Indigenous educators hope to participate in this work in a respectful and meaningful way, but they are aware that good intentions are not enough or can even be harmful. We are able to support district teams, in consultation with key stakeholders, to develop or adapt approaches and resources that are responsive to local histories, contexts, and needs that will engage students in authentic critical inquiries. Our overarching objective is to nurture thoughtful, empathic, and critically-minded dispositions, and contribute to genuine and impactful actions that help to transform challenging local histories into a reimagined present and future.

Maria Vamvalis, The Critical Thinking Consortium

For more information

Please direct your inquiries to:

Usha James, Executive Director

Warren Woytuck, Director

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