Edmonton school district officials emphasized the importance of a curriculum that explains Canada’s dark history of residential schools Friday, marking the second anniversary of a milestone report from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
“The curriculum is the thing that binds all of us together in the province,” said Edmonton Public Schools superintendent Darrel Robertson. “Schools are a place where we respect kids, where we nurture success, where we teach culture.”
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2015 with 94 calls to action. These included changing school curricula to teach students about the devastating legacy of residential schools, which caused multi-generational trauma in Canada’s indigenous communities.
Members of Catholic and public school districts gathered at the Centre for Education on Kingsway and 101 Street for a smudge walk that wove through downtown Edmonton and paid tribute to residential school survivors.
“When we talk about reconciliation, it’s much more than just understanding each other. There is a legal vacuum that has to be filled by all of you, you have to take that responsibility,” elder Percy Potts of the Alexis Nakota Sioux Nation told the crowd.
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People gathered at the Edmonton Public Schools Centre for Education before a smudge walk Friday. Participants listened to a traditional Cree morning song to greet the day.
He said the legacy of broken treaties has left aboriginal communities in a continued state of incarceration. “Our children have the right to proper education under the treaty, our people need proper health.”
Before the smudge walk, a traditional morning Cree song was performed and the Treaty 6 flag was unveiled. Attendees contributed items to a box representing reconciliation.
Katherine Swampy added a medicine wheel to the blankets and other tokens, explaining how it can contribute to healing. Her family continues to live with the trauma caused by residential schools — her mother and brother are both survivors.
“The schools may have closed, but the system still exists,” she said in an interview. “You can see it in the nation, (with) poverty, violence and colonialism and all the systemic racism still there.”
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Katherine Swampy, Samson Cree Nation councillor, speaks at the Edmonton Public Schools Centre for Education on Friday.
Swampy, a Samson Cree Nation councillor, said events such as the smudge walk are small but important steps. She held a paper heart created by a student at the Victoria School of the Arts during the march. Each paper heart carried on the walk represented a child who survived the residential school system. Dozens of people marched down 101 Street before travelling to the Sacred Heart Centre and on to City Hall for an afternoon ceremony.
Swampy said she has noticed a shift since the 2015 report.
“Just two years ago people were saying, ‘Oh get over it. That happened a long time ago’,” she said. “But this didn’t happen long ago … The last one shut its doors in 1996.”
Melissa Purcell, supervisor for Métis and Inuit education at Edmonton Public Schools, said there has been a “tremendous amount of change.”
“All of the people that presented today and provided commitments, they did that because they felt like it was important to them,” she said, explaining that she has spent the past two years working to help educators become more confident in the subject.
“The response from students is always amazing, they’re quick to understand this is a wrong and dark chapter in our history.”
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Students at the Victoria School of the Arts made paper hearts to represent the survivors of the residential schools in Canada. They handed them to people as they marched on June 2, 2017, in a smudge walk.
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