Thank you to Regie Marie Plana-Alcuaz for sharing the impact of watching the TEDx presentation by Carolyn Roberts who explains how reconciliation can happen in your community. Regie writes:
Carolyn Roberts is an effective storyteller, and I will remember the coyote and the bone needle story as it relates to how we should work towards reconciliation and the many pieces of this puzzle.
First of all, it was devastating to hear that there are only 4 living fluent speakers of the Squamish language. I first lived and worked amongst the Nisga’a when I arrived in the northern part of Turtle Island, and it was already shocking to find out that there were only 400 fluent speakers of Nisga’a language amongst 7,000 Nisga’a people. The loss of language is the loss of culture. It’s a perpetual genocide.
Secondly, the work of Reconciliation never ends. As long as we have indigenous people who make up a majority of foster care children, who live in poverty, who don’t have water, then we should be decent and have enough sense of justice to work towards correcting that.
Thirdly, territorial acknowledgments are ways to continuously learn about the people whose land we live and work on. We need to keep educating ourselves about the indigenous people who have existed since time immemorial but who were dislocated from their homes and continue to experience trauma. How are we working to provide restitution for them?
Finally, we as educators bear a major responsibility in ensuring that future generations are also attuned towards working for equity and justice for our indigenous siblings. We should honour and respect them by our actions, not just words.
Leave a reply