I remember my United States History textbook started with the arrival of Columbus. Without preamble, without context, this is how I grew up understanding how the uncharted territory of the now-Americas belonged indisputably to European explorers. Growing in San Francisco I came to recognize the cultural spaces and neighborhoods for Latin American, Chinese, Japanese, and Russian immigrants, to name a few. There is no aboriginal neighborhood. The United States has yet to issue the kind of public apologies given by the Canadian government to their aboriginal populations (http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/prime-minister-stephen-harper-s-statement-of-apology-1.734250). We do not even refer to them as aboriginals, in my community, but Native Americans. This terminology can be dangerous; while the US aboriginals are recognized as Natives, they are still identified by dominant (say, white?) society as “Americans,” as belonging to the European-named continent.

My point is that I grew up with so little knowledge and exposure to the systematic prejudice and mistreatment of “Native Americans” and aborignal peoples that the TRC was both an opportunity for learning and coming to terms with my ignorance.

I watched a TRC livestream on Wednesday. I expected horror stories and tears, narratives that sought to expose the atrocities behind a government-backed intervention of culture (http://www.livestream.com/trc_cvr/video?clipId=pla_65a31726-a66f-4c6a-b5c7-d9f5a64b24bc). What came up was a group of students of various ethnic backgrounds sharing their own stories about reconciliation with a society that exerted its cultural lens and subsequent prejudice and discrimination on not only aboriginal peoples, but any group that was relatively “other.” A Chinese girl talked about the Chinese head tax charged on her family upon arrival to Canada generations before. She spoke of her personal rejection of her family’s culture, self-assimilation, to avoid the stigma attached to being perceived as a “FOB,” someone not in the loop of dominant,white Canadian culture. A Jewish man spoke of the Holocaust and the repercussions on survivors, the progeny of those survivors, and what it meant to preserve and continue Jewish culture and identity. The woman representing the first generation of aboriginal youth free from residential schools said it best: “what is the price you can put on loss of life, loss of land, loss of family?” I had no answer, even rhetorically.

I had forgotten that the TRC, an intentional space for marginalized peoples, was not exclusive to aboriginal communities. Hosting this opportunity for self- and cultural representation does not excuse Canada for what it has done, but it starts and continues the dialogue. It kills ignorance, it kills silence and it kills, if only for an hour and half, the ability to ignore what happened. I had grown up in a city and region I thought was so conscious and active about combating prejudice and yet I have never known of anything like the TRC in San Francisco, let alone California.

The following day I paid a visit to the Museum of Anthropology (http://moa.ubc.ca/experience/exhibits.php). My intent was to further my understanding of aboriginal material culture as its own form of narrative and preservation. But it’s uncomfortable, I assume, to see your culture behind glass instead of in practice, is it not? I cannot say. An expectation with museums is that they preserve elements of cultures that are no longer productive; it is apparent this is not the case of aboriginal culture. The totem poles are incredible, looming and intricate, albeit old. There were marriage garments, winter wear, jewelry, all elements I had no exposure past Pocahontas. There were lovely things, made tragic by their glass display cases. It is a very different experience to learn of another culture through museum space than to recognize elements of one’s own.

On Saturday I attended a Commissioners Share Panel (http://www.livestream.com/trc_cvr/video?clipId=pla_81669410-44e6-422b-b9fe-b99dbfa6ac33). The man’s name was Leonard. He’d had no formal education before attending a residential school two hours north of Vancouver. He was an orphan raised by his grandmother, and could not afford to come home in the summers so he lived in isolation from his family for six years, at residential school. Throughout his time there he was consistently sexually abused, bullied, and made to work in the fields to maintain the school. After graduating he worked in a power plant and became an alcoholic. It was devastating. This is a narrative that was to us as outsiders, as non-natives, as a part of dominant culture, was sheltered. The TRC is not only a dialogue for the marginalized, but an intentional space given by the empowered to the silenced. Leonard’s story is meant to make you, or I, as the guest, uncomfortable; if I learned nothing this week it’s that being uncomfortable is an acceptance of others’ realities. Not everyone lived through what Leonard did, but his verbalized autobiography gives agency to his people, to the students of residential schools who are still unable to share their stories, their realities, their identities.

The TRC is not a quick-fix of the relationship between the Canadian government and aboriginal peoples, but it’s a start. Taking responsibility for those atrocities and their ongoing ramifications in later generations is hard to do, but by letting people tell their stories, letting them construct their own narratives instead of through a third party through a Canadian lens, is empowering. Allowing marginalized groups to occupy the spaces and interests of the dominant group is also empowering. The circulation of these stories are meant for us, the big dogs who have never had their identities questioned or trivialized. These stories are for us, to let us know that we need to pay attention, and step outside our comfort zones, and act. Being a good listener is not enough anymore.