Tag Archives: Canada’s History

Module 4 – Post 5 – Residential School Survivors + Beyond 94

This website provides stories from residential school survivors from video interviews: Janet Longclaws, Katherine Thomas, Louise Longclaws, Debra Courchene, Wandbi Wakita, Peter Yellowquill, Louise Hall, Vivian, and Karen. These videos are from the Beyond 94: Truth and Reconciliation in Canada project. All of these videos just break my heart. You can hear the pain and horror in their voice and you can see the trauma they faced by looking at their eyes. These individuals have PTSD and cannot get these flashbacks out of their head. I just can’t even imagine why anyone would do all these horrible things to another human being. It is absolutely appalling and disgusting.

As educators, it is important that we listen to these stories so that we never forget them. The truth cannot be hidden any longer. It is time for healing and the reconciliation process to fully begin. We need to all listen to EVERY story. We need to learn the truth that has been hidden for way too long. The more we know as educators, the more that we can educate our students, colleagues, family members, and our friends.

While I was exploring more on this website, I stumbled upon a teacher guide for Beyond 94: Truth and Reconciliation in Canada. There is a lot of valuable material within this guide. Topics such as education, language and culture, health, justice, reconciliation, child welfare, and activities to do in the classroom, First nation communities support, and residential school resources. The main purpose of this guide is to allow educators and their students to explore and investigate the TRC Calls to Action and the Beyond 94 site. I appreciate how this guide has follow-up questions from the residential school survivor video interviews. This could allow educators to have a class discussion about what they watched and to see if the students understood the content. It may be too challenging to comprehend for Kindergarten students but the questions could be adapted and could work for upper primary to intermediate grades.

The 7 activities that are provided in this guide focus on acknowledging territory, TRC – educating others, language, residential schools, finding evidence of Indigeneity, and language/culture, exploring child welfare, and examining justice.

For more information on residential schools, there are resources on pages 35-37. Explore them all and share with everyone.

Module 3 – Post 4 – Residential School Survivor Stories

This website provides stories of those individuals who were survivors in residential schools. These videos would be beneficial to share with your students as they are real stories from their time in these schools. Even though there are storybooks and videos that we can share with our students, having an individual speak about their trauma can have more of an impact, I believe. Even if you believe that your students are not ready to listen to these stories, it would be extremely beneficial for us, as educators, to listen to these real-life stories so that we can have a fuller picture of what exactly happened in these schools. These stories will allow us to understand the trauma that was faced during their time at these school, and to help us educate our students. I am not saying to tell their stories, as they are not our stories to tell, but to have more of an understanding so that we will be able to have deep conversations with our students to allow them to comprehend their Canadian history. Many of these videos were hard to listen to as their feelings are still extremely raw, however, it will be powerful for you to have a listen.

M1, P2: The Marrow Thieves—A Must-Read!

A few years ago, I was introduced to the book called The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline, which had just come out and was highly raved about. Someone who enjoys Sci-Fi books and someone who is always interested in reading Canadian and Indigenous works, I gave it a read. My mind was blown. Not only was this book engaging and intriguing in all aspects of a true dystopian novel, but it brilliantly touched on a more real aspect, our Canadian history and the treatment of Indigenous peoples. I loved it so much, I ordered a class set for our school and it is now one of the books we have at our school to teach with at Senior English levels. I have been teaching juniors and Digital Learning with the 9’s these past two years, so I have not been able to use it in my courses but I hope to do so next school year. Thus, I decided to look into some resources online that could support with this. I did find a few sites, but as someone who prefers to create her own activities and use the author’s views as guides, I found the CBC Books site to be helpful, primarily because of the interview with the author, Cherie Dimaline, as well as articles and videos.

Without giving too much away, this story imagines a world where people have lost the ability to dream and begin to hunt for the cure in the bone marrow of Indigenous people. Seems too dark to be possible, but we will see similarities to the dark past of our Canadian history. In addition to reading for your own engagement and knowledge, if you are a teacher, and are looking for ways to incorporate Indigenous content and Indigenous authors into your classroom, give this book and website a try!

CBC Books. (2017, July 07). The Marrow Thieves by Cherie Dimaline. CBC. https://www.cbc.ca/books/the-marrow-thieves-1.4195121

Dimaline, C. (2017). The Marrow Thieves. Cormorant Books.