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Ever since classes started, both my Sociology and ASTU courses have been (for a lack of a better term) drilling information about the truth and reconciliation conference better known as the TRC into our brains like you wouldn’t believe. Now I may be coming off in a very negative sense but I mean it in the most positive way possible, by this I mean I’m thankful for the fact that I was consumed by all this information. Why? Well I never really learnt much about this topic in high school since topics like these weren’t eminent at international schools over seas.

Who knew that after a few classes I would already feel like I was connected to what the colonizers had done to the natives and in particular the children especially since I have a large European heritage. I even had to have someone tell me that what had happened back then did not define me as a person. But even with that I wasn’t convinced and when I was told we were to choose two TRC events to attend I couldn’t help but feel the need to attend more than that. Unfortunately due to my living conditions getting into the city would be a little time consuming, but that didn’t stop me from following the live feeds as well as going to the Belkin gallery on campus.

What I couldn’t understand is why other people I knew from other faculties didn’t even understand why we were being given a day off in the middle of the week, or they knew why we were being given a day off but weren’t as emotional as I was or why they didn’t feel the need to attend any of the events when we were given a day off for this particular reason. But then I realized that if my professors hadn’t fed me all this information I probably wouldn’t have gone either, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t be curious about the reason of the TRC or simply for why we were being given a day off. I say this because I’m upset and furious after what I’ve learnt.

I remembered from the Koener library, Cathy Busby’s piece “We Are Sorry”, the full text of Steven Harper’s apology from June 11, 2008 to the First Nation people for the treatment they faced. This made me almost want to change my political views and more importantly it touched me. That’s until I realized like everything else the Harper government has cut back on lately, the current government had also cut spending towards First Nation People. In the short video art piece at the Belkin Gallery by Chris Bose named “Savage Heathens” Steven Harper’s apology is recorded. There was a repetition of specific lines, including the fact that it was the goal of residential schools to “kill the Indian within the child.” Once I discovered that the government was cutting their funding towards the First Nation people I realized how hypocritical the government to my country is and the lies that I have been consumed by. It makes me question if the students from the other faculties are as consumed as I was by the lies.