Originally posted March 2020.
For my Journey Towards Reconciliation project I was asked to do an aesthetic and written response.
Aesthetic Response
For my Aesthetic response I decided to do an acrylic painting. The white bird represents European colonizers and the red bird represents Indigenous people. The branch is the sociological divide between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada that has been put in place by colonial culture.
In the painting the white bird is allowed to be free and achieve anything, they are careless and have no worries. The white bird also does not understand that the red bird is suffering, and if they do understand they think it is not their problem.
The red bird is caged and suffering. It is not their fault that they are in the cage, but they are responsible for getting themselves out of the cage if they want a better life. The white bird is not there to help them.
Written Response
My Journey Towards Reconciliation has been very impactful on my view of my positionality in the world. Through learning more about decolonizing and indigenizing education, I have become aware of my privilege and how it may affect my relationships with students as a future teacher. One of the most significant realizations I have had is that everyone has a responsibility to work towards reconciliation, especially myself as a future teacher. I also know that my journey has just begun and there is much more to learn and experience in regards to reconciliation. My Journey Towards Reconciliation has brought insight into my understanding of teachers and teaching, learners and learning, my personal ecological relationship to the world, and decolonizing education.
In this course, I have learned that teaching is a profession in which professionalism is of extremely high importance. The Saskatchewan Teacher Federation Code of Professional Ethics provides commitments to the profession, teaching, learning, and community, of which teachers are to uphold (2017). Before this class, I believed that professionalism meant that you are to withhold your relatability and separate your personal life from your profession. From this course, I have learned that professionalism is not to be unrelatable from the view of your students. Professionalism is to show respect to yourself, your coworkers, your students, and your community. I came to this realization by learning the importance of relinquishing the power of learning to your students by sharing information about yourself with them. Before this course, I believed that a teacher’s role was to deliver course content professionally and keep their personal life separate from their teaching. I have now learned that an essential component of being a teacher is to share yourself with your students as this is a way for them to view you as a person in which they can trust, love, and support. The best teachers are those that take the time to build and maintain relationships with their students.
I believe that building relationships with your students is an important component to working towards reconciliation. This is done through developing ‘I-Thou’ relationships with your students:
I-Thou is a spiritual relation. ‘I’ stands in relation to ‘thou’ not through seeking but through encounter. Encounter is actual life. It means suspending experiencing and just being. … A Thou relation is life with, it is not experiencing something as an object or with objective; it is not internal making sense of an object experienced, it is a relation between, subject with subject, reciprocal and emergent (because it is without objective). (Pirbhai-Illich & Martin, 2019).
As a teacher, your role is to learn about your student’s experiences and support them based on these experiences. As a white settler, my responsibility to my Indigenous students is to learn about their culture and ways of knowing to better support them. It is my responsibility to help Indigenous students close the privilege gap between themselves and non-Indigenous students. As a teacher, it is my responsibility to educate people on the impact residential schools and European colonization has had on Indigenous people. My role as a teacher is to be a leader in working towards education by supporting Indigenous students and educating non-Indigenous students.
During my journey, I have learned the importance of invitation and hospitality in education. A fundamental way of ensuring your learners are encouraged and engaged is to ensure that they feel welcomed and comfortable in their learning environment. Invitation and hospitality in education go beyond physical surroundings; an essential aspect of this is acknowledging and incorporating different ways of knowing in teaching. There are two main worldviews that are involved in education, colonial, and decolonial (Pirbhai-Illich & Martin, 2019). Colonial worldviews in education are restricting and do not benefit those who work towards reconciliation as the worldview creates a power dynamic, “The problem with the object-based, colonial tradition is that it seeks to dominate and to use power to ensure that its way of thinking and being is the only way of thinking and being that is acceptable.” (2019). Through learning about colonial and decolonial traditions, I have learned that the best way to improve Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships is to integrate colonial and decolonial traditions in education. By incorporating both views in school, all individuals will become represented, and diversity will be celebrated, not condemned.
In regards to working towards reconciliation, I have learned that there are three steps to this process. The first step is learning the truth about the harm residential schools and colonization has caused; the second step is learning how to work towards reconciliation, and the third step is living truth and reconciliation. My experience in the first step, learning the truth, was heartbreaking. Throughout my schooling, we were taught about residential schools, but we were not informed about the brutality of them. We were taught that it was wrong, but we were not taught why it was wrong. In this course, I was exposed to the brutality of Residential Schools:
My name was Lydia, but in the school I was, I didn’t have a name, I had numbers. I had number 51, number 44, number 32, number 16, number 11, and then finally number one when I was just about coming to high school…” (Canadian Teachers’ Federation, 2016)
This quote had an extreme impact on my view of residential schools. I learned that there was not just physical abuse involved in residential schools but that there was also sexual, emotional, and psychological abuse. Learning about the brutality of residential schools and then the severity of the legacy of residential schools ignited a desire in me to take action to work towards reconciliation as a future educator and Canadian Citizen.
The second step was much more comfortable than the first. I enjoyed learning about ways to contribute to reconciliation and my role in reconciliation as an educator. In the discussion booklet, “Truth and Reconciliation: What is it about?” created by the Canadian Teachers’ Federation, there is a list of ways that people can work towards reconciliation. From this list, I created my own list of ideas that I can work towards reconciliation. My list includes: continually learning about the harm of residential schools and colonization; acknowledging the truth about the past; learning about Indigenous cultures; teaching my peers students and community about reconciliation; teaching my students, peers, and community about Indigenous culture; help to decolonize education; participate in orange shirt day. Doing all of these things and more is my intention to work towards reconciliation.
The third step is the step that lasts a lifetime and generations. Achieving reconciliation is a continuous journey and is done by living it; this means taking action daily. My journey towards reconciliation is a learning journey. It began with learning about teacher professionalism, building relationships with students, understanding invitation and hospitality, and continues with learning about truth and reconciliation.
References
Canadian Teachers’ Federation. (2016). Truth and Reconciliation: What is it about? A discussion booklet for the classroom.
Martin, F., & Pirbhai-Illich, F. (2019). A relational approach to decolonizing education: working with the concepts of invitation and hospitality. Retrieved from http://https://urcourses.uregina.ca/pluginfile.php/1876621/mod_resource/content/2/ECS 100 Invitation and hospitality.pdf
Saskatchewan Teachers’ Federation. (2017). Code of Professional Ethics.https://www.stf.sk.ca/sites/default/files/code_of_professional_ethics.pdf
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