TRC commissioner outlines which Calls to Action the university can focus on

Before an audience of students and faculty, Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Marie Wilson explained last week that universities need to recognize they are not experts of residential schools — survivors are.

Wilson’s keynote speech kicked off “Truth and Reconciliation (TRC): Good Relations, and Indigenizing the Academy,” an event held from October 19 to 21 by the Faculty of Arts to encourage its members to engage with the TRC’s Calls to Action. The Calls to Action, released in June 2015, are a set of recommendations for local, provincial, and federal governments to further the reconciliation process.

The event focused on how the faculty can advance reconciliation on campus through curricula and teaching practices. Other sessions in “Truth and Reconciliation (TRC): Good Relations, and Indigenizing the Academy” included panels and talks that covered the work of the TRC, the meaning of the university being located on Treaty 6 land, and the inclusion of mandatory indigenous content in course curriculums.

The keynote began with Wilson overviewing the residential school system and the mandate of the TRC. She recounted her emotionally difficult work in recording residential school survivor stories at TRC hearings. The TRC, she said, was “an expansive six year-long public research initiative” designed to educate the Canadian public about the history of residential schools.

Though the TRC addresses various layers of Canadian society, Wilson stressed the importance of academic institutions in the reconciliation process. Inclusion of indigenous experiences in course curricula, according to Wilson, are important for creating informed views of indigenous issues. Wilson referenced her own work in including indigenous viewpoints when she worked as a CBC journalist in northern Canada. There, Wilson hired indigenous employees who had years of experience, even if they lacked required credentials listed on the job description.

Wilson also discussed the need for safe spaces to allow students to identify as indigenous in a comfortable and liberating way. Wilson said this can be achieved by asking indigenous students what does and does not work for them in the academic climate.

To conclude her speech, Wilson said the university as a whole can focus on the following Calls to Action:

• #1, #27, and #57, which call for indigenous cultural educational and sensitivity training for public servants, social workers, and lawyers;
• #12, which calls for a greater emphasis on indigenous culture and history during early childhood education;
• #16, which calls for offering diploma and degree programs in indigenous languages;
• #28, which calls for mandatory courses on indigenous topics in law schools;
• #65, which calls for a national research project into reconciliation;
• #77, which calls for universities to connect with the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation database as a reliable source of information.

The university’s access to local indigenous experts and languages gives it the resources to implement the Calls to Action, Wilson said.

“You are a mandated and world-recognized centre of research excellence,” she said. “You can speak out and hold us to account in living up to the greater country I think we can become.”