Why this course is important

I am incredibly fortunate to say that I grew up with a lot of indigenous influences in my life. I went to Sherwood Park Elementary school which was the direct catchment for the Tsleil Watuth Nation reserve.

As a family we would watch tons of documentaries and read books to due with indigenous experiences.One of my most vivid memories of my childhood was one day when my class had gone out to practice drumming with one of our Indigenous staff and an eagle flew over us. Henry (the staff member) told us that we could never point at an eagle as they are the carriers of our ancestorsand it was incredibly disrespectful. As a 7 year old I wasn’t an incredibly deep person, but I was so moved by that experience that I went home and told my parents that we could never point at an eagle again.

But all the knowlage I learned as a child was only stories and traditions. As I grew older I began to learn about the harsh truth of the treatment of indigenous peoples. I had thought of the Indigenous workers at my schools as sort of magical people and I was horrified to find out that people had bad views towards the indigenous people.

So far with this course I have learned so much more about the truth of what the residential schools were really like and how they created inter-generational trauma in the indigenous communities. I realized that some of my knowledge that I had previously thought was incredibly extensive was only scraping the surface. It made me realize that I needed to educate myself more to make sure that I was am able to speak confidently about this knowledge that I claimed to know a lot about.

This course has taught me a lot about what reconciliation is in our community. Reading the calls to action made me notice how I have seen them and been affected by them in my life.

I believe that this course is so important to help erase ignorance that many Canadians hold towards the indigenous peoples. I have noticed it with people in my own life, that had made many ignorant statements that really made me want to educate myself more to make sure I never express the same ignorance. I think that if every Canadian educated themselves a little bit more about indigenous experiences we would have a much less hateful society, and we woulderase the stigma that some people have towards indigenous peoples