Looking back at our first project in the BCFP 12 course, there were a few key take always for me. 1: This project taught me how to be more open to learn about things that are either out of my wheelhouse, or uncomfortable to talk about. 2: This project opened the door for me to start learning about more indigenous history, and maybe even learning about it on my own time. 3: it taught me how it effected the community we live in, the community that I have lived in for all my life. These three keystones were essential to the growth I had this project. 

During this project we learned about survivors of residential schools personal experiences at the schools, and then their lives if they survived afterwords. This was extremely impactful to me to hear some examples of the awful things that happened at these evil schools, and then how they struggled to function as adults later in life. We learned how more often than not the kids of the survivors had generational trauma and often fell into Alcoholism and Drug Abuse problems. It was crazy for me to hear all of this knowing how big of a deal addiction can be to people. I realized that these schools didn’t just destroy the child like they intended, they destroyed generations of families.

Overall looking back at the learning and growth from this project I have realized that in most cases indigenous people didn’t just lose they’re culture at residential schools, they lost themselves. These schools had no mercy. They broke and broke and beat and broke and hurt children with no mercy. They didn’t care because they didn’t see indigenous people as human. From then we as a community have started to grow. The Church has apologized, along with the Canadian Government. There is support out there now for survivors and children of survivors. However this is all still just a start. We can all do our part by even just being aware of the atrocities that happened at Residential Schools and understanding that this can never happen again.