It’s not about what you do on the day of National Truth and Reconciliation, it’s about all that you have done leading up to the day, all the research, all the reading and learning.  The discussions and discovering of TRUTHs about this country’s history.  The day you put on that orange shirt is the day you acknowledge that you have listened and learned.  

 

Topics: Teaching Resources, Learning, Truth and Reconciliation, Orange Shirt Day

June is Indigenous History Month but it is my hope that we are always aware of the Indigenous people around us. Some of us may not share the same experiences in life, but whether you are Canadian or Indigenous or both, we have a shared history, from different perspectives. 

Topics: Teaching Resources, Indigenous History, Indigenous, Indigenous Peoples' Day, Indigenous Awareness Month, Indigenous History Month

If you have ever travelled to Brantford Ontario Canada, you might have been excited to visit the home of Alexander Graham Bell to learn about the invention of the telephone.  You might have come for a hockey tournament and had the privilege of meeting Hockey Legend Wayne Gretzky’s father Walter, who loves hanging out at the rinks. You may have picked up brochures with beautiful pictures of the Grand River or did research about Joseph Brant, who was the negotiator between the Mohawk and British during the American Revolution. But you might not know that Brantford is the home of the first residential school in Canada; that the building still stands with the names of children carved into the bricks and that it is one of the few residential school buildings still standing in Canada.

Topics: Art, Survivor Testimony, Residential Schools, Indigenous History, Culturally Responsive and Relevant Pedagogy, Indigenous, Lesson Ideas, Facing Canada, Creative, Woodland Cultural Centre