East / Listen

Our symbolic journey on the medicine wheel begins in the east, where the sun rises, the place of beginnings. This direction also suggests the first step in any learning journey, that of awareness. We can not begin to learn something new until we are aware we don’t yet know it. We can not learn new things unless our eyes, ears, and hearts are open and attuned to those who can teach us. Learners must first quiet the competing narratives in their specific upbringing and limited experience to truly hear the voices, see the faces, and feel with the hearts of Indigenous people and the way they make sense of the world around them.

Acknowledgements

As a resident of Port Hope, and a teacher in Cobourg, Ontario, I am grateful for the opportunity to live and work on land that has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples who stewarded it since time immemorial. I acknowledge it as the traditional territory of the Anishinabek, Huron-Wendat, Haudenosaunee, and Ojibway/Chippewa peoples. This territory is covered by the Williams Treaty.

As a member of the Institute for Christian Studies, I acknowledge that its physical campus also sits on land that has been inhabited by Indigenous peoples who stewarded it since time immemorial. I acknowledge it as the traditional territory of the Huron-Wendat, the Seneca, and the Mississaugas of the Credit peoples. This territory is covered by the Toronto Purchase, Treaty 13.

I am reminded that all Canadians are treaty people. I offer my gratitude to First Nations, Métis, and Inuit peoples across Turtle Island for their continued care for, and teachings about, our earth and our relations. In my efforts to love God and my neighbours, act justly, practice mercy, and walk humbly as an image-bearer of God, I endeavour to honour those teachings.

WHERE AM I?

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT OF TRADITIONAL LAND

WHO AM I?
CRITICAL CONSCIOUS AWARENESS

As of fall 2021, I am a 37-year-old, white, male, cisgendered, settler. My father immigrated to this land when he was 9, my mother’s parents when they were teenagers, all three from Holland. I was raised in a Christian Reformed context, surrounded by family stories of those in the lower to middle classes who worked hard and did what they thought was right as they experienced wars, floods, abuse, mental health crises, loss, love, faith, and family.

I have never been the victim of racism, however, I have perpetrated it, and benefitted from my racial identity within the system of privilege I live. Having learned about the lives of those who are different from me, those with differing privileges within the same system, I now work actively to teach children how to build better relationships with those around them. To live in community with each other. I see this as both a professional duty, and my purpose as a follower of Jesus who instructs me, above all else, to love God and love my neighbor (Mark 12:31). I know I will get things wrong, I have, in fact, made mistakes that hurt others, but I seek forgiveness, and offer it freely, in the spirit of the One who has graced me with forgiveness (Matthew 6:14; Mark 11:25; Luke 6:37; Ephesians 4:32; Colossians 3:13).

I have been actively learning about the history of the place I live, the Indigenous people who are my neighbours, their ancestors who lived here long before me, and my place within, for the last decade or so. Through that learning journey, I have been blessed and honoured with knowledge, insight, traditions, practices, and ways of seeing the world that are different from what was culturally familiar to me. I deeply appreciate the time, honesty, vulnerability, generosity, and trust in me that those who shared them offered. In relating some of those stories and lessons here, I acknowledge that they are told through my personal lens, and therefore may be misrepresented in unintentional ways. Should that be the case, I ask for grace and forgiveness and welcome the opportunity to be corrected so I can deepen my own learning as well as the learning of those I teach.

Awareness

In my early years at NCS, I taught history from an Ontario Alliance of Christian Schools produced and approved curriculum. I had the privilege to teach three students from Alderville First Nation at that time, but I had never considered what my role as a white, Christian teacher of Indigenous students was. This point was never really addressed, nor did it seem relevant or necessary to reflect upon, until it did. That turning point was when I sent home a photocopy worksheet, directly from the curriculum binder, as homework for one of my Ojibwe students.

This curriculum, written by Christian educators, based on both historical study and a Biblically-centered worldview, used the word ‘squaw’ to identify an Indigenous woman. This document had been reviewed, published, and taught countless times since, and to my knowledge, this page had never before been identified as problematic.

I did not identify it as problematic. The word ‘squaw’ was part of my lexicon. I had heard it as a child while watching Disney’s Peter Pan, I had read it in Lynne Reid Banks’ The Indian in the Cupboard, and Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House on the Prairie series. While, to my knowledge, I had never used this word to identify an Indigenous woman, I certainly didn’t identify it as derogatory or offensive.

One student from Alderville took his homework to the afterschool program in his community for help that afternoon. The person helping him with the work read that word and reported it to her supervisor, who in turn took the matter to a council member. The Alderville Education Administrator contacted the school and arranged an appointment to speak with the principal and myself.

Before attending the meeting, I was instructed to listen, empathize, and be respectful, but under no circumstances was I to apologize as this would admit to wrongdoing and may open the school up to litigation.

Expecting to sit quietly through a brief, superfluous, tongue lashing, I watched as the professional demeanor of this administrator from Alderville crumbled as she revealed the hurt and psychological damage that had been inflicted on members of her community, and on herself personally, by the unconscious bias, misinformation, ignorance, and judgement of the predominantly white society around her.

This was one of the first times I heard about residential schools as a personal experience. It was the first time I was informed that the word ‘squaw’ was abusive and diminishing to Indigenous women. Intentional or not, I had, through an act of racism, deeply offended, demeaned, and hurt someone. The gaps in my educational knowledge - lived experiences, Christian Elementary education, Catholic Secondary, and graduating from University with a joint BA in History and English - had left me without the relevant knowledge to teach history in a way that protected and respected all people represented in my classroom, nevermind my country.

This woman, a professional educator, an administrator with decades of experience, was victimized by the way I taught the children in my care. She wept for herself, for the woman who had seen the page, for the children it had been given to, because the ignorance that had removed her people from their homes and strippped them of their cultural identity, was alive and well in yet another generation under her care. Her pain was palpable, her hurt agonizing. I sat there, eyes burning with empathy, mouth clenched with duty.

I have this painful memory. I carry with it my shame and her hurt. I share it with you to emphasize what happened next.

My administrator, who had warned me against admitting wrongdoing by apologizing, calmly excused herself to find a box of tissues for her guest. I was left alone in the room with one of my unintentional victims. I was told to look her in the eye and remain silent. This instruction was based on fear of litigation, fear of responsibility, and the misguided righteousness of what was deemed ‘right’. This lack of action would cause division, further hurt, and solidify NCS as ‘just another school run by Christians,’ not unlike the residential schools whose memory continues to haunt. This would also save me from the pain of opening up and exposing my ignorance, but not from the pain of guilt. However, I could trust that the system I lived and worked in would help soothe that guilt and numb the pain through affirmations of privilege. I could choose this path.

Or I could speak the truth welling up within me. I could reach out and offer healing to a person I had caused to hurt. I could show love, rather than stick to what I was told was ‘right.’ I could embrace the pain I had caused and now felt, allow it to be shared, make a connection through mutual agony, and learn and grow from it as a result. I chose this path. As soon as my principal closed the door behind her, I apologized. I wept openly as I explained my ignorance and unconscious bias and offered a sincere promise to educate myself on Indigenous history in Canada and to never use a history curriculum told from only a one-sided, colonial, perspective again.

She met my eyes, and told me that my words were all she wanted to hear. She acknowledged the vulnerability I had shown and thanked me deeply for my words. She sat quietly when the administrator returned. She listened politely as she was told that the curriculum would be pulled and reviewed, and she politely thanked the administrator for her time. She then looked at me, held my gaze as I held my promise, shook my hand, and left the office.

This moment marks the beginning of my personal journey of learning about Indigenous peoples and their history, decentering my awareness of others, decolonizing my education, faith, and curriculum, and opening up to the stories of others that help me build better relationships and love in community.

First Steps

The previous experience helped launch our school community onto a learning journey of its own. Spearheaded by a new principal, the staff began with a year of listening. Inviting Indigenous speakers into PD days, taking courses and workshops, and being mindful and deliberate about what we were researching.

We encouraged the OACS to review the curriculum and entered into dialogue with them about the reasonings behind it.

On a community level, we hosted The Blanket Exercise and invited the greater NCS to participate. This facilitator-led interactive experience, “is based on using Indigenous methodologies and the goal is to build understanding about our shared history as Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada by walking through pre-contact, treaty-making, colonization and resistance. Everyone is actively involved as they step onto blankets that represent the land, and into the role of First Nations, Inuit and later Métis peoples. By engaging on an emotional and intellectual level, the Blanket Exercise effectively educates and increases empathy” (Blanket Exercise Workshop, n.d.).

The Blanket Exercise. Click here for more information.

“To be in good relationship with one another requires a critical conscious awareness and an acknowledgement of whose traditional lands we are now on as well as the historical and contemporary realities of those relationships”

(Styres, 2019, p. 32).

“Acknowledging the Original Peoples of a place is something [Indigenous Peoples] have always done when going to other people’s territory. It is important to respect the sustainers of the land and to help us remember we are just guests on their land. This respect honors the relationship of those people with that land from the ages to now, even when millions of other people say they have a title to the land. Creator knows who was given the land and the people of that land learned how to sustain it. I think it can become meaningless if the people are not honored properly and given the time to share the story of the land” (Woodley & Woodley, 2020).

“Knowing where you are in your own racial identity development can help you name the emotions you are feeling and can move you towards more mature levels of racial awareness”

(Tisby, 2021, p. 47).

“The term settler serves to make the necessary distinction between the Indigenous peoples of a particular place and those whose roots originate elsewhere … but it can also refer to anyone seeking to live on Indigenous peoples’ traditional territories and who benefit from the privileges of colonial relationships”

(Styres, 2019, p. 31).

“Critical reflection is also action”

(Freire et al., 1970, p. 128).

“At some point in life, most people have an encounter with racism that disrupts their previous thinking” (Tisby, 2021, p. 47).

“[T]he experience of racism is subjective. What is harmless to many people, perhaps most, might be a significant source of trauma for few”

(Kim, 2021, para. 8).

“Because I am descended from Europeans, I have profited from what Native Americans have lost ... I have been reminded of that, and I have experienced pain … But it is a small pain. And a deserved pain. The pain I experience is caused by guilt over what my people have done. By contrast, Jesus had no guilt at all. He entered profoundly into the depths of our pain. What a wonder this is”

(Adeney, 2005, pp. 36–37).

“Indigenous students ... are entering hostile spaces where their lived experiences and those of their families may be completely absent or, if introduced, examined dispassionately by Settlers engaging in what they consider to be a critical exercise, and where racist sentiments may be shared with the justification of ‘free speech.’ Indigenous populations are experiencing a boom that means more Indigenous youth will be in classrooms at all levels in the future. Will these spaces represent them or continue to be experienced as hostile or dismissive of them?”

(Restoule & Nardozi, 2019, p. 312).

“Diverse classrooms in a racist culture, of course, include the likelihood of further painful experiences for students from outside the dominant culture … It is naive to imagine that instructors can make classrooms safe for students”

(Ramsay, 2005, p. 20).

“[I]t is convenient for non-Indigenous people to hide behind the systems and institutions that that privilege them and fail to question the status quo, but … in reality, non-Indigenous individuals are as caught up in the system as Indigenous individuals. Thus, if non-Indigenous individuals perceive themselves as being caught in the system and streamed through it such that they are in a position to replicate and reinforce mal-adaptive interactions and oppression, there is more motivation to examine the status quo and push back against the systems and institutions”

(Zinga, 2019, p. 288).

“[W]e are contesting understandings of the doctrine of discovery, terra nullius, stereotypes, and other myths that support dispossession and colonialism and narratives of Canadian identity … Without contestation, these ideologies, discourses, and myths would go unchallenged, meaning that the space of mainstream education would continue to be one of assimilation and pain for Indigenous students, while Settler students continue to hear the same half- and untruths about Indigenous Peoples in their curriculum”

(Restoule & Nardozi, 2019, p. 334).

“Not only has multiculturalism enabled the integration of people of colour into Canadian society under white supervision, it has also generated a popular mainstream denunciation of the claims of [Indigenous] peoples. The popular sentiment … defines [Indigenality] as amounting to no more than just one culture among many in the country, with [Indigenous] peoples having no special claims, no special entitlements above those that can be claimed by other individuals”

(Thobani, 2007, p. 173).