Educators respect and value the history of First Nations, Inuit and Metis in Canada and the impact of the past on present and the future. Educators contribute towards truth, reconciliation and healing. Educators foster a deeper understanding of ways of knowing and being, histories, and cultures of First Nations, Inuit and Metis.

During my second practicum, I invited into my classroom a local with ties to the Lheidli T’enneh and who is hired by SD57 to bring Indigenous content and ways of knowing into the classroom. This speaker addressed the poor reporting around the renamed Lheidli T’enneh Memorial Park and its sordid history. Many of my students reflected with shock that they did not know how close the dead bodies were to the surface in the park. Many did not know beforehand that the dead were not kept only to the cemetery itself and that there were mass graves after Influenza decimated the local population due to the fact that it was a main travel hub and stopping point on the river. In addition to this guest speaker, I shared with the class Wab Kinew’s work and interviews on CBC. I used this content doubly for the arrangement of its content (for the youtube project) as well as the impact that Wab Kinew has had on truth and reconciliation in Canada.

In my last practicum, I was very happy to have engagement from students that I normally hear little from in class when I directly connected one of the music pieces we are playing to a Navajo elder’s story of the people the song was written to represent. A student who never speaks up in class shared twice in class when they had never spoken before. In addition, the check-in that I have engaged in every day after a land acknowledgement has been integral in creating a greater sense of community in my classroom. The foundational ideas behind this check-in are deeply entrenched in the First Peoples Principles of Learning with regards to identity, story sharing, and wellness of being.