How educators can respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Calls to Action

Educators have a special role in furthering truth and reconciliation in education, but many struggle to understand exactly what that means and how to accomplish it. There is no step-by-step guide to getting it right. Educators can only meaningfully accomplish truth and reconciliation in education by seeking out truth and reconciliation through education: an ongoing process of amplifying Indigenous voices and experiences, allowing oneself to be changed by them, and being guided by this learning both personally and professionally.

Springing from an Indigenous education master’s certificate program at the University of Calgary and written from an adult education perspective on transformative learning, this book invites educators, broadly defined, into a conversation about truth and reconciliation through education. Section I contains useful chapters on program design and concepts, while section II presents a collection of inspirational and thought provoking personal reflections from Indigenous and non-Indigenous educators who have taken deliberate, active roles in responding to the TRC’s Calls to Action.

This is a resource written by educators for educators wishing to embark on their own journeys of truth and reconciliation. Join the reconciliatory education community in courageously teaching, learning, and acting, just as the educators in this collected volume do.

Yvonne Poitras Pratt (Métis), Associate Professor at the Werklund School of Education, University of Calgary, traces her ancestral roots to Red River and more recently to Fishing Lake Métis Settlement in northern Alberta. Yvonne publishes on topics of Métis education, reconciliation, decolonizing, and arts-based education, and she has earned four teaching awards, including the 2021 Alan Blizzard Award for and an Esquao Award in 2003.

Yvonne Poitras Pratt's profile page

Sulyn Bodnaresko is a Settler, born, raised, and living on traditional and contemporary territories of the Blackfoot, Tsuut’ina, Iyarhe Nakoda, and Métis peoples (Calgary, Alberta). Sulyn is an educational research PhD candidate at the University of Calgary, and she focuses on understanding the implicatedness of newer Canadians in truth and reconciliation. Her interdisciplinary academic background includes global affairs, immigration and settlement, public policy, and education.

Sulyn Bodnaresko's profile page

This book will be of great utility to anyone who has ever asked, "What does reconciliation look like in higher education?" This book paints a vivid picture of one answer to that question: Reconciliation can happen through education.

<i>Canadian Journal of Higher Education</i>