Truth before Reconciliation

In our first BCFP project of the year, we tackled the question of why the course BCFP actually matters. Our final thoughts were communicated as a written response and as nice as it would’ve been to sit down, write that and be done with the project, that simply wouldn’t have been possible without the learning we did leading up to this writing.¹

Two eyed seeing is the practice of viewing things through the two “eyes” of indigenous and western knowledge. Through the strengths of these multiple perspectives, we can gain a deeper understanding of topics, and make more educated decisions. That’s a bit of a coarse summary, but this was pretty central to our learning. It was one of the first things we learned about, and served good use in the rest of the project. I had a hard time conceptualizing, two-eyed seeing as we were starting out. It eventually clicked when I used it to examine a group of hereditary chiefs, who work to maintain their territorial claim to land. When analyzing their work through two-eyed seeing, what surprised me was that despite how heavily rooted it is in their own cultural beliefs and practices, much of what they do could be seen as western ideas and practices. ²

Research for this project was focused on the history of residential schools within Canada, as well as what reconciliation actually was. Our discussions of reconciliation followed a similar mode to those of two-eyed seeing[^4], comparing Indigenous and Western sources and perspectives on the same topics, following the timeline from residential schools and the harm they caused, to the efforts to reconcile with indigenous communities.

For independent research we focused on a few aspects of the history of residential schools, and drawing connections between them through a semantic map. My areas of focus were:

1. Government
2. The Church
3. Assimilation
4. Abuse & Danger
5. Apology

From what we already learned in class, I already had a good idea of all of how these aspects would connect, and what would be the best to look into. This meant I could focus on finding examples, clarifying connections, and getting nicely into the weeds.³ I feel like away from it with a generally deeper and more nuanced understanding of how the system of residential schools came to be, and managed to exist for so long.

Response writing was challenging, but only in that it was a bit of an unfamiliar style of writing, It honestly caught me off guard how personal we were meant to be. I think I was decently personal, but my writing did still fall into sounding a bit more academic than I expected.

The sheer scale of residential schools and their impacts make it easy to forget the individual impacts they had. Hearing personal accounts from survivors and parts of their community made it so much clearer how deeply these systems actually cut, beyond just the numbers. By understanding the true harm of the systems, I realized the impact that not only residential schools have had, but everything within Canada that allowed them to gain their power. As I said in my personal response, the importance of BCFP is (in short), how it makes us aware of how the past and present struggles of indigenous peoples came to be, so we can avoid repeating the past and work towards a better future. Developing my own opinion on the importance of this course in this project sets the stage nicely for whatever comes next. Whether that opinion changes or not, only time can tell.