Jessica Rachel Cook, ‘Under the blanket,’ 2023, repurposed church pews, athracite coal, durum wheat, beeswax, antique tools and mixed media.
(Frank Piccolo/courtesy of Art Windsor-Essex)
Labour is the central theme for understanding history and legacies of Mount Elgin Industrial School, a former Indian Residential School, in a new exhibition at Art Windsor Essex.
A rock with the message ‘Every Child Matters’ painted on it sits at a memorial outside the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, in Kamloops, B.C., in July 2021.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Contrary to what some ‘denialists’ believe, research shows that Canadian media outlets did not help circulate a ‘mass grave hoax’ regarding unmarked graves at former Indian Residential Schools.
Ceremonial tipis sit in front of the former residential school, Blue Quills, now the home to Blue Quills university run by seven First Nations.
(Terri Cardinal)
The author led a search for unmarked graves at the site of Blue Quills, a former residential school. She found more areas of interest (potential graves) than the official record shows.
The Blue Quills Indian Residential School in St. Paul, Alta., Aug. 15, 1931. When the federal government announced plans to shutter the school in 1970, the community fought back, and Blue Quills became the first residence and school controlled by First Nations people in Canada.
(Provincial Archives of Alberta)
To honour Truth and Reconciliation Day, we spoke with Terri Cardinal, who headed up one of the many community searches for the children who went missing while attending an Indian Residential School.
Girls’ class at St. Mary’s School, Blood Reserve, Alta., April 1933.
(Provincial Archives of Alberta, OB10558)
Survivors of multiple colonial school systems need their voices to be heard. An exhibit examines how colonial schooling policies over a century and a half influenced the Blood People.
Amanda Snell (left) stands next to her car which has a photo of her deceased partner, Steven Dubois, taped to it. Richelle Dubois (right) stands next to a photo of her son, Haven Dubois.
(Michelle Stewart)
This summer, one family is marching from Regina to Ottawa, hoping to raise awareness about the vulnerabilities and systemic inequalities faced by Indigenous boys, men and Two-Spirit People.
King Charles, left, then Prince of Wales, talks with artist Wade Baker, of the Squamish Nation in Vancouver, B.C., in November 2009.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
Ironically perhaps, it may be the move toward reconciliation between Indigenous Peoples and settler Canadians that revives the focus of the Crown in Canadian schooling.
Former Tk'emlúps te Secwépemc Chief Shane Gottfriedson, left, speaks as hiwus (Chief) Warren Paull, of the shíshálh Nation, listens during a news conference, in Vancouver, on Jan. 21, 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck
This new agreement finally allows First Nations to decide for themselves how the funding will revitalize their language and culture independently of the government.
A rare photo from an Indian Residential School in Fort Resolution, N.W.T. These systems have been labeled a form of genocide by the Canadian House of Commons.
(Department of Mines and Technical Surveys/Library and Archives Canada)
Canada’s recent resolution to label the Indian Residential School system as genocide (and not cultural genocide) is not a mere alteration of words, it is a significant and consequential change.
Duncan McCue, left, walks with Rocky James, a podcast guest on CBC’s ‘Kuper Island.’
(Evan Aagaard/CBC Podcasts)
Canadian journalist institutions have failed to address their ongoing colonialism and that has meant that urgent Indigenous issues have been ignored or sensationalized.
Alex Bird (second from the left) and his siblings from the Lheidli T'enneh First Nation were among the first students to attend this public school, near Prince George, B.C., in the early 1910s.
(Royal B.C. Museum, Image B-00342, British Columbia Archives)
In B.C., residential school principals sat on public school boards, and some Indigenous children even attended public schools. Understanding such links matters for truth and reconciliation.
After the death of Queen Elizabeth, questions arise about whose life gets mourned and who does not. Here is the Queen with the Guards of Honour in Nigeria, Dec. 3, 2003, for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting.
(AP Photo/Ben Curtis)
In the middle of the tremendous outpouring of love and grief for the Queen and the monarchy she represented, not everyone wants to take a moment of silence. And there are a lot of reasons why.
A protestor holds a sign saying ‘Reparation for Reconciliation’ as Pope Francis arrives for a public event in Iqaluit, Nunavut on July 29, 2022, during his papal visit across Canada.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
The Pope’s apology could mark a new way forward if the Catholic Church makes genuine reparations for the evils it perpetrated.
Pope Francis waves to the crowd, making his way to the Plains of Abraham during his Papal visit in Québec City on July 27, 2022.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jacques Boissinot
Visiting Indigenous people on their land was a step in the right direction, but the pope’s visit was full of tensions over both what was said and what wasn’t.
Gilda Soosay, president of Our Lady of Seven Sorrows Parish Council in Maskwacis, Canada, where Pope Francis visited the site of a state school for Indigenous children.
Cole Burston/AFP via Getty Images
A historian of the residential schools explains how religion played a key role in assimilationist systems for Indigenous children in Canada and the United States.
Pope Francis arrives to a hero’s welcome at Commonwealth Stadium in Edmonton on July 26, 2022, to take part in a public mass.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette
Apologizing for people versus the establishment that upheld not only the Indian Residential Schools system but protected – and continues to protect — the people who committed the crimes is horrifying.
Pope Francis receives a traditional headdress after apologizing near the site of the former Ermineskin Residential School, in Maskwacis, Alta.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jason Franson
Residential schools and the papal bulls justifying the doctrine of discovery call out for concrete acts of atonement and reparation on the part of the church.
Pope Francis’s visit to Canada will offer him an opportunity to apologize for the harms of the Catholic-run Indian Residential Schools.
(AP Photo/Andrew Medichini)
Pope Francis’ visit concerns all Canadians. It’s about our relationship to history and the construction of a state that marginalized Indigenous people and tried to assimilate them.
Members of the Assembly of First Nations perform in St. Peter’s Square at the Vatican on March 31, 2022.
(AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino)
Pope Francis and the Catholic Church must make a plan with Indigenous Peoples, not for us, in order to walk the path of reconciliation. Some initial suggestions of what a plan might include.