A Chance For Allyship: Truth and Reconciliation Events This Week, Resources, and Learning More

UBC’s events and website are available at http://irsi.aboriginal.ubc.ca/ and http://ctlt.ubc.ca/2013/07/25/truth-and-reconciliation-at-ubc-confronting-our-legacies-2/.

A primer on the school system, its legacy, and relationship to the Canadian state can be found here, http://indigenousfoundations.arts.ubc.ca/home/government-policy/the-residential-school-system.html.

While we pay witness and center survivors and place the residential school system and its horrors in focus this week, doing our best to work as allies, it is also important to keep in mind the larger framework in which the residential schools operated. They were a tool of colonialism which operated in ways that were gendered, raced, and full of other dynamics.  Sexual violence and gendered violence alongside the enforcement of gendered norms (labour students were required to complete were based on Western cultural stereotypes for instance)were heavily present in the residential school system and have had strong impact on the First Nations communities impacted by the legacy of that system.

I would like to take this space to share information, concerns, varying perspectives, and statements by Indigenous folk and allies in order for us to do more than only observe colonialism and the legacy and fact of the residential school system on this week, particularly in relation to the Indian Act and current struggles and spaces of resistance. This is a moment to act as an ally and begin to deepen or research these interconnections between residential schools, ongoing colonialism, and other institutional power dynamics.