National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is a day to honour Residential School and Day School Survivors, remember the children who never returned home, recognize the resilience of Indigenous Peoples, and reflect on our collective responsibility to advance reconciliation.
Truth is an essential part of reconciliation. For generations, Indigenous Peoples carried and shared the truths of residential schools, Day Schools, the Indian Act, the reserve system, and other colonial policies designed to disrupt our families, cultures, languages, and ways of life. Too often, those truths were denied, minimized, or excluded from Canada's collective understanding of its own history.
For the past few years, Werklund Centre (formerly Arts Commons) has focused on sharing these truths by supporting the Elders Story Project, an Indigenous-led, trauma-informed initiative of the Elders Knowledge Circle Society (EKCS). The EKCS is dedicated to preserving, protecting, revitalizing, and sharing wisdom through lived experience, cultural knowledge, oral histories, and teachings.
While Indigenous histories have included tremendous trauma and loss, Indigenous identity is not defined by colonialism. Our stories are also stories of survival, resilience, continuity, resistance, reconnection, and resurgence. Our traditions are related to the land, water, sky, and all the beings that call Mother Earth home. They are filled with joy and colour, not sadness and darkness. Recognizing this duality is key to reconciliation.
At 29 years old, I have witnessed an interesting –– and at times painfully slow –– shift in the way people talk about First Nations Peoples, residential schools, and Canada's colonial history.
My own family carries this history. Generations of my family, up until my dad, attended residential or Day Schools. I am the granddaughter and niece of Day School Survivors.
Growing up, conversations about Indigenous histories and contemporary issues often felt like a fight to be heard. I found myself constantly dispelling myths, stereotypes, and mentally and emotionally preparing myself for arguments whenever Indigenous issues were discussed.
After the discovery of unmarked graves at the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, I felt something change.
For the first time in my life, it seemed as though more people were beginning to listen.
My grandma passed away before she could witness this shift in understanding and truth-seeking. I wish she could have seen it. At the same time, I am grateful that my aunts and uncles are here to witness a change that, although slow and incomplete, is beginning to happen.
When National Day for Truth and Reconciliation became federally recognized, it felt like another step forward. To me, there was significance in seeing the country formally acknowledge a history that Indigenous peoples have been speaking about for generations. Recognition alone does not create reconciliation, but acknowledgement of the truth is necessary before meaningful change can happen.
I am a Kwakwaka'wakw woman from 'Namgis First Nation. Having grown up in and out of Children's Services, I have spent much of the past ten years on my own journey of reconnection and healing.
Now, being relatively new to Treaty 7 territory, part of that journey has involved learning about and connecting with the histories, protocols, cultures, and ways of knowing of the First Nations whose territories I am grateful to live and work within.
This year, I have had the opportunity to work at Werklund Centre as an Indigenous Relations Assistant and to support its involvement with the Elders Story Project, specifically by listening, transcribing in some cases, and time-coding their stories from previous gatherings that have taken place on and around September 30th. As they have lost many of their family members and fellow Elders over the years, these recordings will act as a library of Indigenous knowledge.
Listening to the Elders has also allowed me to learn more about the Nations and cultures of Treaty 7, and it has also been validating in ways that are difficult to put into words. Across our different Nations, histories, and experiences, there has been a spoken and unspoken shared understanding of the impacts of colonialism and intergenerational trauma.
But these stories are not only about trauma. Yes, they hold memories of colonial policies and their impacts, but they also carry knowledge that existed long before those policies: knowledge about family, community, land, language, culture, ceremony, relationships, humour, and responsibility to care for future generations. Their stories remind us that despite centuries of policies intended to disrupt the transmission of Indigenous ways of knowing, that knowledge has survived.
Hearing the Elders speak about what they hope for the next generation has been particularly meaningful to me. Most especially through their use of humour and laughter as a tool for resilience and survival.
The emphasis on family and community. The passion to inspire youth to partake in culture and ceremony. The responsibilities to the land and to one another. The advice Elders offer to younger generations.
Those are the things I want to carry forward.
Supporting this project has been fulfilling, emotional, validating, and inspiring. It has also allowed me to witness what reconciliation can look like when an organization, like Werklund Centre, is willing to listen, build relationships, create ethical space, and support Indigenous-led work over the long term.
For many years, public conversations about Indigenous Peoples have understandably centred on residential schools, colonialism, and trauma. Those truths should always be told and never be forgotten. But I also hope we are entering a time when Indigenous stories are increasingly understood beyond trauma.
The cultures of Indigenous peoples across Turtle Island did not end with residential schools. Our histories did not begin with colonization.
Cultural resurgence allows us to shift the conversation from what was taken to what has survived; from disruption to reconnection; from intergenerational trauma to intergenerational knowledge and strength.
There is something so deeply powerful about watching Elders and Grandparents who lived through the attempted erasure of Indigenous peoples –– trailblaze the path of resurgence and now pass their knowledge and fight to keep our cultures and languages alive.
The same generations who inherited the impacts of colonialism can also inherit language, ceremony, stories, teachings, values, and resilience.
When people participate in National Day for Truth and Reconciliation or listen to the Elders Story Project, I hope they understand that truth-telling and cultural resurgence are connected. I hope they leave with an understanding that reconciliation begins with listening.
Listen without immediately responding. Listen without defending. Listen without trying to reshape someone's experience into something easier to hear. We must acknowledge the systems that attempted –– and continue to attempt –– to separate Indigenous Peoples from their families, lands, languages, and cultures.
For Indigenous Peoples, these stories can also be a pathway back to culture, family, community, and identity. For non-Indigenous people, they are an invitation to understand a history that belongs to all of us and to consider what responsibilities come with knowing that history.
The Elders Story Project creates an opportunity for those teachings to continue travelling between generations. It honours the Warriors who carried this knowledge through extraordinary efforts to silence it while creating space for younger generations to receive it, learn from it, and carry it forward.
Truth must come before reconciliation, and one of the possibilities that can grow from truth is resurgence: Indigenous Peoples reclaiming, revitalizing, and celebrating their cultures, languages, relationships, and ways of knowing that have always been here.