Over 11 million people tuned in to watch the last ever Tragically Hip show.
It was a powerful and moving show that brought people together across the country, and everybody is talking about the moment when lead singer Gord Downie sent us a clear message about our relationship to First Nations.
“We were trained our entire lives to ignore, trained our entire lives to hear not a word of what's going on... And what's going on up there ain't good. It's maybe worse than it's ever been… It's really, really bad, but we're going to figure it out, you're going to figure it out.''[1]
I'm putting it out there to educators to be at the vanguard of responding to this message.
With Gord’s call to action echoing across the country, here are some places to start. Check out the resources below, or share them with others in your community.
Read the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report: The TRC spent years talking to residential school survivors and prepared a comprehensive report -- reading this report is a powerful way to begin to learn the true history of colonization in Canada. Click here to read the calls to action Click here to join over 3,500 people who’ve pledged to read the entire report.
Participate in Skills for Solidarity: LeadNow.ca launched this program in 2014 to open up a conversation about the shared history between Indigenous Peoples and non-Indigenous Peoples in Canada. Our political context has changed, but with a new government that is talking the talk of reconciliation, the program is more relevant than ever. Click here to join Skills for Solidarity.
Want to do more? Share the Truth and Reconciliation Reading Challenge with your friends and family. You can email the link to your contacts, or use the links below to share the challenge. Click here to share on Facebook. Click here to share on Twitter.
Give these books a read before heading back to school: The Reason I Walk by Wab Kinew Children of the Broken Treaty by Charlie Angus
Check out this website and get the magazine for your school and classroom: Canoe Kids
Imagine if all 11 million of us who heard Gord’s call to action took the time to understand this country’s painful past. Imagine if all of us understood how the legacy of residential schools and colonization continues to shape the lived experience of Indigenous communities. Imagine if all of us learned what we could do to support the struggles of Indigenous peoples fighting for justice.
Our future, as people living all across this land, will be so much stronger if we’re able to deepen our understanding of our shared history and take collective responsibility for building a country based on mutual respect and recognition.
Sources:
[1] 'Trained our entire lives to ignore': Gord Downie's call to action for Indigenous in the North: http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/north/gord-downie-praises-justin-trudeau-aboriginal-people-1.3729996