National Day for Truth and Reconciliation: Exhibit features stolen Kainai children's stories of resilience on Treaty 7 lands

• In Canada, when we talk about truth and reconciliation we have a tendency to focus on the Indian residential school system (IRS).
• While engaging with knowledge about residential schools and their legacies is an important facet of truth and reconciliation, there are other colonial school systems that we also need to acknowledge, consider and remember.

Multiple colonial schooling models

The Canadian government initiated and implemented multiple colonial schooling models for over a century and a half beyond the IRS, such as:
Where one system failed, the government designed a new school system based on the failure of the previous school model to try and assimilate Indigenous children.

Survivors from many school models

• Murray Sinclair, former chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) said, “The Survivors need to know before they leave this Earth that people understand what happened and what the schools did to them.” As a society, it is important that we remember Survivors from each school model and their many impacts on Survivors, their descendants and society as a whole.
• People need to know and understand the truth about what happened to Survivors and why this happened to them in order to heal and walk the path of reconciliation.

Addressing gaps in knowledge

• (also known as Akaisamitohkanao’pa, or gathering place) approached me to be a guest curator and create a traveling museum exhibit based on my TRC research, I decided to use the opportunity to rectify the gap of knowledge so many of us have about educational policy.
• It presents photographs and stories from Survivors, the Canadian government, the Christian religions and their missionaries, the Indian Agents and Indian school inspectors.

Right to know the truth

• fully adopt and implement the … United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why,” and “iii.)
• fully adopt and implement the … United Nations Joinet-Orentlicher Principles, as related to Aboriginal peoples’ inalienable right to know the truth about what happened and why,” and “iii.)

Multiple Christian churches

• The exhibit introduces the different Christian churches who created missions on the Blood Reserve, and shows Survivor experiences of missions’ different characteristics.
• For example, as Survivor Jim Young Pine shares about attending St. Mary’s School:
  “The nuns at the school were French and always spoke French.
• It was while working outside Kainaisskahoyi that I learned English from non-Natives.”
  “The nuns at the school were French and always spoke French.
• Churches opened several of the different schools the Canadian government devised to try and assimilate Indigenous children.

Stories from Survivors of institutions

• The stories are also a testament to the survival of the Blood People.
• We continue today to practice and live our ways of knowing, being and doing as Siksikaitsitapi.
• The exhibit concludes on a note of hope by highlighting the resiliency of the Kainai People.

Maintaining our identities as Siksikaitsitapi

• Today, the Blood Tribe runs its own education programs from early childhood education to post-secondary education.
• Kainai Board of Education operates five schools (Saipoyi Community School, Aahsaopi Elementary School, Tatsikiisaapo’p Middle School, Kainai High School and Kainai Alternate Academy).
• The Blood Reserve has worked hard to create education that works towards maintaining our identities as Siksikaitsitapi.

Education as ‘new buffalo’

• To many Indigenous Peoples across plains regions in Canada, education has become the “new buffalo.” This means just as the buffalo once sustained us for our needs, Indigenous Peoples are adapting education to meet our needs today.
• To observe the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, and all year,
  let us be reminded of Survivors’ voices from the past century and a half, and as Sinclair said, re-commit our reconciliation efforts to “act to ensure the repair of damages done.”
  As the former TRC chair also said, until people show they have learned from this, we will never forget.