Because the Lives of My Kin Depend on it: Reflections on Teaching Indigenous Studies 101

Abstract

This reflective essay, adapted from a final lecture in an introductory Indigenous Studies course, examines the state of Indigenous education on the eve of the 10th anniversary of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s Final Report. Drawing on classroom encounters in a large first-year course, the Red River Métis author reflects on teaching students with varied academic preparedness amid institutional constraints. She highlights the emotional and intellectual labour expected of Indigenous faculty and the persistent gap between institutional rhetoric and meaningful change. Guided by the 4R Indigenous Learning Outcomes – respect, responsibility, reciprocity, and relationships – the essay explores pedagogical tensions, including teaching histories of grief and trauma while foregrounding hope, joy, resistance, and resurgence. It argues that introductory Indigenous Studies courses are not neutral spaces but sites of ethical responsibility, concluding with a call for learners to continue the work of building healthier relationships and pursuing reconciliation beyond the classroom.

Introduction

The following knowledge-sharing was minimally adapted from the final lecture titled Remember the Glimmers, Make This Place Beautiful, offered as a parting gift to learners enrolled in a 100-level undergraduate Indigenous Studies course, INDG 101: Introduction to Indigenous Perspectives, during the winter term of 2025.

Despite being one of Canada’s first universities, established in 1841 by Royal Charter of Queen Victoria, Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario does not have an independent Indigenous Studies department (Queen’s Encyclopedia, 2025). Instead, Indigenous Knowledges and Perspectives courses are housed – often quite awkwardly – within the linguistics and languages department. This idiosyncratic situation is a result of the somewhat organic emergence of Indigenous Knowledges courses at the university, as the first “Indigenous content” was introduced through Indigenous language[s] classes. A decade [or more] later, we are still here.

This explains, in part, how it came to be that INDG 101 was offered for the first time during the 2024 to 2025 academic year. It was a challenging learning environment to both teach and learn in: As we neared the 10th anniversary of the release of the Final Report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC), it was obvious to me as a Red River Métis educator working in post-secondary spaces that despite an initial flurry of activity – curricular development, recruitment of Indigenous scholars – many universities were continuing to struggle to make meaningful progress towards rising to the Calls to Action (TRC, 2015c, 2015d). Part of the struggle, as I understand it, is that even a decade after the release of the TRC’s Final Report, within Canadian society we have been largely unable to span the chasms of (mis)understanding that define non-Indigenous grasps of Indigenous lived experience on these territories.

The Commissioners offered a vision of reconciliation as one of building and caring for relationships and went so far as to draw a map – in the form of 94 Calls to Action – on how to begin. And yet, despite these gifts, for over 10 years now Indigenous scholars have continuously and publicly reflected on the gaps between visions of an “indigenized” or reimagined academy, and how far universities are actually willing to go on their walk to meet us and build the new relationships that would be required to do this work in a sustainable and healthy way. As Adam Gaudry and Danielle Lorenz explained in their 2018 work:

Many Indigenous scholars, for instance, argue for an indigenization that provokes a foundational, intellectual, and structural shift in the academy, requiring the wholesale overhaul of academic norms to better reflect a more meaningful relationship with Indigenous nations. For most university administrators, however, this transformative vision of indigenization is too destabilizing and so propose more modest goals of increasing Indigenous student enrollment and hiring more Indigenous faculty and staff. In practice then, despite the growing prevalence of indigenization rhetoric on campuses across Canada, there are several distinct visions of indigenization, only some of which are able to work in tandem with others. (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018)

Ultimately, Gaudry and Lorenz noted that Indigenous scholars surveyed generally conceptualized “indigenization” processes as decolonial processes that should disrupt a status quo that isn’t working, while the institutions they laboured within appeared more inclined towards window-dressing inclusion efforts (Gaudry & Lorenz, 2018).

Now 8 years since publication of their article (that has now become canon literature for anyone working towards indigenization of the Canadian academy), from my perspective the meeting point between disparate visions is still not halfway. Rather, the expectation seems to be that Indigenous scholars will continue to run marathons, carrying all the gear, to be rewarded with only the most basic levels of inclusion. Make no mistake: Indigenous scholars continue to labour in these spaces and publicly share our experiences (e.g. Brunette-Debassige, 2025; Lussier, 2025; Pedri-Spade & Pitawanakwat, 2022); I understand these continued efforts to be grounded in both a hope of finally prompting meaningful change, and as a mechanism to hold institutions publicly accountable for harms caused.

It is in the former space – the space of hope – where I grounded my efforts in relation to the development and delivery of INDG 101. As a mum to young kids currently engaged in elementary and high school systems in Ontario, it was obvious to me that I would likely need to be prepared for a range of student preparedness levels among learners entering my undergraduate classroom. I was also acutely aware of the stakes: University students in my classrooms are not too many years away from occupying positions of significant power and influence in Canadian society as private-sector employees, policymakers, academics, public servants, teachers, doctors, and lawyers. Without a base-level of understanding of Indigenous realities, there is a very real potential for these emerging professionals to inadvertently perpetuate harm against Indigenous communities.

At the end of the day, it was a very, very challenging teaching experience, and one during which I was systemically called to recommit to the hope of the endeavour. Writing my final lecture was truly a labour of love and birthing it aloud in my classroom was not without tears and many pauses for breath as I pushed through. With these parting words to my 140 enrolled learners, I reflected on the current state of Indigenous Education in elementary, secondary, and post-secondary institutions in Canada, and on our collective efforts to bridge knowledge gaps during our classroom encounters over the course of the term. The lecture culminates in a return to the 4R Indigenous Learning Outcomes – responsibility, respect, reciprocity, and (healthy) relationships – which had served as the basis for pedagogical approaches in the classroom and for evaluated assignments over the course of the term (OCAD University, 2025).

Ultimately, my parting words offered three key takeaways to guide learners as they move beyond the four walls of the classroom. In the end, despite the weight of the institutional challenges that were shouldered, the span of the gaps to be bridged, and some profound moments of stress in the classroom, I sent the learners off with words of gratitude, hope, and responsibility for moving through the world as lifelong learners and ethical citizens. I reminded them to remember the glimmers – the places where the light shines through – and to continue efforts to learn, beautifully. Because: allyship is not enough (Lindberg, 2019), and the lives of our kin may well depend on it.

INDG 101 Final Lecture: Remember the Glimmers, Make This Place Beautiful

So, here we are at the end of our semester together. I’m not going to lie: There have been moments this term when I felt as if we were collectively limping towards mile marker 1 of a marathon that you have only just begun.

For those of you who have been with us since the first class, you will remember that I opened our first lecture with a slide deck about birds. I showed you maps of migration patterns and introduced you to Latin genus names and a little bit of “Indigenous knowledge” about a few popular birds that live in the local area. I did this because, when I was developing this new course and preparing to teach it for the first time, I had stumbled across a relevant Reddit thread.

In the thread, which has since been deleted but – rest assured – I still have the screenshots, a prospective learner had asked the Internet about the workload involved in this new course offering. The single response, offered by someone who certainly had never taken the course given that it was brand new, was that “It’s a DEI course lol . . . so it’s a total joke.”

And so, I told you that since some of you may have expected our course to be a “bird course” – that is, one that you can fly right through – I didn’t want to disappoint you, and I chose to begin the course with birds. Feeling as though I had satisfied that expectation, I warned you that those were the last birds you were going to see in this course.

At the end of the add-drop period, once all the dust settled from the revolving door that was our class list for the first few weeks, registration closed. Our class still had a waitlist.

And, thanks to somewhat relentless advocacy behind the scenes – which some of you were involved in – by week 3 we had moved out of the incredibly inappropriate classroom in the windowless basement that had required more than 70% of you to sit with your backs towards me, and required me to teach from a podium that was more often than not obstructed by a pole. While I am sure, as I was reminded several times by university administrators, that the classroom is highly sought-after by some professors, I feel safe in making the comment that the space was almost universally loathed by everyone here. It certainly wasn’t conducive to building anything akin to a classroom community.

While there was much rejoicing, upon confirmation of our move, most of you were probably never tracking the weight of the colonial encounters that came to bear as I made efforts to improve your learning conditions. Those are, [un]fortunately, stories for another day.

When we began our work together in earnest, I’m sure you will recall that I had you complete an introduction assignment. Now, let’s be clear: some of the 10 points you earned from that assignment were my gift to you. You earned a point for your name, a point for telling me your programme of study, and a point for Googling the traditional caretakers of the land you call “home”. The substantive questions, though, were where the rubber hit the pavement. Through your responses to the prompts “describe previous experiences you have learning about Indigenous perspectives on the territories currently known as Canada” and “tell me why you choose this class and what are you hoping to learn,” I was forced to confront the devastating truth that access to learning about, and with, Indigenous Peoples is far from guaranteed in so-called Canada.

Many of you who hail from further west described limited encounters with the story of Chanie Wenjack, a child who perished during an attempt to run away from Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School, introduced through the works of Gordon Downie (2016), in Grade 5 or Grade 6 curricula (Carley, 2025). As a point of interest, the 1967 Maclean’s Magazine article that inspired Gordon Downie misnamed Chanie as “Charlie”, just as school administrators had (Adams, 1967).

While some of you had previously been afforded access to learning opportunities in Indigenous communities and through land-based programming, others among you admitted that the work of preparing a basic land acknowledgement for their hometown had been considerable because the matter had never been discussed in elementary or high school.

I will admit it; your emails seeking advice on preparing land acknowledgements shook me. In universities, land acknowledgements are issued so frequently that they have now largely taken on a patina of pro forma performance. To be confronted with visions from the ground where learners are unaware of whose homelands they are growing up on startled and surprised me and reminded me of why land acknowledgements are important as a starting point.

Some of you who had grown up in Ontario had benefitted from the opportunity to read some Indigenous literature in Grade 11 through a new course offering that has been adopted piecemeal in some parts of the province (Ontario Ministry of Education, n.d.). Other Ontario secondary school graduates described reading Richard Wagamese’s Indian Horse, and subsequently watching the film adaptation of the book, as the beginning and the end of conversations around Indigenous lived experiences (Elevation Pictures & Criterion-on-Demand, 2017; Wagamese, 2012).

Many of you wrote about the moment you began to learn about the history of residential schools, and for several of you, this early education was tied to media representations of the events in Kamloops in June 2021 [with the release of findings from a study of the school yard of a former Residential School with ground-penetrating radar that identified approximately 315 unmarked graves], which set off new national conversations (Dickson & Watson, 2021).

For those of you who began to make your life in Canada later in your lives, or those who are visiting students here, these discussions around Indigenous education and colonialism in your introduction assignments were further complicated by understandings that you had gained through studying for Canadian citizenship tests (Government of Canada, 2021).

A few of you were here because you wanted to be, and by this, I mean that this was an elective course that you were taking out of interest or for some other personal reason. Many of you were here because this course is required for either the programme you are currently enrolled in or to support your future life goals, including attending medical school or veterinary medicine school in the Prairie provinces.

[Dear Reader: In 2025, some Canadian medical schools adopted a new admission requirement that applicants demonstrate that they had completed a first level Indigenous course to apply to their schools. While I firmly believe that efforts to encourage learners to engage in learning about and with Indigenous Peoples should be applauded, over the course of the term I did find myself wondering if the purpose and intent of these new application requirements was in fact an effort to avoid having to do the work of teaching and addressing the root causes of systemic discrimination that Indigenous Peoples face in healthcare systems. There were moments in the term when I cursed this effort that I perceived to be an attempt to download responsibilities for rising to the calls to action of the TRC that were specifically made for the healthcare professions to me and my colleagues as teachers of first-year Indigenous Studies courses.]

I am also quite certain that despite my introductory comments about Canadian Geese and Northern Cardinals, some folks remained enrolled in the course in the hopes that it would be an easy credit or, and as I overheard in the hallway during week 2, a “guaranteed GPA booster”.

The starting lines and motivations were, quite frankly, all over the place. And so it began, with several introductory lectures to ground us in a basic common vocabulary that is necessary to engage in the profound layered and complex learning that must occur around the many sensitive topics we would discuss. I attempted to mask my frustration with Canada and her provinces that in 2025, coming up on the 10th anniversary of the release of the Final Report and 94 Calls to Action of the TRC, the inconsistent patchwork of approaches and experiences across Canada required us to spend almost the entire first month of the course engaging in what was essentially a remedial Canadian history and civics class and vocabulary lesson (TRC, 2015c, 2015d).

One of the things that I shared with you early on was a video of Dr. Shauneen Pete speaking about education. Dr. Pete (2017) talked about how so many people in Canada have been “systemically denied the opportunity to learn” about, or with, Indigenous folks in the context of their formal education. Given this reality, for some of you, the early readings of Chapters 1 and 2 of Prof. Chelsea Vowel’s book represented brand new information, and I reminded you that this was absolutely not on you as a learner, but rather is a function of colonial education systems working exactly as they were designed to (Pete, 2017; Vowel, 2016). I said that it was reasonable to be frustrated and, to echo Dr. Pete, really, “really pissed off” (Pete, 2017).

I also acknowledged the elephant in the room that some of you may have been a little worried – if you were never taught anything about Indigenous folks, even though 100% of the land in the territories now known as Canada are Indigenous homelands, what else didn’t you learn in school (Royal Canadian Geographical Society, 2018)? How steep was the learning curve going to be?

While I told you that all of those feelings were totally reasonable, and that you could be mad, I reminded you of my belief that anger isn’t a particular productive emotion when we are talking about reconciliation. I encouraged you to be properly angry for a minute but then to prepare yourselves to move on. My kids are getting older by the minute, so we had work to be getting on with. That work needed to be grounded in love and community care, not anger.

Meanwhile, for some of you, the first classes seemed a little elementary. You were frustrated at how basic the chapters seemed. Some of you expressed your disappointment and worry that this class wouldn’t have a lot to offer you. I asked those learners to first pause and sit in empathy and then reflect on what you really hoped to get out of this class. Were you here with a good heart? I asked you to think back to the first time you heard about some of these topics, and how you felt. I asked you to give grace to those around you who weren’t afforded the same privileges in education as you were.

I then asked everyone here to do a humility check, and I stated quite explicitly that there is not a single person on the planet who has nothing left to learn about Indigenous Peoples on the territories known as Canada. Not one. Learning about, and with, Indigenous folks is a lifelong commitment. While you may have heard a version of a story before, with an open mind and humble spirit you will always find new things to take away on the second, third, or fourth time around.

If we were to build a classroom community grounded in the 4R Indigenous learning outcomes of responsibility, respect, reciprocity, and (healthy) relationships, we absolutely needed to start with a common vocabulary (OCAD University, 2025). I hope, with a little time and distance, you will agree that establishing those foundations was worth the time and effort . . . as frustrating as our first month together may have seemed at the time.

As we moved past vocabulary and into Part 2 of our course – “[Un]Learning” – I handed over the microphone to you for 45 min of each of our classroom encounters.

Through your collaborative research projects and group presentations, I do hope that you came to build new relationships with some of your peers while also building new relationships to the individuals you were researching. As an ardent proponent of the belief that actions towards reconciliation must necessarily be a collaborative effort, designing assessments that included both collaborative work in small groups and knowledge-sharing with the broader classroom community was important to me. While the method and theory behind the development of the assessments is often less interesting to learners than the letter-grade outcomes of the assignments themselves, I was proud of my efforts to ensure that our learning responded to the needs expressed through the 4Rs.

I was proud of how many of you brought the stories and voices of the exceptional and diverse list of First Nations, Métis, and Inuit people I asked you to research into the room. It was never a dull moment. In January alone, we covered wide-ranging topics from numbered treaty-making and the story of Mistahimaskwa (Big Bear) to modern treaty-making as told through the life stories of Charlie Watt and Frank Calder, to the stories of First Nations and Métis matriarchs like Anne Bannatyne, Thelma Chalifoux, Christi Belcourt, Jeanette Corbière Lavell, Elsie Knott, and Sharon McIvor. When we eventually arrived at residential schools and forced assimilative education, you presented the stories of Phil Fontaine, Phyllis Webstad, and the late Dr. Murray Sinclair-iban with humility and the appropriate level of gravitas.

While working in a group, especially with strangers, can be uncomfortable – and admittedly sometimes very difficult – and while the idea of presenting to a room full of 150 other people can seem intimidating, you largely rose to the challenge with grace.

You brought music – some of you live! – and videos carrying community voices into the room, and I believe that the spirit, efforts, and energy you invested honoured the people and stories who you were assigned to research.

And yet we left so much on the table, as is always the case in an introductory-level survey course. Given my disciplinary background, I found it particularly challenging that we did not have time to engage more with questions around Canadian criminal “justice” systems. In an ideal world, we would have spoken about the over-incarceration and over-policing of Indigenous folks, rates of domestic and other violences in Indigenous communities, “Gladue Reports”, restorative justice, and so many other concerns facing our communities.

We had a few very challenging moments, like the time I snapped in the middle of a very challenging lecture on Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit folks because the audible ding from someone’s messenger app almost broke my spirit (National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, n.d.).

There were the seemingly endless email and phone exchanges with facilities management folks when some of you made very basic requests to smudge our classroom and start out work in a Good Way that forcibly reminded me of just how unwelcome Indigenous ways of being can be perceived within a large, western institution such as a university. When I am feeling able to show grace to the institution, I remind myself that I am fortunate to be teaching at a university where the “Environmental Health and Safety” team has thought about smudging and taken steps to formalize an “Indigenous Use of Traditional Medicines” policy (Queen’s University, 2018). On those days, I think about how the existence of such a policy, undoubtedly hard-fought for by an Indigenous woman who came before me, protects my right to use traditional medicines in the workplace. Other days, when I am tired and feel compelled to smudge and I remember that the same policy I was grateful for the day before requires a five-step approval process – initiated at least 1 week in advance of my desire to smudge – and an eight-step day of procedure – including calling the campus police both before and after engaging in ceremony – I am less generous with my views on the matter. Sometimes I simply cannot forecast when I need to pray or draw upon comfort from my ancestors and our medicines a week in advance.

Possibly the most challenging moment we faced together this term – if we don’t count the ongoing labour disruption that has upended life on campus generally and in our classroom specifically – was the afternoon I called you out for academic integrity violations during in-class assignments and “exit ticket” exercises.

[Dear Reader: Ah, the curious pedagogical tool of the exit tickets! Advised by a colleague that, in their experience, attendance was a significant problem at Queen’s, I modified my learning plans to build in the evaluation method of exit tickets, short assessments that are distributed at any point during a classroom encounter and that must be submitted before the end of class. For me, the use of exit tickets in this class helped me achieve a few things as an educator; I won’t elucidate them all here, but I will offer a few examples. First, they allowed me to gain in real-time feedback about whether my teaching methods were supporting actual learning – critical when developing a new course and teaching it for the first time. Second, they gave me some insight into how much (or how little) learners were engaging with required readings in advance of class, which also informed how I developed my lectures. Third, because I assigned them a value of 25% of the final grade for learners in the course, they encouraged attendance. This last element was perhaps the most valuable; it is challenging to teach anything to a learner who isn’t there.]

When the academic integrity concerns came to light, I told you off for messing around on the exit tickets in the most academic way possible, via PowerPoint followed by a literal mic drop.

And then . . . I came back for the next class.

Because that is what Indigenous leaders do: We continue to show up and provide you opportunities to learn. As Murray Sinclair-iban once said: “Education is what got us into this mess and education is key to getting us out of it” (National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation, 2025). I believe that, and I frequently call on the sentiments behind it on the hard days.

I am ever hopeful that you will become agents for change, because if I fail at this, my people will continue to die. Sounds a little dramatic, eh? But this isn’t semantics. As we have seen countless times this term through your collaborative research on the lives of Joyce Echaquan, Tina Fontaine, Dudley George, Cindy Gladue, and so many others, that this learning on your part – whether you are targeting a career in health care, social work, policing, criminal justice systems, education, or anywhere else in Canadian society – is a matter of life and death for Indigenous folks.

With that sense of seriousness and urgency in mind, as our time together came upon us, I’ve been thinking a lot about what I hope you will take away from our time together.

The more I thought about what I hoped you would take away, the more I thought about my young friend in the back row. I did warn him I would wave at him during this lecture, and I appreciate his openness to being singled out as part of my talk. As an enrolled learner, he is in first-year of health science. He has attended every single class this term, and he has his anatomy class immediately after this course every week. I know this because he often stays after our lectures are complete to check in about his notes, his progress, and his thoughts about the class content.

Thinking about this learner, I reflected on how different his two back-to-back learning experiences must be.

I became so curious – I am a researcher after all – that I did a little digging into “Anatomy 100”. I found the syllabus – and you all know how much I love a good syllabus – and I learned that the course is a web-based course with all kinds of interesting mechanisms for learning, and I quote, “basic structure and functional relationships of the human body. The course entails the basic building blocks of the human body at the gross and microscopic levels . . . Body organ systems covered in this course will include the skeletal, muscular, nervous, endocrine, cardiovascular, respiratory, digestive, urinary and reproductive systems” (Queen’s University, n.d.).

Let’s be honest: I did a deep dive on Anatomy 100. It struck me that in both spaces you are learning “basic structure and functional relationships” – of very different things. In both spaces, you are learning building blocks that will underpin future learning (Queen’s University, n.d.). I could go on, but I won’t bore you with all the details. Suffice to say that the more I learned about what some of you were learning outside of the four walls of this classroom, the more I got to thinking about some of the things that we experienced here together, and how those experiences might be different than the context of an anatomy class.

We can use the example of academic integrity, including some light cheating on in-class assignments. In the context of an anatomy class, if you don’t put in the work or go to class and somehow still manage to pull off a pass in the course, the consequences will be yours to bear. Right? If you put in the minimum in an anatomy class, you may later struggle in Anatomy 200 because you won’t know, for example, where the bones are. And that will be on you. At that point in time, you’ll either do the work to catch up, or you may eventually change your life plan to avoid having to catch up – but the consequences will be very limited in scope, and of an individual nature.

In the case of our work together, if you don’t complete the readings, or you have some departures from academic integrity, or you let your peers carry a little more water on the group assignment, the consequences will not necessarily be borne by you. Sure, your group members might dislike you, you may not do as well as you hoped in the class, or you may fail the final exam; however, if you pass the class and you haven’t done the work, you’ll personally be okay.

And then it hit me. As different as the two classes are, in this class – just like in Anatomy 100 – if you don’t do the work, you won’t know where the bones are.

You won’t know about the bones in the ground in the schoolyards of residential “schools” (TRC, 2015a). You won’t know about the bones sunk to the bottom of the Red River (MacPherson et al., 2016).You won’t understand why there was a need to search the Prairie Green landfill (Sinclair, 2025).

And the fact that you don’t know where the bones are will be borne, will continue to be borne, by Indigenous Peoples, communities, and nations.

And the more I thought about this, the more I thought about how that’s one thing that really defines the colonial experience in the country known as Canada, isn’t it? Individuals over Indigenous communities.

Now, you will all know by now that I understand all things to be interrelated, and I often find small points of connection between stories. So, I was sitting there, thinking about anatomy, Indigenous Studies, and bones, and I remembered that Maggie Smith, the American poet – not the British thespian who played Prof. McGonagall in the Harry Potter films – wrote a poem, called “Good Bones”. In revisiting the poem as I wrote this lecture, I decided that I wanted to share with you this afternoon. Maggie writes:

Life is short, though I keep this from my children.

Life is short, and I’ve shortened mine

in a thousand delicious, ill-advised ways,

a thousand deliciously ill-advised ways

I’ll keep from my children. The world is at least

fifty percent terrible, and that’s a conservative

estimate, though I keep this from my children.

For every bird there is a stone thrown at a bird.

For every loved child, a child broken, bagged,

sunk in a lake. Life is short and the world

is at least half terrible, and for every kind

stranger, there is one who would break you,

though I keep this from my children. I am trying

to sell them the world. Any decent realtor,

walking you through a real shithole, chirps on

about good bones: This place could be beautiful, right? You could make this place beautiful (Smith, 2023).

I’ll work on keeping it from my children, if you promise to try to make this place, now known as Canada, beautiful.

Now, at the beginning of our class I shared with you that our course had been structured in such a way as to be attentive to the 4R Indigenous Learning Outcomes adapted from the work of Verna J. Kirkness and Ray Barnhardt in their seminal work (Kirkness & Barnhardt, 2001).

At various times throughout the term, I’ve shared and re-shared an image showing the 4Rs of Respect, Relationships, Reciprocity, and Responsibility in balanced relation. And so, I thought it only seemed fitting to offer you key takeaways from this class that are attentive to these key elements of learning – building relationships to ideas and peoples.

Respect, which is a process of “acknowledging and valuing diverse peoples, communities, experiences, and ways of knowing” is the basis for takeaway one: If Canada wanted to, it would (OCAD University, 2025).

Over the course of the semester, we have worked through many broad topic areas, ranging from treaty-making and First Nations women’s rights, through the dangerous work of land defenders, the history of residential schools and forced assimilation, the over-representation of children in child welfare systems, the crisis of Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women, Girls, and Two-Spirit folks, and discrimination in health care – to highlight only a few themes. What I hope you will have identified as a thread running through all these topics is that, fundamentally, the relationship between Canada [and her provincial governments] and Indigenous Peoples is not one grounded in principles of respect. The goal of successive waves of colonization, and later of the government of Canada’s legislative and policy agendas, has been the assimilation of Indigenous Peoples into the body politic.

As we learned about these topics, many learners reached out, struggling to understand how this could be the case, why they were only just learning about it now, and grasping desperately for solutions to these systemic issues.

And while I hope – and actively work towards – the day when we reach a point in Canadian society where the basic humanity of Indigenous Peoples is not a question up for debate, and that our basic human and constitutional rights are respected, the reality for the time being is a difficult one to swallow: If Canada wanted to make a change, to address, systemic anti-Indigenous racism in all its forms, it would. As we have seen in this class, countless reports, inquests, inquiries, investigations, Royal and national commissions, and individual and collective testimonies have identified specific sites of concern, and many have proposed going forward action to begin to rebuild trust-based relationships in this society (Bibliothèque de l’Assemblée nationale du Québec., n.d.; Canada, Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples [RCAP], 1996; Commission of Inquiry into Matters Relating to the Death of Neil Stonechild, 2004; Cormier, 2019; Hamilton & Sinclair, 1991; Manitoba Advocate for Children and Youth, 2019; National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls, 2019; Office of the Chief Coroner for Ontario, 2016; TRC, 2015b; Turpel-Lafond, 2020). Instead of heeding the calls, Canada continues to choose to fight First Nations children in courts, to discriminate through legislative vehicles including the Indian Act, and to fail to uphold basic treaty rights that it is bound, through the so-called Honour of the Crown, to uphold (Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs, 2025; Government of Canada, 1985).

I am by no means saying that the problems would be easy to solve, but if Canada wanted to, it would.

While the situation is urgent and dire, we must seek to rebalance our relationships. Here, we must “recognize the importance of Indigenous knowledge and perspectives in addressing contemporary issues and challenges” (OCAD University, 2025). Relationships are the foundation for takeaway two: Do not forget the glimmers, the spaces where the light shines through.

When you think and speak about Indigenous Peoples and our many communities, it is easy to fall into a pattern of focusing on all the crises that have been created, and are maintained, by ongoing settler colonialism. While it is critical that citizens are engaged in efforts to address and redress historic and ongoing harms to Indigenous communities, it is equally important that you do not forget to celebrate Indigenous knowledge systems, resurgence, and joy.

In the third part of our course, after establishing a common vocabulary and [un]learning, we focused on stories of Indigenous resistance, resurgence, brilliance, and joy. This was a strategic choice, and one that was not without consequence. To highlight moments of hope, love, and transformative collective action, I was required to leave considerable content on my syllabus cutting room floor. While I wish that we could continue our work together for 6 credit hours, or 9 credit hours, or 36 credit hours so that we could properly consider legal, social, and geographic landscapes that we unfortunately left unexplored, I have no regrets about my choice to ensure that we spent some time doing what William Prince from Peguis First Nation, whose music welcomed you into the classroom during our third part of term, describes as “standing in the joy” (Prince, 2023).

As you move through the world beyond the four walls of this classroom, I hope that one thing you remember is that every day Indigenous youth, adults, seniors, and Elders are out there from coast to coast to coast working to support and raise up our young people, our learners, and our communities in the best ways that we know how.

Some, like Minister Nahanni Fontaine and Her Excellency Mary Simon – the first Indigenous Governor General of Canada! – do this work by working within Canadian political systems (Office of the Secretary to the Governor General, n.d.). Others like Sharon and Shirley Firth, Jordin Tootoo, and Waneek Horn-Miller set beautiful examples in sport.

Louis Riel, a great leader of the Métis Nation, is quoted as having said that “My people will sleep for 100 years, and when they awake, it will be the artists that give them their spirits back” (Manitoba Métis Federation, 2025). And boy, did we see some spirit in the works of Christi Belcourt, Kent Monkman, Kenojuak Ashevak, Annie Pootoogook, Tarralik Duffy, and Jeremy Dutcher.

We learned about women like Josephine Mandamin and Autumn Peltier who are walking and speaking for the waters. We learned about some water relations, like Mutehekau Shipu – the Magpie River, who are learning to speak for themselves (with a little help from their human kin; Canadian Geographic, 2022).

In our final classes, we stood in the joy of collective action and Indigenous-lead social movements like #IdleNoMore and #ShutDownCanada. When you leave this class, I hope you raise those stories up and remind those around you to notice Indigenous brilliance and joy. We are still here.

While all the 4Rs are related, my final takeaway calls you to consider that of reciprocity [“understanding the interconnectedness of all things and the importance of giving back to the land, community, and knowledge systems”], and responsibility [“recognizing our obligations to future generations and to the well-being of the land and community”] together (OCAD University, 2025).

I am ending this class with the most important takeaway of all: You may have entered the space, not even knowing what you didn’t know. Over the course of 13 weeks together, I have offered you a highly curated learning experience that should stand as only an introduction. I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: Reconciliation is not some kind of video game where one day you’ll hit the end, and you will get a little pop-up that announces “achievement unlocked! Now you’re reconciled!” The end of this course cannot be the end of your learning.

As the commissioners of the TRC explained:

To some people, reconciliation is the reestablishment of a conciliatory state. However, this is a state that many aboriginal people assert has never existed between aboriginal and non-aboriginal people. To others, reconciliation, in the context of Indian residential schools, is similar to dealing with a situation of family violence. It’s about coming to terms with the events of the past in a manner that overcomes conflict and establishes a respectful and healthy relationship among people, going forward. it is in the latter context that the truth and reconciliation commission of Canada has approached the question of reconciliation. To the commission, reconciliation is about establishing and maintaining a mutually respectful relationship between aboriginal and non-aboriginal peoples in this country. In order for that to happen, there has to be awareness of the past, acknowledgement of the harm that has been inflicted, atonement for the causes, and action to change behavior (emphasis added). (TRC, 2015c, pp. 6–7)

Awareness, acknowledgement, atonement . . . and action to change behaviour. To truly do this, and to do it well, requires lifelong learning and a commitment to ethical citizenship.

In the context of Indigenous legal education, Dr. Tracey Lindberg once wrote:

You do not get to lead or trample. Just gather the materials for the build so we can do it when well. You need to love Indigenous Peoples so much – want your kids to love Indigenous Peoples so much – that you commit to finding out what Indigenous laws, traditions, processes, protocols, truths, philosophies, and yes, ways to mourn, are. You need to love law so much that you suspend your disbelief, decolonize your education, and open your mind to the possibility that colonization is a thing that happened and that you are going to learn it, deconstruct it, replace it, and support the work of Indigenous Peoples in our re-build. You are going to need to be a traitor, because allyship is not enough. (Lindberg, 2019)

And that really is my call to action for you: I hope you leave this space and actively engage in acts of traitorous love, because allyship is not enough.

But: I believe that you could make this place beautiful, and the lives of my kin may literally depend on it.

Maarsii (thank you) for learning with me this term.