Truth and Reconciliation

This post originally appeared on ActiveHistory.ca

By Amy Bell, Scott Cameron, and Thomas Peace

Huron University College is London, Ontario’s oldest post-secondary institution. The college was founded in 1863 to train priests and missionaries to evangelize throughout the Lower Great Lakes.

Over the course of its history, the college has had two locations, one on either side of Deshkan Ziibii, or Thames River, the waterway which today runs through the heart of London. This river has been (and remains for the latter three) of central importance for Attawandaron, Anishinaabe, Haudenosaunee and Lenni-Lenape Peoples; a homeland where relationships between nations have been and (are) governed by the Dish with One Spoon Treaty, the 1796 London Township Treaty, and the 1822 Longwoods Treaty. As such, Huron has a deep and complex history interacting with Chippewa of the Thames, Aamjiwnaang, and Bkejwanong First Nations as well as the Haudenosaunee at Oneida of the Thames and Six Nations of the Grand River.

Huron University College played an active transitional role in normalizing a settler presence on Indigenous lands. For much of its history, the church and the college were tightly interconnected: sharing a name, similar heraldry, common resources, staff, institutional structures, and a focus on evangelizing First Peoples.

Today at Huron, there are few reminders or institutional references to Huron’s complex missionary past, its close connection with the Mohawk Institute or Shingwauk Residential School, or even of the Indigenous students who attended the college and went on to become priests and missionaries themselves.

Huron students were introduced to this material in two upper-year classes and over two academic years (2015-6 and 2016-7). In HIS 4202F: Confronting Colonialism: Land, Literacies and Learning, Tom Peace situated Huron’s nineteenth-century collection of missionary books within the context of the Lower Great Lakes. The course challenged students to grapple with the complex ways that education, schooling, literacy and writing have been used, and contested, as imperial and colonial tools to assimilate and dispossess Indigenous people of their Land, culture and political power.

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This post originally appeared on ActiveHistory.ca

By Amy Bell, Scott Cameron, and Thomas Peace

The filing of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s (TRC) Final Report marked a watershed moment when Canadian universities began to respond to calls for recognition and reconciliation. Land acknowledgements recognizing the link between Indigenous peoples and their traditional territories have gradually spread to universities across Canada, and university administrations have begun processes of self-auditing and consultation with Indigenous communities and nations.

Three weeks after the TRC report, Universities Canada, which represents the leadership of 96 universities across Canada, published a set of thirteen principles on Indigenous post-secondary education to advance opportunities for Indigenous students in post secondary institutions and integrate Indigenous themes and topics throughout the academy. In 2017, eighty percent of their member universities self-reported that they were conducting activities to promote intercultural engagement through cultural activities, events and forums, talking circles, competency or reconciliation training; just under seventy percent were developing strategic plans for advancing reconciliation; and two-thirds were working to incorporate Indigenous knowledge and methods into research projects and classrooms on campus.

These initiatives range from teach-ins on Indigenous law and practice at the University of Waterloo, to University of Toronto’s hiring of an outreach librarian to work with Indigenous students, communities and collections, to the University of Alberta’s Massive Open Online Course [MOOC], Indigenous Canada, which explores contemporary issues and Canadian history from Indigenous perspectives and can be audited for free.

Broader initiatives include greater outreach and recruitment within Indigenous communities, developing curricula specific to Indigenous cultures, hiring more Indigenous faculty positions and incorporating Indigenous representation in university governance. Both Ryerson University and Acadia University have, for example, committed to long-term decolonization strategies that will incorporate these types of systemic changes (Acadia Launches, 2018, Truth and Reconciliation, 2018). They require a long-term financial and resource commitment, a willingness to consult and listen to Indigenous communities, and an openness to structural change.

But what happens when your home university is not able to, or is unwilling, to engage institutionally with the Calls to Action? For a variety of reasons, the administration of our home institution, Huron University College, in London, Ontario, was slow to respond to the TRC. The question we faced in this context was: how can faculty enact change without structural transformation or significant administrative support?

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