Northwest Territories solidly on path to reconciliation: Education Minister attends TRC closing event
Publication Date
News Release
OTTAWA (June 3, 2015) – Northwest Territories Minister of Education, Culture and Employment (ECE) Jackson Lafferty attended the Walk of Reconciliation and spoke at the Actions of Reconciliation event during the closing ceremonies of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) on June 1 in Ottawa.
“I am both pleased and saddened to attend this event,” said Minister Lafferty. “There has been such an outflow of support, interest and action generated by the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, but we are truly just getting started. In the Northwest Territories, we heeded the challenge laid before us by the TRC four years ago – to address the history and legacy of residential schools for our students. We responded, and along with the Government of Nunavut, the TRC and the Legacy of Hope Foundation, we developed the first comprehensive teaching resource in Canada on the history of residential schools and their legacy. We have made this a mandatory requirement for graduation for all students attending high school in the NWT.”
As of February 2015, all teachers in the NWT have been offered the training for this course, now in its second edition. Feedback from the first year informed the second printing, and numerous teachers from across the territory claim it has profoundly changed their perspective on the impacts of residential schools across Canada.
Minister Lafferty added, “as Justice Murray Sinclair of the TRC has said consistently, ‘there is no reconciliation without education.’ Teachers are a critical part of this information, which is why we have included them as key partners in sharing the materials and stories gathered through our resource and materials. We want to ensure this moves beyond our northern borders to the rest of Canada.
“This is one of the reasons we have invited Aboriginal educators and indigenous scholars from across Canada to the Aboriginal Educators’ Symposium, coinciding with the Council for Ministers of Education Canada (CMEC) annual conference, in Yellowknife at the end of June. Recognizing that educators have the ability to transform students’ lives, we hope to explore how to better support Aboriginal educators in their work and to determine how to attract and retain more Aboriginal people to the teaching profession. This is so fundamental to our path to reconciliation and I will be extending an offer to provide training on the residential schools experience to other jurisdictions at the CMEC conference at the end of the month. This will provide other jurisdictions with the information to develop and design their own training for the specific needs of their teachers.”
Minister Lafferty is the co-lead with Alberta for the CMEC pan-Canadian Aboriginal Education plan, which was committed to at CMEC 2014.