A Consider This Opinion Piece: Reconciliation in Universities – U Alberta

October 9, 2015

On Wednesday, October 14, I hope you’ll join me for the public lecture Reconciliation in Post-Secondary: Implementing the TRC Recommendations.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 2015 report calls on post-secondary organizations to fully engage in reconciliation. As Chief TRC Commissioner Murray Sinclair said, “the truth will set you free, but first it will piss you off.”

To meaningfully engage in reconciliation, universities must look beyond recruitment of Aboriginal faculty and students and the development of Aboriginal programs towards acknowledgment of the historic and contemporary colonial bones of the university itself. In its final report, the TRC said that harms accumulated over the 100 years that residential schools operated throughout Canada amounted to cultural genocide. I believe that Canadian universities were more apt to train and support faculty and students to implement the residential school regime than to protest against it

Read More: http://blog.ualberta.ca/2015/10/a-consider-this-opinion-piece.html?m=1