High School Teachers Working Towards Reconciliation: Examining the Teaching and Learning of Residential Schools

Researchers: Tana Mitchell and Jennifer Tupper
October 2017

Canada has a long and well-documented history of unequal relations with the first peoples of this land. From policies of forced starvation (Daschuk, 2013), to the ongoing murders and disappearances of Indigenous girls and women in Canada, Indigenous peoples continue to be marginalized, oppressed, and rendered invisible in national narratives. Yet many Canadians remain ignorant about Canada’s history of colonialism and its ongoing effects. This reality creates significant challenges with respect to our abilities as a nation to work toward reconciliation between Indigenous peoples and settler Canadians. It is thus important to be attentive to and understand the many very real ways that Indigenous peoples have been, and continue to be, deeply harmed by historical colonial policies/ practices in this country, including the Indian residential school (IRS) system, and the ways in which settler Canadians are both implicated in and how they may work against these practices. With this in mind, our research was an attempt to respond to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada: Calls to Action specific to educating Canadians about the history and legacies of residential schools in Canada. Grounded in anti-colonial theory and using action research and critical discourse analysis as orienting methodologies, this qualitative research involved seven teacher-researchers from Regina Public Schools, one Faculty of Education participant from the University of Regina and numerous high school students from across Regina public schools. 

As an action research project and in light of the Calls to Action, we approached this project as “a form of self-reflective inquiry by (teacher-researcher) participants … in order to improve understanding of their practices in context with a view to maximizing social justice” (Cohen, Manion, & Morrison, 2000, p.227). The research explored how teachers took up and taught about processes of colonialism in Canada, including the IRS system, how secondary students made sense of themselves as Canadians as they learned about colonialism, the history and legacy of residential schools, the challenges and successes of classroom teachers in teaching about colonialism and residential schools, and how classrooms can become sites for reconciliation. An overall goal of the collaborative action research project was to deeply consider the practice of truth and reconciliation education.