Facing History & Ourselves: ‘Indigenous Resistance, Resilience and Resurgence’ Workshop

On July 31, 2024, I had the opportunity to participate in a full day workshop in Toronto. Previously, I’ve participated in a number of activities through the organization Facing History & Ourselves, but what captured my interest most about this workshop was the subject matter and the facilitators. I knew that this would be an opportunity to really localize my learning and connect with other types of educators in the area from different teaching contexts.

This workshop promised learning combined with a walk tour of downtown Toronto combined with a lunch of Indigenous dishes.  The morning began in the On-Site gallery which had a wonderful exhibition ‘Other Tongues: Part 1 Communication’ installed related to language and identity. I enjoyed being able to walk around and take in this exhibit throughout the morning.

Then, we listened to Lorrie Gallant walk us through some history and discuss its representation in different pieces of art work. After a short break, we had the opportunity to hear Kahsenniyo Kick (Mohawk/Six Nations/Wolf clan) share her experiences and her spoken work poetry. I had previously heard her speak at the July 1st, 2021 gathering at the Mohawk Institute in Brantford following the identification of the remains of Indigenous children who attended the Kamloops Residential School. She shared a powerful spoken word which she repeated this day called, “I wish.” This poem explored the disconnected from culture, language, family, land, kinship relationships as past but also on-going traumas resulting from the residential and day schools.  She very graciously also shared her personal experiences of attending day schools as a child, as well her experience of forced sterilization during the birth of her second child. This information was chilling as it reinforces that colonial violence is not a mere thing of the past. She’s younger than I am by more than a decade. She grew up less than 40 km away from I grew up, and yet, she experienced these traumas so recently. These are not distant problems of a colonial past, but on-going traumas that are being inflicted by a system of government that has failed to fulfill its promises.

The last part of the day, saw us taking our boxed lunches and heading to Nathan Phillip’s Square where Sherri Vansickle talked about the history of the land. As an educator, she talked a lot about the role of education historically, as well as its future promise in effecting real change. All three speakers emphasized the importance of land and the connection between the Indigenous peoples and land. Several months later, I’m still processing the teachings  from that day.