Page 61 - Restorative Journey: Indigenous Educational Wellness

Justice Murray Sinclair, former TRC Commissioner, stated during an interview with APTN News:
“Public school systems have largely failed about respect for Indigenous people. They taught everybody that Indigenous people were inferior,
had no rights, had no existence, had nothing worth talking about, that they were heathens, savages, pagans, uncivilized, that they were lucky Europeans came here and
saved them from extinction – which is all mythology.
They basically taught white supremacy, saying that the white Europeans who came here and settled saved this country from being nothing. And therefore, they teach the myth of white superiority. And those twin myths of Indigenous inferiority and white superiority
are the terrible results of the public school system.”
– (APTN News interview with Justice Sinclair hosted by Brett Forester, January 2021)
Figure 34: Image of the Two Row Wampum replica. Photo taken by Elizabeth Doxtater14
14 This replica belt was part of the Since Forever Art Show in 2017 during Canada’s sesquicentennial (150th) anniversary., Treaty partners were invited to contribute individual rows for its completion. The intent was to keep the pattern accurate to foster respectful and meaningful understanding of this agreement. Supplies and instructions to follow the pattern of the Two Row Wampum belt were provided. However, some of the contributions, as seen in the last three rows of this image, reflect a disconnect between the learning and the application.
Commemoration • Education • Healing/Wellness 53