Page 70 - Restorative Journey: Indigenous Educational Wellness

Voice Perspective
These terms will be blended into an updated vernacular that will be more meaningful
and relevant. They will better represent a language of empowerment, resilience, and strength that reflects being dissimilated Indigenous Nations within a larger nation.
Indigenous peoples do not need to passively learn and then recite English terms that limit cultural understanding, community development, individual aspirations, and pedagogies. Instead, we can co-create
a form of reverse colonialism that finds empowerment in the language that defined and limited Indigenous peoples’ collective potential.
Gestures toward reconciliation in accordance with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report are at risk of being reduced to
the requirement of a recital of a land acknowledgement mentioning the 94 Calls to Actions from the TRC, and possibly referring to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP).
Elizabeth Doxtater
Indigenous peoples reaffirm and maintain a distinct sovereign status and are the only group of nations who have nation-to- nation treaty relationships with the Crown. As Indigenous nations and communities become stronger and recognized as native to these shores, not mislabelled as minority or ethnic groups, it is important to include true reconciliatory actions in any education model.
Within this model, reframing the discourse of Indigenous education enables us to work toward restorative Indigenous educational wellness. This monumental time of truth and reconciliation affords us the opportunity
to work as treaty partners and create models that honestly strengthen our relationships. We are at a place in history where we can reframe the discourse to commemorate the past, educate the present, and contribute
to the wellness of the current and future generations of all treaty partners.
62 Commemoration • Education • Healing/Wellness