Home from my Prairie

 Home from my Prairie

What a wonderful week!

The highlight of my tour home was being able to share my learnings with thousands of students and teachers. 

I am in a position and of the age where I  can be open and honest. For our world to become what it should be, our youth will have to be given the tools they need to make it so. 

1. Residential schools were right there - all around me when I was a boy. Had the adults in my world had the foresight and the courage to tell me the truth about what was going on, I would have had a chance to make a difference.

Not a word about residential schools. Was it that no one knew about the hurt and abuse that was taking place in those schools? I think not. I don't believe that my parents and my teachers were anywhere near as aware as we are today, but many knew and they remained  silent. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Recommendations are clear in telling us that we MUST tell our children what happened. Are we? Before teachers tell the truth, they must feel that they are supported - they must trust the system they work within. This is where we are struggling. I hope that our board and administrators are leading in this effort.

2. Canada's Chinese Canadian youth deserve to know the truth of how Canadians treated the Chinese after inviting them to Canada to work on our new railroad.  Chinese youth deserve to know as does every other student. Why do our students not know that Chinese workers had to pay their voyage even after we invited them, needing their
help...that they were paid half what a white worker was paid...that they had tarps for shelter while their white counterparts were housed in shacks that provided much better protection from the elements and also that they would be responsible for all the hard and dangerous work. Should they not be informed that one Chinese worker died for every mile of railroad laid between Calgary and Vancouver? 

3. Canada's North - The lives of thousands of Northern Canadians would be so much fuller and much more gentle if our youth learned the truth about how these Northerners live and why. The seal hunt was decimated by people who knew nothing about the Inuit, the Innu or the Gwich'in. A movement was started to ban the seal hunt, the traditional way of life of these proud Canadians. Brigitte Bardot started a movement. a movement that ended with the banning of seal fur. She/they spoke of small white calves being cruelly bludgeoned to death on the open ice. They had pictures of men with clubs slaughtering these small white animals. This is NOT how seals were hunted. Yet, we Canadians did not stand up for our Northern family. We let them down then and continue to do so today. I have seen them hunt. They love and respect the seal. They share the last breath of the seal as it dies. If Canadian youth were taught the truth of  the hunt and of life in the North, they could make Canada a better Canada.

4. Our schools - We continue, and fueled by social media, to have our youth believe that success is defined by the clothes they wear, the cars they drive and the size of the houses they live in. Study hard. Master the curriculum and the academic world, and you are well on your way to success. We must tell students that they are being misled...that the key to success is not building their lives around ego or money but rather around the gifts that each has within. That is hard to do when our schools focus solely on the curriculum and not on the individuals under our care.