BIV MAGAZINE
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TEACHING TRUTH Lawyers, engineers and geoscientists get new education mandates as professional associations increase Indigenous training
GLEN KORSTROM
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raining related to truth, reconciliation and understanding Indigenous issues has increased in the past year, and in some cases, the training has been made mandatory for members of professional associations in B.C.
Indigenous training organizations, such as Indigenous Corporate Training Inc., have been around for years, but there has been a surge in interest in education around Indigenous issues throughout 2021, particularly after the preliminary discovery in May of an estimated 215 unmarked graves on the grounds of a former residential school in Kamloops. Diane Smylie, senior director of San’yas Indigenous Cultural Safety Learning Programs at the Provincial Health Services Authority, told BIV Magazine that her organization trains around 35,000 students per year, and that this volume is increasing. Since her organization’s inception in 2010, it has trained around 160,000 students, she says, with some of them in professional associations, and others in private companies or the public sector. San’yas includes 10 courses — all centred on anti-racism training. “The curriculum is based on what we call an anti-racist, decolonizing pedagogy,” she says. “The pedagogy is very similar in lots of ways across the courses, but what is different is we’ve partnered with Indigenous Peoples in different sectors or jurisdictions.” Kerry Simmons, executive director of the Canadian Bar Association British Columbia Branch (CBABC) says her organization’s members are increasingly asking for Indigenous-related training courses. “We’re seeing more people attend each one of these courses,” she says. “In one that we did this fall with Indigenous Corporate Training, we had so many people interested that we had to offer it three times.” CBABC is one of many organizations that offer lawyers a range of continuing education and professional development training. The Law Society of British Columbia (LSBC) is the regulator
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for B.C.’s legal profession, and it requ i res practisi ng law yers to ta ke profession a l development courses annually. Lawyers are then free to choose which courses they take, a nd from wh ich organization. One new development, however, is t h a t t h e L S B C ’s b enchers i n 202 1 CPABC CEO Lori Mathison has been d e te r m i n e d t h a t trying to increase Indigenous training I nd igenous i ntercultural competency and recruitment at her association • and understanding is so important that, ROB KRUYT starting in 2022, all lawyers in B.C. must take a six-hour, LSBC-designed course that outlines the history of Crown relations with Aboriginal Peoples. The course delves into the history and legacy of residential schools, and how legislation regarding Indigenous Peoples created the issues reconciliation seeks to address. Lawyers must complete this course within two years. The rationale for the legal profession to heighten the importance of Indigenous education stems from the 2015 Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) report’s recommendations, Simmons explains. “The TRC observed that our legal systems and lawyers have
2022-01-12 10:13 AM
