One school’s reconciliation journey By Barbara Parkin, teacher, artist, writer, Coast Salish Territory We are on a reconciliation journey, and like many school staff in BC, we expect to be on this journey for years to come. The staff at Quilchena Elementary in Vancouver is non-Indigenous, with roots in Europe and Asia. Back in September 2013, two staff members attended the Truth and Reconciliation Commission hearings in Vancouver. From that day forward, we began our journey. We brought in First Nations artists Anastasia Hendry and Alice Guss to lead the children in activities from beading/sewing to cedar bark weaving. A local naturalist, Lori Snyder, led students and teachers
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through identifying Indigenous medicinal plants on the school grounds. The school’s professional development committee arranged for BCTF’s Aboriginal Education Co-ordinator, Gail Stromquist, to
lead workshops—one workshop on infusing Aboriginal content into the curriculum, the other on the history of residential schools. Both workshops were defining. In 2017, we spent a professional development day at the Musqueam Cultural Centre with Musqueam leaders Larry Grant, Mary Point, and Debra Sparrow. At another schoolbased Pro-D day, the Vancouver Board of Education’s (VBE) Indigenous Education Team led us through the BC Blanket Exercise.
