TRUTH FIRST
BEGINNINGS
It made me think of what Jackson had told me as we parted. “To me, this is actually a positive place, a place of success,” she’d said. “I got two degrees here. I came for upgrading. I was a dropout. And I managed to pull up my socks and get things done. And now enrolment is growing. We’re becoming more well-known. And all those things that were taken away — the ceremony, the identity — that’s what students learn here, to grow, to come into the
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cultural identity that was lost during the residential school time.” The transformation of Blue Quills from a repository of shame and horror into a conduit for knowledge and hope is not just uplifting but symbolic. It’s what needs to happen in the hearts and minds of Canadians. A few weeks later, I asked Janice Makokis over coffee what such a person would look and act like, a white person who has turned that corner. “Well, I guess for starters, they’d
understand their privilege. They would understand the privilege they carry as a non-Indigenous person. They would understand the history and issues of Indigenous peoples. They would know when to use their privilege in places and spaces to advocate for Indigenous peoples if there is not an Indigenous person there. And they would know how to work with Indigenous peoples in a respectful way where they don’t try and control the agenda. And they