CALL TO ACTION

Dozens of orange hearts pasted on the wall of a Cayuga high school hall bear a message of “reflection, hope and love” for residential school survivors.

“For every person who is taught the importance of truth and reconciliation, we grow one person closer to a unified Canada,” one reads.

And another: “You are not alone. The world is on your side to fight this injustice.”

The messages were left by some of the hundreds of students who visited truth and reconciliation learning stations developed by Grade 12 law students at Cayuga Secondary School, located in Haldimand County just outside of Six Nations of the Grand River and Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation.

On their own or in small groups, students researched and created a poster about one of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action from its 2015 report. The conference-style fair was set up in a learning resources room during fourth period from Tuesday to Friday for the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Friday.

John Lafortune, a student in the international and Canadian law class, said he picked No. 81, which calls on the government to erect a “publicly accessible, highly visible” monument to honour residential school survivors and children who were lost.

“This is an issue that affects us as a nation,” said the 17-year-old, whose background is Ojibwa. “It’s a lot more than a statue.”

Each day during fourth period, law students engage their peers — an estimated 550 of them by the end of the week — in conversation about reconciliation as they loop through the 13 presentations. The posters are required to have an interactive component and many use QR codes linked to resources so students can deepen their learning.

John’s poster invites students to share — anonymously on a sticky note — their thoughts on the best ways to honour survivors in a monument.

“I’ve been surprised by some of the Grade 9s,” he said. “In Grade 8, there’s not lot taught about residential schools, but there have been quite a few who are genuinely interested and would like to educate themselves.”

Student Areej Qureshi, 17, said she chose the fourth call to action, which calls on the federal government to establish national standards for the apprehension of Indigenous children and custody cases.

“The reason that I chose this call to action was because it has to do with Indigenous children keeping their Indigenous identity, which is exactly what residential schools programs were trying to get rid of,” she said. “I felt that was really significant.”

Grand Erie District School Board teacher Meghan Cameron said the goal for each presenter is “to help promote an understanding of why the call to action is there and what it’s calling for, and how it will achieve justice for residential school survivors.”

“Every single student in period four will have an opportunity to go through,” she said. “The whole idea is that it’s an educational piece for the entire school.”

Cameron said the class began the year with conversations around “personal concepts of justice” and civil litigation as a means of achieving justice. The Indian Residential School Settlement Agreement is the largest class-action settlement in Canadian history to date and spurred the creation of the commission.

The law teacher said it’s a “progressive” initiative that can be built on each year. Last year, her students did a historical overview of the residential school system.

“This is a process that everyone needs to be a part of, that this isn’t just an isolated event in one particular day or week,” she said.