Locating Myself in Reconciliation

My name is Cassidy Serhienko and I am a second year education student at the University of Saskatchewan. I chose to pursue my degree at the University of Saskatchewan because it is close to home and they recently restructured the program to be direct entry and include more diverse class options and in-school placements. I have wanted to be a teacher for my entire life, I always enjoyed school and I love the school environment. Education has always been very important to me and pursuing a career in education has been a lifelong goal of mine. I always had very good teachers who supported me and my classmates throughout our school careers and they have inspired me to do the same for my students. After starting University and taking Indigenous Studies classes and Teaching for Reconciliation classes I can see more clearly all the ways that the school system was set up for me to succeed. I flourished in school, not only because of the type of learner I am but because my history and perspectives were taught as the dominant narrative. Indigenous students and other students of colour do not always have this privilege, and it has strong effects on how they perform in school. As Amanda Gebhard discusses in her article on the effects of residential schools on the modern education system, Indigenous students are working against many obstacles and a lack of visibility within the curriculum is one of them. In an interview, one teacher says that “Aboriginal culture in the curriculum [is] crucial to the success of her Aboriginal students” (Gebhard, 15). As a person of European descent, the school structure has always catered to me and I realize now that this has been a contributing factor to my success in school.

On my mother’s side I am English and Swiss and I do not know all of my heritage from my father’s side, but it includes Hungarian and Russian. My grandparents on my mother’s side are farmers and raise purebred Charolais cattle and my father’s parents were sale managers, so also heavily involved in the cattle industry. My parents raise purebred Charolais and my father works for Semex, a global cattle genetics company. I do not know very much about my family’s involvement in colonization but they without a doubt have benefited from it as landowners in this province. I come from a very small town called Maymont located in between Saskatoon and North Battleford, it is a very white and (in general) racist community. I do have white privilege, it is something that I was always aware of but until coming to University it was not something that I ever really had to confront, coming from the community that I do. Robin Diangelo writes in her article on white fragility:

“For many white people, a single required multicultural education course taken in college, or required “cultural competency training” in their workplace, is the only time they may encounter a direct and sustained challenge to their racial understandings” (Diangelo, 55).

I certainly think that this is true of many of my high school classmates. I am a voracious reader and was more interested in social justice movements like feminism and so I exposed myself to writing about racism and inequality that we were not necessarily shown in school. That being said, I did not experience a “sustained challenge” to my understanding of race until I started this class on teaching for reconciliation. It is easy to feel guilty for experiencing white privilege and it is a knee jerk reaction to defend yourself when you are called out for benefitting from it. However, I have learned that to truly have an impact in confronting these inequalities as a teacher, it is more important to acknowledge your privilege and to teach students about what white privilege and racism looks like and means for them.

Prior to coming to University I did not know that much about reconciliation or what it meant for me as a future teacher. Now that I have learned more about what reconciliation actually is, I always think about it in terms of my involvement in education. For me, reconciliation has become about the importance of making a lifelong commitment to teaching about Indigenous knowledge systems, history and perspectives. In relation to that, it is about making my classroom a space where Indigenous voices are heard and Indigenous students feel comfortable sharing and celebrating their heritage. I was lucky to have teachers in high school who made a point of teaching Indigenous content, and I have realized over the course of this class that my experience could be characterized as unique. This should not be the case, and in order to be dedicated to reconciliation as an educator it is important to be aware of Indigenous issues as well as problems Indigenous students may face in the school system. Jennifer A. Tupper’s article discusses how treaty education can be used to disrupt settler worldviews, she writes that in order for Canadians to engage in reconciliation they must rethink Canadian history. To do so “requires dismantling the myth of an empty land, in which First Nations peoples are rendered invisible” (Tupper). This statement resonated deeply with me as I could see how even though I was taught about Indigenous peoples role in Canadian history, it was still always through a very Eurocentric lense. Indigenous perspectives and understandings of historical events was rarely discussed and including these is crucial not only to Indigenous students success, but also to cultivating understanding and empathy in non-Indigenous students.

References

DiAngelo, R. (2011). White fragility. International Journal of Critical Pedagogy,3(3), 54-70.

Gebhard, A. (2017). Reconciliation or racialization: Contemporary discourses about

residential schools in the Canadian prairies. Canadian Journal of Education, 40(1), 1-30.

Tupper, J. (2013). Disrupting ignorance and settler identities: The challenges of preparing

beginning teachers for treaty education.In Education, 17(3), (38-55)