Using Facing History's "Stolen Lives" in the Classroom

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I didn't learn about these things when I was in high school. Residential school was not talked about when I was going through my educational experience. And I didn't know what I didn't know. And I find that now our teachers are starting to ask those questions and realizing that they really want to make sure that they're doing the teaching and their students are doing the learning in a respectful way, in a good way, in a way that honours those who came before whose history has not been told, whose voice has not been heard.

And so a resource like Stolen Lives allows them to continue that learning, to be able to know how to talk to students about residential schools, to know how to approach an indigenous person to come and share with the classroom in a respectful way.

And so the fact that Facing History and Ourselves was willing to step up and say, this is something that we're also missing from our own strategies, our own resources, and we need to do this in a good way, we need to engage the indigenous community in how we're going to create these resources, has been wonderful. And we're not taking anything away from anybody, but voices are being heard that have been silenced in the past.

I feel very, very delighted but also amazed that something has evolved to this level to be able to teach Canada, not only our students, but Canada, what it is that has been ignored and missed. Individually, I never thought I'd see the day this would happen.

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