NEWS PHOTO EMMA BENNETT
Patricia Danyluk, an educator from the Werkland School of Education in Calgary, speaks during a presentation on Teaching Teachers About Reconciliation. Educator Yvonne Poitras Pratt also spoke during the workshop as part of Healing and Reconciliation Week at Medicine Hat College. A number of events will continue throughout the week.
jappel@medicinehatnews.com@MHNJeremyAppel
Indigenous and settler Hatters have the opportunity this week to walk the long road to reconciliation arm in arm.
Healing and Reconciliation Week has been ongoing at Medicine Hat College since Monday.
Whitney Ogle, the school’s Indigenous support specialist, says the meaning of reconciliation isn’t set in stone.
“We need to create opportunities for students and community to engage in what reconciliation is as individuals and as a community,” said Ogle.
For Ogle, the first word she associates with reconciliation is ‘transformative’.
“Healing and reconciliation is truly taking the steps (and) actions that are needed,” she said. “It’s trying to build a collective understanding of our history.”
This is Healing and Reconciliation Week’s fifth year in Medicine Hat, and second hosted by MHC.
“We are providing experience in reconciliation in the forms of performing arts, with artists coming from all over central and northern Alberta, (and) through the traditional ceremonies of the Blackfoot, Cree, Metis, Ojibway and Sioux people,” said Ogle.
There are also feasts, lectures and conference sessions on Indigenous ways of knowing, she added.
Ogle says the purpose of these events is “to really captivate people to walk their own path to reconciliation, so that they can feel comfortable in owning their truth and moving forward.”
But reconciliation is an ongoing process, she said.
“There is no deadline, there is no black and white, there is no end goal,” said Ogle. “Reconciliation is a continued journey that will always progress for our future generations, because I understand our way of life is for the next generations to be passed on.”
Settler Canadians have a role to play in reconciliation, too, Ogle says.
“Regardless of what’s happening, reconciliation is for everyone, because our historical legacy has affected us all, whether it’s belief systems about Indigenous or belief systems about non-Indigenous,” she said. “We need everyone to write a new history. It can’t just be one-sided.”
The scheduled events continue today with the Walk for Reconciliation outside the Esplanade at 1 p.m.
