Day of Truth and Reconciliation: Talking to Kids

With the Day of Truth and Reconciliation approaching, I felt it was important to provide some resources about how to talk to kids and address some commonly asked questions as a starting point to the journey of reconciliation. Please find below some considerations:

1. Parent Resource: There are many resources that exist including this article by David A. Robertson about how to talk to kids.
2. What is Truth and Reconciliation? Here is a great video by Isabel DeRoy-Olson CBC kids News Contributor explaining when Truth and Reconciliation started, and five key things individuals can do to help including paying attention in history class, remembering and honouring indigenous people and residential school survivors on orange shirt day, reading about indigenous issues, reading all 94 calls to action in the truth and reconciliation report, and speaking up when seeing indigenous people treated unfairly.
3. What does Indigenous mean? CBC kids News has a accessible video for kids to start to build their understanding.
4. What are Residential Schools? Monique Gray Smith’s video is a great resource for parents to watch as it speaks to how to talk to kids about.
5. Book Resources. This article from CBC provides 10 Beautiful Indigenous books to start exploring with your child.
6. Journey of Healing Together. First reflect upon what is your role on how to continue to support the healing that needs to take place for reconciliation. Then you can discuss with your child what would be meaningful for them, it could start with reading some of the book resources or continuing to educate through CBC kids resources, and building from there. There is another great video by Isabel DeRoy-Olson CBC kids News Contributor about how to be an ally to indigenous people.