Posted by Peter Roaf on Sep 28, 2021
All students and Delta staff will benefit from a deeper understanding of Canada’s history of colonization and its influence on current relationships between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people when they embark on a journey towards reconciliation. Diane Jubinville, Delta School District Vice-Principal, Indigenous Education Department, and Heide Wood, an Educator in the School District's Indigenous Education Department, spoke to Ladner Rotary members on September 28, 2021.
 
Leading up to Canada's first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on September 30, 2021, honouring the lost children and survivors of residential schools, their families and communities, the two leaders in Indigenous Education in Delta, spoke about the long history of 13,500 years or more for First Nations in British Columbia.
 
Vice-Principal of Indigenous Education at Delta
School District, Diane Jubinville, demonstrates
with a chain of beads the 13,500 years of First
Nations inhabitation of what is now British Columbia
The last few inches in the chain of beads represent
the time since Canada became a nation with
Confederation in 1867
 
Truth and Reconciliation Day is one opportunity to recognize and honour that heritage in moving forward as well as commemorate the tragic and painful history and ongoing impacts of residential schools as a vital component of the reconciliation process.
 
According to the Honourable Justice Murray Sinclair Chair, Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, "We are governed in our approach to reconciliation with this thought: the way that we have all been educated in this country…has brought us to where we are today—to a point where the psychological and emotional well-being of Aboriginal children has been harmed, and the relationship between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal people has been seriously damaged… but education holds the key to making things better… if we agree on the objective of reconciliation, and agree to work together, the work we do today, will immeasurably strengthen the social fabric of Canada tomorrow.”
 
Guillermo Bustos, former social studies teacher at Delta Secondary School, who taught Indigenous Education in its earliest days for Delta (left) and President Denis Denischuk (right) thank Diane Jubinville and Heide Wood