Review: Respect and Relationship Session

On March 12th, the SCAA hosted a day-long workshop on the topic of Indigenous-Settler relationships, decolonization, and reconciliation, called the Respect and Relationship Session. The workshop consisted of a morning talk by Eugene Arcand, a Residential School survivor, about his experiences. After lunch, participants were invited to join in a blanket exercise, a teaching tool to share the historic and contemporary relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. For more information on the workshop, please see this previous post.  Following is a brief review of the event, with reflections on the morning's talk by Crista Bradley of the University of Regina, and reflections on the blanket exercise in the afternoon by the Provincial Archives' Jeremy Mohr. 

Crista Bradley
University of Regina Archives 
Records and Information Management Archivist
On the morning of March 12, 2018, SCAA members gathered for the first half of the Respect and Relationship Session.  We heard Eugene Arcand, a Cree man from Muskeg Lake First Nation, speak about the experience and effects of the eleven years that he spent in Saskatchewan Residential Schools.  He also spoke about the Residential School Settlement Agreement and reconciliation at both personal and national levels.  Eugene was so articulate and compelling.   He shared thoughtful and candid reflections on being taken from his family, his time at school, and some of his challenges and accomplishments in the years that followed.  He showed us a well-loved archival photo of his fellow classmates, and referenced it throughout the morning - adding names and stories to some of the others who walked part of this road with him.  It was so generous of Eugene to share some of his history with us, to help those of us assembled understand a little more of our own. 

Jeremy Mohr
Manager of Reference and Outreach Services
Provincial Archives of Saskatchewan
For the afternoon of the workshop we got to experience a very moving way of summarizing Indigenous history from pre-European contact to today through the blanket exercise. Using a series of blankets on the floor to represent the land/mother earth, and with all the participants representing Indigenous peoples, we were visually shown how various events and policies affected Indigenous people. We also read aloud statements at various points describing an Indigenous perspective on things that occurred. As we were led through hundreds of years of history the blankets shrank ever smaller and separated until they were mere postage stamps of their original size. More and more of the participants were also forced to stand off to the side having been a victim of disease, famine, or a government policy that separated them from their culture. It was a truly amazing way to showcase the importance and connection to the land for Indigenous people; to show hundreds of years of history and its effect on a people; and to directly connect participants to being a part of that history. I was truly glad for the healing circle that followed where we could all freely express how we felt about what we had just witnessed, and to hear some of the stories from the elder Lillian Piapot, facilitator Michael Cardinal and others that know and feel this way on a daily basis. I was even more thankful to know that this exercise is happening more and more throughout the province, in schools and to other organizations. I would strongly encourage anyone who is considering becoming more involved in reconciliation, or who just wants to know more about this history to take part in one of these sessions. You can learn more about Kairos, the organization that created and facilitates the blanket exercise here https://www.kairosblanketexercise.org/

Questions for Consideration: 

• What are some potential outcomes for archivists (and by extension, archives) from better acquainting ourselves with Indigenous histories and experiences?

• How might this knowledge affect the ways in which an archive connects with its community? 

• Would you like the SCAA to host more workshops like this one? Why or why not? 

• What parts of your own collections highlight the histories of marginalized segments of the population? How might you bring these histories to light? 

• What are some of the challenges you have faced in working with materials related to Indigenous histories?