The power of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is it pulled back the drape a little bit on Canada\u2019s colonial history and allowed Canadians to take a peek behind that colonial curtain. Many for the first time to see what was Canada\u2019s role in residential schools? What happened to the children in those residential schools? And how can we fix this collectively as a nation? <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its final report in 2015. It has 94 calls to action. The top ones are all to do with children including remedying inequalities and child welfare care for First Nations, M\u00e9tis and Inuit children. Also, implementing Jordan\u2019s Principle, making sure that they have adequate education, making sure teachers are trained about First Nations, M\u00e9tis and Inuit people so they can support their students in learning and also understand their student\u2019s liberalities in a better way. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So all those calls to action are there and you should really take a look at them as an early childhood educator to see which ones you can activate not only as a professional in your professional and as a citizen in your personal life but also to engage the children in your centres with. Which is where Spirit Bear comes in. And you can see here, he\u2019s actually got an official TRC pin. And that was given to him by the chairperson of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Murray Sinclair. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, Spirit Bear and the TRC commissioners know each other very well and Spirit Bear has all kinds of free activities you can do in your early childhood centre and with the families if you\u2019d like to implement the Truth and Reconciliation Commissions calls to action. And we\u2019ve made it super easy for you. Spirit Bear has a calendar that you can access free of charge on our website and every month has a free activity that children can do. So right now, we\u2019re in Honouring Memories, Planting Dreams season. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, what we do is we ask children and adults and community members, they can do it as one child or as a group, to plant a garden in memory of the children who were in residential school. And then the act of planting is to learn about one of the calls to action and say, \u201cYes, I\u2019m going to help out with that.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, it\u2019s a very simple thing. We also have what we call Bear Witness Day for Jordan\u2019s Principle where we invite children who are attending daycare, school or an adult in the workplace to bring their teddy bear to work or to the daycare or to school to honour Jordan River Anderson because that was his favourite toy. He\u2019s the founder of Jordan\u2019s Principle. And then to use that to educate other children, other people in your life about Jordan\u2019s Principle so that First Nations children can access those services. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
And to make it even easier on our website, we\u2019ve had children do an educational video for other children in French, English and American Sign Language so that they can learn about Jordan\u2019s Principle and be good ambassadors or like Spirit Bear is, an ambearrister for Jordan\u2019s Principle. We also have Have a Heart Day at Valentine\u2019s Day where children, even very young children, can write or draw a Valentine about what makes them happy as a child and wish that for other children and then send those off to the Prime Minister so that every child is treated fairly. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
We get bubble blowers and then we put the bubbles in the air when we\u2019re planting the gardens for Honouring Memories, Planting Dreams and each bubble is a dream of a child that we\u2019re all going to launch into and respect throughout our entire lifespan. So, there\u2019s all kinds of fun and free ways and Spirit Bear has books. He\u2019s going to have animations that we\u2019re just working on right now. And you can, in your early childhood centre, even get one of Spirit Bear\u2019s relatives. So, we have ambearristers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So to make this easy for early childhood educators, we have a program where you can write to us and say, you know what, we would like to teach our children and adults and ourselves as early childhood professionals about reconciliation in our community. So, we\u2019d like to have an ambearrister. So, what will happen is you have to agree, there\u2019s terms to the program. So, an ambearrister, like this one, this is Cedar Bear, that\u2019s Spirit Bear\u2019s sister, will arrive in the mail along with a calendar. You must have the children read stories to the bear about the local First Nation, M\u00e9tis or Inuit Communities. And then maybe even have an elder in who can teach the children some of the words in the language so that they can learn it. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Then you have to have a naming ceremony for your bear and also, you need to get down to work at getting regalia for your bear. And every month, you and your bear are going to be doing those activities in Spirit Bear\u2019s calendar on Truth and Reconciliation. And then you\u2019re going to post pictures of your bear doing all these things with kids, going to community events and you\u2019re going to tag Spirit Bear who\u2019s got his own Twitter feed @Spirit Bear. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
So that Spirit Bear knows what his family members are doing because he\u2019s kind of the boss. He supervises all the rest of the bears and he wants to make sure they\u2019re doing good work. So that\u2019s something else you can do. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The power of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission is it pulled back the drape a little bit on Canada\u2019s colonial history and allowed Canadians to take a peek behind that colonial curtain. Many for the first time to see what was Canada\u2019s role in residential schools? What happened to the children in those residential schools? […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"template-text-only.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2512","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2512","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2512"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2512\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2513,"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2512\/revisions\/2513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/content.scienceofecd.com\/transcript\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2512"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}