If you are looking to do more work in Indigenous education in your class or at your school, and need support from Policy to justify your work to less willing colleagues or community members, the new Education Equity Action Plan is one place to turn. Launched in September 2017, the three-year plan lays out concrete guidelines for multiple layers of the education system to improve the "success and well-being" of all students in the provincial system.

You may make a mistake. Indeed, you MOST LIKELY will. I do all the time. But as non-Indigenous teachers we need to realize that we can recover from mistakes and do better. What we can't recover from is another generation of students in Canada who don't know the whole truth, and who may grow to perpetuate misconceptions and racist attitudes and support oppression. 

In recent days I've begun to get emails from teachers wanting to rethink their Thanksgiving curriculum. I need to preface this post with another reminder that I am not Indigenous, (I spent last Saturday in my parents garage making sauce and am very Italian-Canadian) and full credit for my learning goes to many amazing First Nations colleagues that have engaged in conversations about the holiday with me over the years, including Dr. John Doran who is now at UPEI and Dr. Jean-Paul Restoule who is at UVic.

One of the questions that I frequently get from teachers is "what can my students and I do to change things?" alluding to their desire to somehow to contribute to justice on one of the many issues that Indigenous communities are facing. My response is always the same, get humble and get listening.