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For the first time in Canada's history, learning about the history and legacy of residential schools is required learning in both the NWT and Nunavut.

Truth and Reconciliation Commissioner Marie Wilson, left, holds the first copies of the NWT and Nunavut curriculum shortly after they were presented to her by Jackson Lafferty, NWT minister of Education, Culture and Employment, and Nunavut Premier Eva Aariak, who is also minister of Education, during a launch ceremony for the new residential school curriculum at the Prince of Wales Northern Heritage Centre in Yellowknife on Tuesday. - photo courtesy of Tessa MacIntosh, with permission GNWT/GN

The GNWT's Department of Education, Culture and Employment officially launched the curriculum last week in a co-ordinated effort with Nunavut's Department of Education. As of this semester, the second unit of Grade 10 Northern studies – a course all students must complete in order to graduate high school in the NWT – will focus on residential school.

The reason for the inclusion of the sensitive topic is simple for John Stewart, the co-ordinator of social studies and Northern studies, who helped to develop the NWT course.

"We can't have another generation of Canadians that is ignorant of that piece of our past," he said. "And I think that's part of how we get beyond that piece of our past so that it doesn't continue to fester. We're addressing some of the issues and we're having some of the conversations that need to be had."

While not all students in the residential school system suffered abuse, the fact remains that this was a government-mandated program that aimed to assimilate all aboriginal children in Canada into the European way of life, said Stewart.

Children were taken out of communities at a young age, often without the consent of their parents. Acknowledging what happened is the only way to begin reconciling this history with the fact that most Canadians consider their country as progressive and welcoming to all cultures, he said.

Bringing the history of residential schools into the education system is appropriate, said Mary Wilson, one of three commissioners on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada.

"It really was the schools and the education system that got us into this situation in the first place because it was education that was used, one might say, as a weapon to take away culture and identity," she told News/North. "The official policies of the day said it was to take away the Indian in the child – kill the Indian in the child actually."

The vast majority of residential school survivors who have shared their story with the TRC have turned to drugs and alcohol at some point in their healing journey, said Wilson, and yet addictions and abuse issues among Canadian aboriginals are often viewed as a problem that aboriginal people should deal with themselves.

"It's not an aboriginal issue, it's not a Northern issue, it's a Canadian issue," she said.

Grade 10 Northern studies classes will spend about 25 hours, or roughly one-fifth of their semester, on the residential school section of the course, learning about the history of government-mandated residential schools, their impact on the aboriginal cultures affected by the schools and the legacy they have left behind, said Stewart.

Marnie Villeneuve is in her 19th year of teaching in the NWT. The majority of this time she has spent in the community where she was raised, Fort Smith. When she first found out about the new curriculum, she said she was immediately excited to explore the subject with her students.

"Because I'm married to an aboriginal man and I have aboriginal children, I'm really excited about being allowed the opportunity to teach it," she said. "I've kind of been on the peripheral of (residential schools) in my teaching career and growing up – because I grew up with Grandin (College) girls – and so, just being allowed that opportunity is a real honour."

Villeneuve acknowledged that not all teachers will be as comfortable with the material. However, she said that the new curriculum holds many lessons for teachers as well and could equip them with knowledge that will help them tackle certain issues with students or parents.

"Some people are dealing with it more so than others. With some people it's very in your face. Some people don't even know that those are the reasons why they respond the way they do to whatever triggers them," she said. "So, for the teacher I think it's empowering to have this knowledge because then you go in with your eyes wide open, or wider anyway."

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