Being Good Relations Network Event – Truth Before Reconciliation

The Chinook Winds and Northern Spirit Inter-regional Being Good Relations Network would like to invite you to our speaker and network event this fall. Dr. Crystal Fraser will offer her reflections and guidance on combatting Residential School Denialism. The network is inviting its members, communities of faith and allies to participate in discussions, workshops and deep listening as we join in the struggle to combat denialism and live out Reconciliation. Registration is free of charge and required. Firm deadline: October 18 at 5:00PM. Thank you to funding from LeaderShift and Chinook Winds and Northern Spirit Regional Councils which allows us to offer this important space free of charge.

We are honoured to work with Dr Crystal Fraser, Gwichyà Gwich’in, originally from Inuvik and Dachan Choo Gèhnjik (Tree River) in the Northwest Territories and is a historian and Associate Professor in the Department of History, Classics, & Religion and the Faculty of Native Studies at the University of Alberta. Her research, teaching, and community work focus on histories of residential and day schooling in the North, Indigenous childhoods, and relationships between colonialism, education, genocide, and human rights in the 20th and 21st centuries. Dr. Fraser is the awards-winning author of By Strength, We Are Still Here: Indigenous Peoples and Indian Residential Schooling in Inuvik, Northwest Territories. We recommend Dr. Fraser’s two books, We Are Still Here and Let’s Talk Treaty. Please plan to join this life-giving space, where will learn in community and plan for action together.

Draft agenda:

Friday, November 6:

10:00 am          Being Good Relations Network meet up:   intros and what’s happening in communities. All welcome.
12:00 pm          Lunch for all participants
1:00  pm            Smudge; Welcome and words from Rev Tony Snow

1:30 pm             Session 1: Dr Crystal Fraser:  What is denialism? How does it impact survivors?

3:00 pm             Break

3:30 pm             Breakout groups for discussion, facilitated by Dr. Fraser.

5:00 pm             Dinner

6:30 pm             Open evening for processing/resting, and having fun. Program TBA.

Saturday, November 7:

8:30 am             Doors open, breakfast snacks available

Smudging available

9:00 am             Session 2: Dr Crystal Fraser: Responding to denialism; resources

10:30 am          Break

11:00 am          The work of the Treaty 6 IRS office: research on cemeteries; what can allies do?  Kerri Randolph and Florence Loyie.

12:30 pm          Lunch

1:30 pm             Breakout groups for next steps, commitments

2:30 pm          Plenary, feedback, closing

3:15               Being Good Relations  Network future

4:00                 Homeward bound