Last week, trustees from the Toronto District School Board voted in favour of replacing the mandatory Grade 11 English course with a course about understanding contemporary First Nations, Métis and Inuit Voices called First Voices.
This comes as welcome news. Since Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) released its final report in 2015 and called for reconciliation education, the Ontario government has been lagging on prioritizing this.
As an Indigenous scholar who belongs to the Kanien’kehá:ka Nation, and teaches courses on Indigenous literatures, I am delighted students will be exposed to texts that are unapologetically Indigenous and carry readers forward on a powerful journey of both reconciliation and resurgence.
