Video Q&A

Dan: Are there other paths that to anti-racism through life experience that don’t necessarily fall within these neat three-step process that you have given us here that we can recognize as being authentic means of arriving at anti-racist?

Connor: My question for you today is now that we have the foundation started in the form of Honouring Diversity 8, how can we ensure that we continue to honour diversity and recognize oppressive thoughts and actions once that is passed when as we move past Honouring Diversity 8?

Carson: When you are talking about people making their decisions subconsciously, even though they are not making them consciously, when myself and my friends and other people make their friend groups even though they are not consciously making it on race or gender or sexual orientation, if they are doing it subconsciously?

Pam: So, a lot of what you touched on today are also reason that parents and barriers that they have for engaging with the school in their kid’s education so what can we do to give a voice and create a space for those parents so that they can feel more engaged in the public school system and their kid’s education journey? Have you seen other examples of that in other districts and any ideas?

Ashley: My question for you is actually more addressing an on-going problem that me and many others have found in my school and these problems are the use of the slang “that’s so gay” as well as “the n-word.” I’m sure it is also happening in a lot other school which I have heard from talking to people within my district and also outside of it and I noticed that this happens because the people that are being addressed in this slang are the minority in my school and so I feel like they don’t really have a voice against it to speak up and a lot of people feel uncomfortable speaking up and saying “hey, that’s not right.” So, I’m wondering what your take on that is that if it should be addressed as a school-wide problem and you know like an assembly or a presentation or more of an approach of one-on-one with students such as talking to parents or considering things such as suspension and what you think the best approach would be to start getting it out of the schools?

Dan: One of the concerns that I have as a parent, and I have heard from other parents, is this idea that we bring privilege up in a classroom we actually introduce shame to our students and the concern there is that if privilege is unearned and there is nothing that you can do about it and it’s earned you kind of deserve it so how in this, sort of, situation it can actually produce the exact opposite effect of what we are trying to achieve here which is anti-racism or anti-diversity and so when we get into a situation where kids instead of coming away with privilege taught me something about being anti-racist they come away with something more akin to resentment, shame and have the exact opposite affect and so how do you, there’s like this ideology here and on the other hand there’s like this implementation where the kids are coming away with the message we want and I guess that’s why I asked if there are other paths where we can focus on empathy more as a means to arriving at that as opposed to a focus on privilege?

Tanya: I just want to say mesiy for this presentation for the work that Dustin shared with us and Leona and her colleagues have brought. Really, really great discussion points. I just wanted to say that it gives me hope because, you know, the diversity that I face as an Indigenous woman and an Indigenous mother is that the education system did not work in the ways that it intended to. I’ve had conversations with my daughter’s teachers in the past about misinformation not regarding our diverse culture, beliefs and ideologies. Yeah, I almost gave up on the education institute and so it just gives me new hope that this work and this conversation is being had with discussion when we are talking about diversity usually those discussions don’t happen you know because we are talking about the privilege too…If they are comfortable with where they are at, with what their world is, they don’t need to go out of their way to learn about diversity issues within their realms. So, much like decolonization people don’t want to in western society they don’t have too right? Yeah, I just wanted to share that and think that it’s really awesome that these conversations are happening and these dialogues are opening up cause often as Indigenous woman or parent, you know, I don’t…in the past, have not found my voice to be able to express to my child’s teacher and finding those faces that make us comfortable to have access to share that diversity. I mean when I went to college and found First Nations rooms, you know, that was like a safe haven for me and why do we need those in college, right? Why are these places necessary? So, it give me a lot of hope that this work is still continuing on and , you know, I am going to have grandchildren soon in these institutions so I am going to be back in there soon trying to create a safe space for my chiys, It’s never ending. So, thank you all for your work. Mesiy. Awet’ze.

Vanessa: As a mother of someone who is going to be in high school in two years and as an educator that works with K-7, is there a language that I can learn to bring these discussions up, but in a gentle way so that it’s not so much of a shock to them when they get to high school cause I have always taught my daughter and anyone that is around me acceptance and advocating for friends when they don’t have the words. You know, like, trying to enable her to navigate through life with empathy and compassion for her fellow human beings, but giving her the tools that she can at least understand a little bit before she gets into high school and also the younger students that I work with at school…just tiny tidbits of things that I can take away from today about having these kinds of conversations in a good way with them?