09/30/2026
Something I wish more people understood about reconciliation:
Reconciliation isn’t only about learning the history of residential schools or acknowledging that Indigenous peoples have experienced, and continue to experience, colonial violence.
Reconciliation looks at what happens within our own communities and systems, including the treatment of Indigenous people who choose to become helpers, advocates, social workers, counsellors, educators, leaders, and service providers.
Indigenous Helpers often experience lateral violence, whether accidental or intended... It can look like undermining someone’s work, questioning their identity or intentions, gatekeeping culture, gossip, exclusion, harassment, stealing ideas, or tearing down someone who is trying to create change. It also happens when people choose not to create space when an Indigenous Helper suggests an alternative approach; especially if the idea challenges or moves away from colonial norms.
If we truly want reconciliation, we have to be willing to ask ourselves: Why are we so uncomfortable when someone suggests doing things differently?
Sometimes the approaches that feel unfamiliar, unconventional, or uncomfortable are exactly the approaches that create space for Indigenous ways of knowing, being, healing, and helping.
Lateral violence is connected to generations of colonial oppression, displacement, poverty, trauma, racism, loss of culture, and systems that have taught us to compete for limited resources rather than support and uplift one another.
Reconciliation has to include creating space for Indigenous Helpers to do their work without being viewed as a threat.
We can hold each other accountable and have disagreements without destroying each other. We can create room for approaches that challenge colonial systems instead of automatically returning to what has always been done.
To me, reconciliation means more than repairing relationships between Indigenous peoples and non-Indigenous Canadians. It also means healing the ways colonialism has impacted how we relate to ourselves and to one another.
Supporting Indigenous Helpers by giving them space to imagine something different is part of reconciliation too. ❤️
- Carrie