Next month, a group of about 40 alumni will travel to Soul of the Mother, a healing lodge in Six Nations of the Grand River near Brantford, Ont.
As they get off the bus, they’ll be identified by numbers rather than names and addressed in the Mohawk language. Inside the lodge, they’ll be given bowls of cold mush to eat.
It will be a purposefully disorienting and difficult experience, meant to help alumni try to understand what Indigenous children faced when they arrived at Residential schools.
But the learning won’t end there – and it will be just one small part of A Mile in Their Shoes: Truth, Empathy, and Reconciliation (MITS).
The four-month program for Queen’s grads is all about Residential schools and their impact on Survivors, their families, and Indigenous cultures. It’s an immersive learning experience that includes readings by Survivors, a full day at Soul of the Mother, and a post-event course that culminates in a virtual sharing circle in December.
This year marks 10 years since the Truth and Reconciliation Commission released its , which urged all Canadians to make a firm and lasting commitment to Reconciliation. MITS was created in 2022 in that spirit, prompted by alumni who sought an active role in this work and designed by the Office of Advancement in close collaboration with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives. TAP Resources, an Indigenous-owned event management and consulting group, helps plan and organize the day at the healing lodge.
Kanonhsyonne (Jan Hill) was part of the initial team that developed MITS. The now-retired Associate Vice-Principal (Indigenous Initiatives and Reconciliation) says they purposefully built the program for participants to go beyond a surface understanding of Residential schools.
“This is a visceral program,” says Hill, a Clan mother of the Turtle Clan, Mohawk Nation at Tyendinaga. “You experience it in a way you can’t experience from watching a movie or reading a book or even just hearing someone speak. It has a more lasting impact, and that’s really important when people are trying to make a true commitment to the work of Reconciliation.”
Lisa Hood, Artsci’04, agrees. She was part of the first cohort of MITS participants in 2022 and says that the visceral nature of the program continues to open a “gateway of learning” for her.
“The fact that it was this experiential program made these topics something that I felt I should learn about to something that I wanted to learn and do something about,” she says. “And it continues to do that for me. It’s probably one of my most formative educational experiences with Queen’s.”
Hood points to the day at Soul of the Mother as being particularly transformative for her. In addition to that uncomfortable start to the day, it typically includes an Edge-of-the-Woods ceremony to welcome visitors, as well as conversations and talks with Indigenous partners and Survivors, a lunch of Indigenous foods, and a sharing circle for reflection. Traditional drumming, singing, and dancing are also woven throughout.
One of Hood’s most profound takeaways from the day actually happened on the bus to the healing lodge, when a MITS facilitator delivered the land acknowledgement in the Mohawk language.
“The experience of hearing that language spoken was really, really moving and beautiful, and particularly because I know that so few people do speak it,” says Hood. “And so, there was a strong theme through that day about the preservation of language and how important that is to the cultural traditions of Indigenous peoples.”
Another strong theme that runs throughout the day and the program is the importance of ongoing learning within participants’ own communities, says Jan Hill.
“Part of our whole strategy and hope was that this would influence alumni to influence their own circles,” she says. “That kind of ripple effect of understanding really helps make sure these kinds of things never happen again and that Indigenous people have their rightful place in society and in our country.”
For Hood, that ripple effect is still happening in her own household.
“My children are learning some of this in school now, and so because I had that experience with A Mile in Their Shoes, I feel like it’s equipped me with more language to speak about this and support their learning, but also to continue to learn together with them.”
A Mile in Their Shoes is just one way that Queen’s is responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s 94 calls to action. To learn more about what else the university is doing, visit the Office of Indigenous Initiatives website.
