Rock Your Roots chance to continue journey on road to reconciliation
STM College community members join largest crowd ever at 2024 walk for reconciliation event
By Paul SinkewiczFourteen members of the STM College community lent their feet to a good cause recently.
The staff and faculty members (and even one recent alumna) met at the riverbank on Friday, June 21 to mark National Indigenous Peoples Day by taking part in the Rock Your Roots Reconciliation Walk.
More than 5,000 walkers - the largest crowd yet - walked along the Meewasin Trail from Victoria Park, looping through River Landing, before returning to the festival grounds. Along the way, Indigenous dancers, drummers and singers shared their culture with the participants.
We were gratified to run into our friends the Cree Canaries Indigenous Youth Drum Group, who took part in our most recent Achimo storytelling event, and Harry and Germaine Lafond. Harry is the STM Scholar in Indigenous Education.
STM College has been working hard on reconciliation since 2012, after members of its faculty and staff attended Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada hearings. Since then, Indigenous Engagement has been integrated into the College’s strategic plan. Now called Authentic Indigenization, it is one of the five priority areas for the College.
STM has established an Indigenous Advisory Circle, appointed Lafond as the STM Scholar in Indigenous Education, and began to raise funds to establish a Chair in Indigenous Spirituality and Reconciliation. It has incorporated Indigenous ceremony into its events, ceremonies and even religious services, as respectfully as possible while learning along the way. Authentic Indigenization and reconciliation are a part of every decision made at STM College, in one way or another.
The Rock Your Roots walk was another step in the right direction, with the sea of smiling, orange-clad walkers embodying a growing understanding of reconciliation in Canada.
See the slideshow HERE:
Learn more about reconciliation in our city at: