These students are driving conversations about truth and reconciliation in their classrooms

Where many Canadians have only started learning about this country's residential schools, Grade 11 student Waylon Fenton has known about them since early childhood. 

He was just a preschooler when his Inuvialuit grandmother, Margaret Olemaun Pokiak-Fenton, and his mom, author Christy Jordan-Fenton, began publishing some of the former's stories about attending residential school in the High Arctic as books for children.

His paternal grandmother's devotion to their culture, her triumphs and her resilience in overcoming fierce hardships — explored in part in the books Fatty Legs, A Stranger at Home, When I was Eight and Not My Girl — continue to motivate and set an example for Waylon.

"It makes me very proud to know that my grandmother did all that," said the 16-year-old from Fort St. John, B.C. 

This week, delegations of First Nations, Inuit and Métis people met with Pope Francis to share stories about the impact of Canada's residential school system, with the pontiff expressing on Friday "sorrow and shame" for the conduct of some of the Roman Catholic members who ran the schools. 

Here at home, dedicated students and parents are continuing to keep important conversations about truth and reconciliation in the education system alive and ongoing. 

While talk of Indigenous experiences have increased in Fenton's classes and society at large, many still have a lot to learn. The teen recalled, for instance, a teacher who just a few years ago raised residential schools in class, but tried to justify them as "better" than what survivors had at home.

"It was… frustrating for me when she was teaching about it that way. I thought that was wrong," said Fenton, who later transferred out of that Grade 7 class.

His mom's desire to teach her own children — as well as other people — about the reality of residential schools was a key reason she felt driven to collaborate with his grandmother to create their age-appropriate books, the first of which was published in 2010.

"I wanted my children to grow up seeing their grandmother as a hero," said Jordan-Fenton, a B.C. author and adult educator. "I didn't want them to ever feel bad about their Indigeneity."

Though not Indigenous herself, Jordan-Fenton's stepfather was a Cree Métis man. Growing up, she lived in communities where many, including her stepfather, had attended residential schools. She knew most Canadians never learned about the traumatic history of that school system as she had — or believed the schools to be a relic from long ago.

"One of the ways that I explain to people that it wasn't that long ago is ... the year that residential schools ended was the year that Toy Story — the first Toy Story movie — came out," she said. 

At readings and events for students over the years, Jordan-Fenton and her mother-in-law saw children from all walks of life connect and empathize with their books. 

"She always wanted to show that children can go through really, really horrific things and that they could come out" of it, Jordan-Fenton said of her mother-in-law, who passed away in 2021.