By Ethan Ready

Hope for Tomorrow

Teaching children of Canada’s dark past is way to address racism

Jun 15, 2020 | 12:38 PM

PRINCE GEORGE – The first step in addressing a problem is recognizing there is one in the first place.

“I’m a middle-aged white woman who grew up in Canada. I’m pretty much the definition of privileged,” admitted Tracy Calogheros.

While the doors to the Exploration Place may still be closed as a result of COVID-19 and the pandemic that ensued, The CEO and her staff still feel that they have a key role in educating the youth of tomorrow, as well as the community of today, especially following recent coverage surrounding social justice matters and inequality.

“I often talk about the fact that there is only one race, there is only the human race,” explained Calogheros. “A big piece of what we do is talk about science and fact-based decision making. You can talk about biology; the fact that we’re all humans and the colour on the surface of our skin is irrelevant. But at the same time, you have to make sure that kids see that the colour on the skin has had absolute horrific impacts on people’s lives through no fault of their own and no good reason.”

While The Exploration Place has worked closely with the Lheidli T’enneh to cover their history, including their degradation, Calogheros says it’s important that we too have that conversation of racism at home with our children.

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According to historical records, the Lheidli T’enneh village, which originally was located at the confluence of the Nechako and Fraser rivers, was burned in 1913 in order to make way for a new city.

Band members were re-located a new reserve, where they reside to this day, known as Shelley.

“As hard as it is, I think we have to be honest with our kids. Tell them its hard for us. Tell them why we’re struggling to teach them about it, that we don’t want to have to teach them about it but why it’s important. And I think you can apply that to every aspect of a child’s life, and when you get to the really important things – like racism – if you’ve established that relationship with trust with your kids, you can continue to delve into these areas that are hard to talk about, that are scary, that we’re going to get wrong sometimes, and it’s okay to get it wrong along as we learn every time we make one of those mistakes.”

Calogheros explained that the foot of her experience in understanding the societal divide has been by listening to the Elders of the Lheidli T’enneh through the relationship developed between them and the Exploration Place.

In order to see the inequality within Canada, she explains you don’t need to look further than the fact that the Lheidli T’enneh are posting water delivery schedules online.

“If we can’t even make certain that all Canadians, regardless of the colour of their skin and their ethnicity, have clean water to drink, no one is going to convince me that Canada isn’t just as riddled with systemic racism as every other country on the planet.”

With two Black Lives Matters rallies having already been held in the City of Prince George, the group behind the rallies, Fridays for Future Prince George, has scheduled a third rally this Friday at 2-o-clock at the site of Mr PG.

The first rally and march, held outside of City Hall, drew in several hundreds of people.