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As schools contemplate ways to address long-term redress and reconciliation, they have to “find some way for all of those stories about who we are to co-exist,” she said.

In its report on the legacy of Canada’s residential school system, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission called on the government and post-secondary institutions to address the backlog of First Nations students seeking university education and to integrate more indigenous knowledge and teaching methods in the classroom.

Some schools have begun to heed the call.

Starting next year, every undergraduate at the University of Winnipeg and Lakehead University in Thunder Bay, Ont., will have to take at least one indigenous studies course.

Wab Kinew, the University of Winnipeg’s associate vice-president of indigenous affairs, said the aim is to give students a “baseline of knowledge” about First Nations, Metis and Inuit people.

“Whether or not you have indigenous blood, if you’re here in Canada, some part of your identity has been formed by indigenous culture and people. Yet it hasn’t always been included or celebrated,” he said.

Kinew said students will be able to choose from a range of courses. While one student might take a history course focused on residential schools, another might delve into the Cree language.

Whatever the course, Kinew says he is “hopeful this will mean future doctors are going to have a little more sensitivity in their practice or future educators are going to know how to incorporate (awareness of indigenous issues) into the classroom or future engineers will have a better idea how to carry out local consultations when designing their projects.”