The University of Toronto is looking into hiring more indigenous faculty and staff, while bolstering the school’s recruitment of indigenous students, in response to recommendations made in 2015 by Canada’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

U of T struck a committee that produced a 125-page report this month, with 34 recommendations ranging from establishing indigenous spaces on campus to offering cultural and ethics training to researchers wanting to work in indigenous communities.

Ry Moran, director of the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation at the University of Manitoba, said reconciliation is not a short-term project, and that it’s complicated.

“I think universities right across the country are wrestling with what it means to embrace reconciliation inside of a university,” Moran said, noting that he thought the areas U of T has identified to address are “spot on.”

“The most important thing that we collectively do is start, and we start this path and start the journey and we continue to have dialogue and reflect on whether or not this is working and additional steps we need to take,” he said.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission — tasked with uncovering and documenting the impact of Canada’s residential school system — made 94 recommendations for Canadians in 2015.

It outlined a road map for the country to remedy its 150-year legacy of government-funded schools run by the church, which took indigenous youth from their families and tried to strip them of their language and culture. The consequences of this system are still felt today.

Some of the TRC’s requests speak directly to Canada’s post-secondary schools. The commission called on universities and colleges to develop aboriginal language programs and to help advance research in the area of reconciliation.

“We are certainly willing to commit some additional resources to address these needs, because we are convinced that they are really important, and in many cases that these initiatives are long overdue,” said U of T’s president, Meric Gertler.

He said the next steps will be talks with the school’s departments and faculty members to determine how to move forward.

Jonathan Hamilton-Diabo, director of Aboriginal Student Services at U of T, who co-chaired the committee behind the report, said students might immediately start seeing things like an increase in indigenous speakers at lectures, and more frequent acknowledgment of the land that the U of T is on.