As our black neighbours to the south continue to bravely fight against systemic racism and violence against their people, we in Canada have just started to come to realize our own prejudices and mistreatment of marginalized communities. These systemic issues have always existed, but a lack of education has unfortunately made most of us ignorant to this past and current suffering. Continuing on as we have will only allow this to prevail into the future.

Now is the time that we call on New Brunswick’s Department of Education to decolonize our Eurocentric history curriculum and mandate it to include the history and subsequent mistreatment of our POC and Indigenous peoples.

This aligns with Call to Action 62 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s report of 2015, mandating that Indigenous content be part of K-12 curricula. This report listed 94 total calls to action for all levels of Canadian government in hopes to repair the damage caused by residential and day schools and to move forward with reconciliation. In 2017, a Kairos report gave New Brunswick one of the worst ratings in its efforts to meet this call to action, behind only P.E.I. and Nova Scotia.

The only way to tackle systemic racism effectively is to address it early on at the source, and changing the public education system is the best way to accomplish this.