Content warning: This article discusses violence against Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQ+ people and mentions the residential school system.

On January 20, UTM hosted a special lecture titled “Thinking Out Loud Together,” featuring Judge Marion Buller — the first woman First Nations judge in British Columbia and the former chief commissioner for the National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls (MMIWG) from 2016 to 2019. 

Students, faculty, and community members gathered at UTM’s Multimedia Studio Theatre to hear Buller reflect on reconciliation, systemic racism, and destigmatizing Indigenous discourse in Canadian society. 

Civil discourse

This lecture was a collaborative effort between Buller and the civil discourse working group moderated by Randy Boyagoda, an English professor and U of T’s first Provostial Advisor on Civil Discourse.

The group was introduced following the Hamas attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023, which sparked Israel’s war on Gaza. According to the U of T Working Group on Civil Discourse website, the group aims to “contribute advice, suggestions, and insights towards strengthening a culture of civil discourse on campus, including the cultivation of dialogue across different points of view and the discussion of challenging subjects.”

As Boyagoda expressed during the conversation, “One of the reasons why we hold events like this… is in hopes of hearing from people whose ideas, insights, and experiences can help us understand how to approach difficult subjects… especially with the incredible diversity of Canada.” 

The event began with UTM’s Vice-President and Principal Alexandra Gillespie welcoming attendees. 

In her speech, she noted the importance of attending the event because “civil discourse matters.”

“University communities advance knowledge for the public good, debate ideas that move the world, and give students the skills to thrive in a complex society,” she said. “But we can only do that if we listen to others with the same openness and genero[sity] that we ourselves deserve. That’s how we build right relations and find and share meaning, including the truth that comes before reconciliation.”

The special lecture

Buller started her lecture by speaking on the systemic failures of Canada’s institutions in addressing Indigenous rights and justice. She spoke about her experience leading the MMIWG inquiry and emphasized the need for structural change beyond reconciliation. 

The MMIWG inquiry looks into and reports on the systemic causes of violence against Indigenous women and girls. In 2019, the MMIWG released its final report which found that “persistent and deliberate human and Indigenous rights violations and abuses are the root cause behind Canada’s staggering rates of violence against Indigenous women, girls and 2SLGBTQQIA.”

The final report included more than 2,380 testimonies from family members and survivors of violence.

“So far, reconciliation seems to be a series of missteps, empty promises, scripted apologies, and recycled funding,” Buller said. Instead, she advocated for what she called “reconstruction.” 

For Buller, reconstruction is centred on the government actively rebuilding Indigenous relationships and communities.

When one audience member asked about the meaning of reconstruction, Buller explained that it involves “reconstructing a legal system that holds Indigenous laws and practices” and reforming Canada’s child welfare system. 

She also suggested “practical things” to help “reconstruct” for non-Indigenous allies, including following Indigenous media outlets, wearing orange shirts for more than one day a year, and following Indigenous creators on social media.

“All of us, Indigenous and non-Indigenous, need to know the truth about our histories, our family histories, our community histories, and our national histories, in order to not make the same mistakes,” she said. 

“Education is knowing the truth, and it is important because we’ll start to learn about each other’s humanity. We’ll be able to see systemic racism, see systemic trans- and homophobia, [and see] systemic sexism. We will be able to move past the incorrect assumptions and stereotypes,” said Buller.

During the lecture, Buller also addressed the impacts of colonial violence and residential schools in Canada. “We assumed incorrectly that with the closing of Indian residential schools… horrific experiences of Indigenous children [would end],” she said. “However, now there are more Indigenous children in the foster care system than there ever were in the residential school system.”

The Canadian government estimates that a total of 150,000 First Nation, Inuit, and Métis children attended residential schools starting in the 1950s until the late 1990s. A 2021 Statistics Canada census showed that Indigenous children accounted for 53.8 per cent of all children in foster care and were about 14 times more likely than non-Indigenous children to be placed in foster care. 

During the Q&A session after the lecture, a member of the audience asked Buller how someone without firsthand experience of an Indigenous person could advocate for change.

Buller’s response was straightforward: “Indigenous people cannot have ‘too many’ allies. We can’t have too many educated allies… so speak up. Educate yourself.”

Indigenous people in need of support can call:

If you or someone you know is in distress because of the recent news about residential schools, you can call: