Truth to Action: Reflections on Reconciliation and Responsibility

Schools play an important role in our lives by teaching us how to connect with one another. Residential schools differed fundamentally: they taught disconnection. They taught our hearts how to harden. Survivors hardened their hearts to endure, while settlers hardened theirs to ignore.

Empathy helps us soften our hearts by reawakening compassion and fostering mutual recognition. For Survivors, being met with empathy validates pain without diminishing strength. For settlers, empathy dismantles denial and makes room for responsibility without paralysis or guilt. In practice, empathy becomes action: it motivates allyship, systemic change, and everyday acts of respect.

But we must be careful. Sympathy is not the same as empathy. Sympathy creates distance, while empathy draws us close. Hearing “I feel sorry for you” pushes us apart, while “I feel with you” brings us together. On National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, bring empathy with you, as it requires listening, presence, and humility. It is an act of stepping into another’s reality without pity or judgment.

I am a guest living on Turtle Island.

Growing up as a child of Filipino immigrants, I yearned for a sense of belonging. With Canada claiming to celebrate diversity and preserve the multicultural heritage of all Canadians, it feels natural to tie myself to a “Filipino-Canadian” identity. But to adopt this label is to participate in a narrative that erases the fact that this land was never ceded, never surrendered, and still holds Indigenous sovereignty. Like many immigrants and settlers of colour, the hyphen helps navigate the feeling of belonging, but belonging cannot come at the cost of legitimizing the colonial mentality.

On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I remind myself to shift the frameworks of my sense of belonging as part of the unlearning process. First, by recognizing that putting a label on my identity reinforces the settler colonial state, and second, by choosing instead to ground myself in honouring the land I live on while also honouring my Filipino roots.

As a non-Indigenous person of colour on Turtle Island, I carry both privilege and responsibility. I recognize my privilege of holding access to opportunities that Indigenous communities are systematically denied, and I accept my responsibility to ensure that my belonging does not erase or overshadow the sovereignty of Indigenous Peoples.

Reconciliation is lived through daily choices:

• Learning the truth about whose land you live on
• Educating yourself about what has happened and what is still happening today
• Creating space to support and amplify Indigenous voices

In this reflection, I’ve learned that belonging is not claiming ownership, but it is a practice of gratitude, humility, and solidarity.

How many times have you heard something harmful, seen something unjust, and said nothing? Personally, I hate to admit that I have, many times. Sometimes, silence feels easier. Recently, someone I look up to told me,

As a non-Indigenous person, when I first started to work with First Nations, there were parts of the process that I struggled to adapt to. Coming fresh from an academic university background, I had taken a few courses on what it means to do ethical research—that engagement and outreach should be culturally grounded and community directed. But it was another thing to show up in an Indigenous space, eager and wanting to help, yet armed with a completely different way of knowing and doing.

Suddenly, my role shifted: to be quiet, to sit down, and to listen. Listen to the stories in their space, in their time. To acknowledge that I am not here to prove myself as the best ally, or to perform support—but rather to be a helper, when and if asked. Because the first part of taking truth to action is just being willing to listen to the truth. The next part is to hear what is needed, and then to do what is asked. Not what I think is necessary, or what the institutions I represent might expect—but to take in what is said and asked, and act on that.

This is much harder than it sounds. Often, the actions required may run counter to project plans, looming deadlines, or funders’ expectations. Taking action based on truth demands flexibility. It requires sitting with discomfort and accepting difficult situations if the actions I take are truly to be grounded in truth.

This, to me, is truth to action and reconciliation in process: hard work, self-reflection, and the willingness to remain in uncomfortable places for the sake of honesty and respect.

In his memoir, Up Ghost River, Edmund Metatawabin reflects that the closest Cree word to justice is kintohpatatin. It is often translated as “you have been listened to,” but its meaning is deeper: to know you have truly been heard—with compassion, fairness, and the assurance that your needs will be taken seriously.

At Narratives, we put kintohpatatin into practice through our work with testimony. Survivors, Elders, and communities entrust us with living histories that must be handled with care and humility. Our trauma-informed protocols guide us to collect stories carefully, document them with accuracy, preserve records responsibly, and return testimony to the communities where it belongs. This work is not only about safeguarding lived experiences but also about protecting dignity, strengthening trust, and ensuring truths remain accessible for future generations.

Testimony is more than evidence of the past; it is a living resource for families, Nations, and communities seeking healing and continuity. Each name recorded accurately, each pause and emotion preserved in a transcript, and each record safely repatriated contributes to repairing relationships and affirming identity in the face of Canada’s long legacy of colonialism and systemic injustice.

Kintohpatatin also extends beyond our work. It can guide our everyday choices: listening with respect, supporting Indigenous-led efforts, and practicing care in our relationships. Reconciliation becomes real when testimony is honoured and acted upon, and kintohpatatin shows us how to begin.

Every year, National Day for Truth and Reconciliation lands heavy on my heart. As a Métis woman, the day feels like time folding over itself... my ancestors, my own lived experience, and the generations to come all sitting with me at once.

When I was growing up, we didn’t really talk about residential schools or intergenerational trauma. In my family, those stories were rarely spoken about, not because anyone was hiding them, but because we were living our own truths, dealing with our own hardships and tragedies, keeping our heads above water. The larger truths of colonial policies and their legacies hovered at the edges of my awareness. It wasn’t until later, through community work, hearing Survivors’ testimonies, and doing my own learning, that I began to see how deeply this history shaped the landscape I live and work in today.

Now, working in trauma-informed planning and design, I hold these stories differently. I’ve listened to Elders describe their stolen childhoods. I’ve stood on lands where children never returned home. I’ve facilitated rooms where pain surfaced raw and unfiltered. These aren’t distant accounts; they live inside me and shape the way I walk through the world.

Carrying this history while holding space for others can be exhausting... a deep, heavy weariness that sits in my chest. I know I’m not alone in this. So many Indigenous people I know carry that same quiet fatigue, the weight of explaining, educating, and advocating while holding their own grief and stories. And in a world fractured by division, misinformation, and othering, that weight can feel even heavier. Some days, I find myself wondering if people truly understand what it costs to keep showing up, to keep explaining, to keep inviting others into care.

And yet, I keep showing up. We keep showing up. Because these conversations aren’t just tasks—they’re a living practice. They grow relationships, and relationships need tending, especially when the world tries to pull them apart. This is where hope lives for me.

National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, for me, is a call to remember and an invitation to imagine. It asks me to hold grief and hope together, to resist the pull of apathy or division, and to recognize that reconciliation is a relationship, not a single act.