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34 www.canadianlawyermag.com INDIGENOUS EDUCATION FEATURE clear in theory. It recommends at least one required course within the law school cur- riculum to include instruction on Aborigi- nal-Crown relations, treaties and Indigenous rights, Indigenous law and the United Na- tion's Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. It also calls for a skills component that engages with the material and mandates ANDRE BEAR was one of the only Indigenous students in a first-year law class at the University of Saskatchewan, a course that was supposed to teach his classmates about his people's history. He wasn't prepared for the other students' reactions. Topics such as white privilege, the history of Indian residential schools and the current statistics of Indigenous people incarcerat- ed were polarizing and posed steep learning curves for most students who were hearing this information for the first time. "A lot of that contempt for new under- standing when it comes to learning about white privilege, racism and oppression — a lot of that contempt was toward Indigenous people," Bear, who is set to graduate in 2023, says. "Being one of the only Indigenous peo- ple in the classroom, it really hurt me to see a lot of them lash out like that." Bristling. Resistance. Defensiveness. Deni- al. Guilt. These are some of the terms used to describe responses to the efforts being made to answer the Truth and Reconciliation Com- mission's Calls to Action — and they're not limited to the law school setting. From Ontar- io's tumultuous journey with the Statement of Principles to British Columbia's recent an- nouncement that all lawyers in the province must complete cultural competency training, there is now also emerging concern over how effectively law schools are teaching colonial history, the concepts of privilege and power dynamics and how the legal system plays a role in enforcing and perpetuating them. The TRC's Call to Action #28 is relatively Reconciliation's uphill battle Indigenous lawyers speak to Mallory Hendry about how meaningful change in legal education is hard