In "Indian Residential Schools," Kids Britannica discusses the effects of the Indian Residential School system in Canada, as well as the country's efforts toward healing and repair over the last two decades.
Pair “Remember” with “Indian Residential Schools” and ask students to consider how being forced to attend residential schools may have impacted Indigenous children’s ability to learn about and form connections with their ancestral lands and cultures. How does the speaker make connections between land, language, and culture in “Remember”? What is the main theme Joy Harjo wants the reader to take away from the poem, and how does she build that theme? Who is mainly the intended audience for “Remember”? How do you know? According to “Indian Residential Schools,” how did forced assimilation seek to destroy the very things that Harjo encourages the reader to “remember”? What advice might Harjo give to any Indigenous person who feels disconnected from their ancestral culture, language, or land?