Indigenous Cultural Training in the Workplace: Reconciliation Requires More Than a Checkbox
Indigenous education and cultural training are becoming increasingly common in Canadian workplaces. But what happens when organizations complete the training without changing their policies, practices, relationships, or systems?
There is something I have become increasingly frustrated by.
I see it in organizations. I see it in businesses. I see it in corporations. I see it in health-care systems, social services, educational institutions, and other places that proudly tell us they are committed to reconciliation.
There is often a training.
An Indigenous awareness session.
A cultural competency module.
A residential school presentation.
Perhaps a required online course that employees have to complete before a particular deadline.
Everyone clicks through the slides.
Everyone receives their certificate.
The organization can check the box.
And then Monday morning comes.
Everyone goes back to work.
And nothing changes.
That is where I struggle.
Because Indigenous education was never supposed to be about completing a module so that an organization could say, "We did our Indigenous training."
Education about Indigenous peoples, colonialism, residential schools, Treaties, Indigenous rights, and the ongoing impacts of colonialism should lead us somewhere.
It should make us question.
It should make us uncomfortable.
It should change how we understand our responsibilities.
And ultimately, it should change how we work.
Indigenous education should lead to action
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada's 94 Calls to Action were not created as a corporate checklist.
The Calls to Action are an appeal to governments, organizations, and individuals to make concrete changes to address the legacy of residential schools and advance reconciliation.
Call to Action 57 calls for education for public servants about Indigenous histories, residential schools, the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, Treaties, Indigenous rights, Indigenous law, and Crown-Indigenous relations.
Importantly, the TRC says this education requires skills-based training in areas including intercultural competency, conflict resolution, human rights, and anti-racism.
That distinction matters.
Skills are meant to be used.
Knowledge is meant to inform practice.
Learning is meant to lead to something.
If I learn about residential schools but continue participating in organizational practices that silence Indigenous voices, what has that education actually changed?
If I learn about the Sixties Scoop but continue accepting policies that separate Indigenous children from their families and communities without questioning the systems producing those outcomes, what have I actually learned?
If I learn about Indigenous self-determination but continue making decisions for Indigenous people without meaningful Indigenous participation, where is the self-determination?
If I learn about intergenerational trauma but continue creating environments that reproduce conditions contributing to that trauma, the problem isn't simply a lack of information.
It is a lack of action.
The Truth and Reconciliation Commission did not call for a certificate
This becomes particularly clear when we look at Call to Action 92.
The TRC calls upon the corporate sector to adopt the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as a reconciliation framework and apply its principles to corporate policy and core operational activities involving Indigenous peoples and their lands and resources.
It also calls for meaningful consultation, respectful relationships, equitable opportunities, and long-term sustainable benefits for Indigenous communities.
And yes, education is part of the Call to Action.
But again, the education is connected to skills and to the broader responsibility of changing how organizations operate.
The distinction is important:
Learn. Then change.
Not:
Learn. Check the box. Continue as usual.
The National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation's ReconciliACTION framework makes a similar distinction.
Its six actions are:
Learn. Understand. Explore. Recognize. Take Action. Teach Others.
The NCTR specifically identifies taking action to address historical injustices and present-day wrongs as one of those six actions.
Education is a beginning.
It is not the destination.
What happens when Indigenous cultural training doesn't change workplace practices?
This is where I think organizations need to become much more uncomfortable.
Because inaction is not neutral.
When an organization learns about the realities Indigenous peoples face and then chooses not to examine its own policies, structures, relationships, or practices, that organization is still participating in the environment Indigenous people experience.
This is where the social work concept of person-in-environment is particularly important to me.
Social work understands people within the context of their environments. The Canadian Association of Social Workers describes social work as recognizing the influence of family, community, culture, legal, social, spiritual, and economic environments on the well-being of individuals, families, groups, and communities.
It also identifies addressing barriers and injustices within organizations and society as part of social work practice.
That means we cannot tell an Indigenous person, Your experience is unfortunate, while refusing to examine the environment producing that experience.
We cannot keep focusing exclusively on the individual while ignoring the system around them.
And we cannot talk about healing while leaving harmful systems untouched.
People are shaped by their environments.
So if the environment remains harmful, our responsibility cannot end with educating the person who is expected to survive within it.
We have to examine the environment.
Indigenous approaches to restoration require relationships, community, and accountability
There is no single Indigenous worldview, Indigenous healing model, or Indigenous approach to restoration shared by all First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
Indigenous peoples are diverse, and our Nations, communities, cultures, languages, laws, histories, and teachings are distinct.
However, there are principles that appear across many Indigenous approaches to healing and restoration that challenge the individualistic ways Western institutions sometimes understand harm.
Relationships matter.
Community matters.
Connection matters.
Culture matters.
Self-determination matters.
Accountability matters.
Healing matters.
And healing cannot always be separated from restoring relationships and changing the conditions that contribute to harm.
The Canadian Association of Social Workers' 2024 Code of Ethics reflects this understanding. It recognizes that community involvement plays a central role in restoration, resilience, and healing from historical trauma. It emphasizes the importance of relationships, understanding Indigenous worldviews, supporting Indigenous models of practice, and respecting the diversity among First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples.
The Code also states that reconciliation is a reciprocal learning process based on respectful engagement, relationship building, and an authentic commitment to meaningful change in social work practice. It calls on social workers to advocate for institutional and systemic changes and to advocate for organizational changes to policy and practice.
That is a very different concept from:
"We sent our staff to Indigenous cultural training."
Training can provide knowledge.
It cannot, by itself, repair a relationship.
It cannot redistribute decision-making power.
It cannot make a policy culturally safe.
It cannot make an organization accountable.
And it cannot undo harm simply because someone has completed a two-hour course.
Reconciliation requires changing the environment
This is one of the reasons the person-in-environment perspective matters so much.
If we understand people within the environments in which they live, work, learn, receive services, and raise their families, then we also have to consider what those environments are doing.
An Indigenous child struggling in a system cannot be understood separately from that system.
An Indigenous employee experiencing discrimination cannot be understood separately from their workplace.
An Indigenous family struggling to access appropriate services cannot be understood separately from the policies governing those services.
An Indigenous community experiencing ongoing inequities cannot be understood separately from the historical and contemporary systems shaping those conditions.
We cannot keep asking:
"What's wrong with this person?"
while refusing to ask:
"What's happening around this person?"
And we certainly cannot provide Indigenous cultural training and then continue operating an environment that creates or reinforces harm.
I am tired of Indigenous people being asked to educate institutions that refuse to change
As an Inuk woman, I have increasingly found myself asking what exactly organizations mean when they say they want to be "reconciliation-focused."
Because I don't think reconciliation should mean that Indigenous people repeatedly explain the same harms while institutions repeatedly express how committed they are to learning.
I don't think Indigenous people should have to continually provide testimony about why something is harmful before an organization decides that perhaps it should reconsider its approach.
And I don't think Indigenous employees should have to carry the emotional and educational labour of reconciliation while simultaneously navigating the systems that need to change.
This is not an argument against Indigenous education.
Quite the opposite.
I believe deeply in education.
I believe people need to learn the history of colonialism.
They need to understand residential schools.
They need to understand Treaties.
They need to learn about Indigenous rights.
They need to understand the contemporary realities Indigenous peoples and communities experience.
They need to examine the history of their own professions and institutions.
But learning needs to take us somewhere.
The CASW Code of Ethics now explicitly recognizes the need for social workers to understand the profession's historical role in colonialism and ongoing discriminatory practices, engage in allyship, advocate for institutional and systemic change, and recognize how Western perspectives shape organizations and practice.
That is what meaningful education can look like.
Not simply knowing.
Doing.
Consultation is not the same thing as listening
There is another distinction that organizations need to understand.
Consultation is not the same thing as listening.
Listening is not the same thing as acting.
And acting once is not the same thing as changing an organizational culture.
Organizations sometimes invite an Indigenous person to sit on a committee, attend a meeting, review a policy, deliver a presentation, or provide cultural guidance.
And then the organization continues doing exactly what it was already doing.
That is not meaningful engagement.
If an Indigenous person tells you something in your organization is causing harm, the response cannot simply be:
"Thank you for sharing."
At some point, thank you for sharing has to become:
"What are we going to do about this?"
The CASW Social Policy Principles similarly describe reconciliation as requiring constructive action to address the ongoing legacies of colonialism, as well as political will, joint leadership, trust-building, accountability, transparency, and meaningful resources.
Those things require more than good intentions.
They require institutional commitment.
Good intentions are not enough
This is perhaps the part that makes people the most uncomfortable.
It is relatively easy to learn about residential schools as something that happened in the past.
It is harder to ask:
Where do I see colonialism operating in my workplace today?
It is easier to learn that Indigenous children were historically removed from their families.
It is harder to ask:
What are our current systems doing to Indigenous children and families?
It is easier to learn that Indigenous peoples have experienced discrimination.
It is harder to ask:
Where might our policies, assumptions, procedures, or organizational culture be contributing to it?
It is easier to say that reconciliation matters.
It is harder to change who gets to make decisions.
It is easier to put an Indigenous person on a committee.
It is harder to actually listen when they say the organization needs to do something differently.
And it is especially hard when that change requires money, time, power, accountability, or institutional discomfort.
But that is precisely where reconciliation becomes real.
What would meaningful Indigenous education look like?
Perhaps we should stop asking only:
"Have our employees completed Indigenous cultural training?"
And start asking:
What changed because our employees completed that training?
What policies have been reviewed?
What practices have changed?
Who was involved in identifying those changes?
Were Indigenous people meaningfully involved in decision-making?
Are Indigenous people being compensated appropriately for their knowledge and expertise?
Are Indigenous perspectives influencing organizational priorities?
Are Indigenous communities seeing tangible benefits?
What happens when an Indigenous person says a practice is harmful?
Is there accountability when an organization causes harm?
Are leaders being held responsible for implementing what employees have learned?
Are we measuring meaningful change rather than simply measuring training completion?
Those questions are considerably harder to answer than:
"How many employees completed the training?"
But they are much closer to the work of reconciliation.
Indigenous cultural competency should be an ongoing practice
Another problem with treating Indigenous education as a one-time training requirement is the implication that there is a point at which someone can become "finished" learning.
There isn't.
First Nations, Inuit, and Métis peoples are not a single culture.
Our communities are diverse.
Our histories are different.
Our languages are different.
Our relationships with governments and institutions are different.
Our teachings, laws, protocols, and cultural practices are different.
And communities themselves continue to change.
Meaningful Indigenous cultural competency therefore requires ongoing learning and cultural humility, not a single course completed once every few years.
CASW describes reconciliation as a process involving lifelong learning, respectful relationships, and meaningful change.
That makes sense to me.
You don't "complete" a relationship.
You don't "complete" accountability.
You don't "complete" reconciliation.
And you don't become culturally safe because a learning management system says your training is complete.
Reconciliation requires us to do something differently
The TRC's Calls to Action were released in 2015.
They were not written as a corporate checklist.
They were not designed to become a collection of mandatory workplace modules.
They were a call for action to address the legacy of residential schools and move Canadian society toward reconciliation.
The NCTR's ReconciliACTION framework puts it plainly:
Learn. Understand. Explore. Recognize. Take Action. Teach Others.
Four of those six actions involve awareness and education—but one of the six is explicitly take action to address historical injustices and present-day wrongs.
That progression matters.
Because learning without action can become another form of avoidance.
And when an organization knows better but continues doing the same thing, we need to be willing to ask difficult questions about what that inaction means.
A certificate does not equal reconciliation
I am angry about this.
I am disappointed.
And honestly, I am tired.
I am tired of watching organizations celebrate themselves for completing the educational portion of reconciliation while Indigenous people continue experiencing the consequences of systems that have not meaningfully changed.
I am tired of reconciliation being treated as something that happens to Indigenous people rather than something that requires non-Indigenous people and institutions to examine themselves.
I am tired of seeing Indigenous education treated as a professional development requirement rather than an invitation to reconsider how we understand power, relationships, responsibility, community, and harm.
And I am tired of the idea that good intentions are enough.
They aren't.
Intent does not erase impact.
Education does not erase responsibility.
A certificate does not equal reconciliation.
If we are serious about reconciliation, the question cannot simply be:
"Did you take the training?"
The question has to be:
"What did you do differently because you took it?"
And then we have to be willing to answer the next question:
"Who is experiencing the difference?"
Because reconciliation is not demonstrated by how much an organization has learned about Indigenous peoples.
It is demonstrated by what the organization is willing to change.
And change requires more than a checkbox.
It requires relationship.
It requires accountability.
It requires action.
It requires humility.
It requires resources.
It requires listening to Indigenous people - not just when what we say is comfortable, but especially when what we say requires something of you.
That is where the work begins.
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