Unreserved: truth and reconciliation and reaching out to the grassroots

Reconciliation is the act of causing two people or groups to become friendly again after an argument or disagreement. It means more than forgiving and forgetting. It is also long journey toward repairing and building stronger relationships.

In Canada the concept of reconciliation has come to mean so much more. From treaty recognition to residential school healing to taking action on the growing list of missing and murdered indigenous women, our journey toward reconciliation is just beginning.

Part of that journey means sharing what we have survived and revealing what we’ve witnessed and then taking those lessons to a new place of healing. The true spirit of reconciliation can only occur when people walk together, no matter how difficult the journey.

This week on Unreserved

The doors of Canada's residential schools may be closed but have we closed the mindset that created them? An indigenous professor says no. Glen Coulthard, a professor of First Nation Studies at the University of British Columbia and a member of the Yellowknives Dene First Nation says this "politics of recognition" won't work and that it's actually a form of modern-day colonialism.

A Winnipeg businessman confesses a secret he has carried for 40 years to a sharing circle of survivors of the residential achool system. Lynn Bishop has been the head of large Canadian businesses and president of the Winnipeg Blue Bombers. But it was a humble man who ventured down to the Forks in Winnipeg where the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was collecting stories about the notorious schools in 2010. Bishop shared what his role was in our troubled residential school history and why he finally told his story.

Plus breaking the silence about the cycle violence against indigenous women

The suspicious death of a young woman on a neighbourhood trail in Whitehorse this week prompted female leaders in that community to speak out and call for change.

Chief Doris Bill  of Kwanlin Dun First Nation and Jeanie Dendys, director of justice, went door-to-door to talk about what is happening in their community and how to stop it.

With music by A Tribe Called Red, Billy Joe Green, Digging Roots.

Tune into CBC Radio One after the 5 p.m. news in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Nunavut, and after the 4 p.m. news in Yukon and the N.W.T. for these stories and more on Unreserved. You can also listen on demand.