Celebrating National Indigenous Peoples' Day!

On June 1st I was joined by friends Sandi Morrisseau, Arthur Cunningham, Andrea Hansen and Steven Francis for a free webinar on how to take action towards reconciliation.

We worked through a practical list of 10 actions that all Canadians can take to advance reconciliation.

I've decided to turn this into a 10 week series to bring a bit more specificity to each of the actions. Weeks #1 and #2 are listed below, and today (June 21st) marks the beginning of Week #3, which offers a particularly fitting action at this time:

Attend an event or celebration and spend time in oral tradition

Check out the images below for some practical ways to take action toward reconciliation in your own personal and professional lives.

10 Ways to Take Action Toward Reconciliation

On June 1, 2021 we hosted a free webinar focused on how all peoples and organizations can participate in reconciliation, based on this list. If you’d like to hear more Indigenous Perspectives, click here.

And if you’re looking for a link to the 90 minute webinar, please get in touch and we’ll send it your way :)

What is a Settler’s Role in Reconciliation and Why Does it Matter?

By Teneya Gwin

A settler’s role in reconciliation will look different to many individuals, it's not a one size fits all type of thing, it is all based on where you are at in your reconciliation journey. I have put together a few ideas to help start this journey. Now these ideas have been based on my experience working with and for Indigenous communities in Alberta for approximately 14 years as well as identifying as Indigenous myself.

I highly encourage individuals to start in your hometown, understanding the history of where you grew up as a place in which you built your foundation. Research if there was a residential school in the area, understand the traditional territory you live in and learn about the neighbouring Indigenous communities (Treaty territory, First Nation reserves, Métis locals, Métis Settlements and Métis Regions). Looking into where and how you were raised as a Canadian and the opportunities available to you and understand that these opportunities may not have been the same for your Indigenous neighbours because of Canadian Law and policy, this is the ‘Truth’ component that I’ll describe soon.

Once you have done this research you can start to build your own land acknowledgement. I truly believe that writing this from a personal perspective means so much more. Land acknowledgements are a beautiful way to start a meeting, conference or I’ve even seen a birthday party started with a land acknowledgement. We are acknowledging our ancestors that came before us that created the spaces and places in which we live and work.

Now that you have some understanding of the territory in which you live, I encourage you to learn the ‘Truth’ component of the Truth and Reconciliation. Look for books written by Indigenous authors, programs facilitated from Indigenous professionals, and multimedia created by Indigenous creators. Heck, the simplest way to do this is to diversify your social network, start following Indigenous people to gain a new perspective. The Indigenous perspective and narrative have been missing from the Canadian conversation for a long time, our history books often read from a narrative that is not Indigenous, we need to have this lens in order to have a better understanding of the truth. There have been many steps taken in Canadian history that have attempted assimilation of the Indigenous Peoples.

Reconciliation and Allyship have become buzz words, but before you put these words in your twitter handle and business card, I encourage you to identify with the definition and follow through with the action component of these definitions. Disrupting oppressive spaces and having a lens to identify that the organizations, governments and institutions have been primarily built on a colonized perspective.

Check out these references to explore what allyship means for you:

Ally Bill of Responsibilities

Treaty 7 Indigenous Ally Toolkit

Montreal Urban Aboriginal Community Strategy Network Indigenous Ally Toolkit

 In terms of reconciliation in your workplace, there are many things an organization can consider; does your workplace consider and include the Indigenous perspective within the strategic plan, hiring practices, specific roles for Indigenous knowledge, Indigenous positions are proportionate to the Indigenous population in the area (board, volunteers and staff)? As a contractor I have the unique opportunity to have sneak peeks into multiple organizations, I often look to see if my values align with the workplace before considering working with them. This is important because as an Indigenous entrepreneur I bring a different perspective, and will this perspective be met with resistance because there is limited knowledge on the ‘Truth’ or will it be embraced because the organization has begun a journey of reconciliation.

Teneya Gwin is the Founder of ElevenEleven Consulting and a longtime colleague and friend to Anne. She is also part of a collective of colleagues with well over 100 years of combined experience working in the field of Indigenous Relations. Learn more about the Indigenous Perspectives series at forumrelations.com/perspectives.

Bessie’s Trees

How learning about my roots strengthened my commitment to take action toward reconciliation

By Anne Harding

I grew up like many Canadians of settler backgrounds, identifying simply as “Canadian.” The notion that I was anything other than germane to the country where my family had lived for generations was a foreign concept. As I started to work with and learn more about the history and experiences of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, though, it became clear to me that I would benefit from a deeper understanding not just of my family’s heritage, but also of their stories with this land.

“Our family has been here for generations. We’re Canadian.” “We’re Maritimers, and have lived in Nova Scotia for centuries.” “We’re farmers from Saskatchewan where we’ve homesteaded for over a century.” I’m sure these phrases, or slight variations on them, are familiar to some. These were the family stories and identities that I grew up with, and that worked for me for the first 20-some-odd years of my life. They worked for me because I’m white, and our systems in Canada are intentionally set up to benefit people like me. Coming from an upper middle class family in Calgary, I never needed to defend or question my background or heritage. I just existed as ‘Canadian’, pretty much blind to the fact that my experience was so very different from the experiences of Indigenous people who were (and still are) subtly and overtly discriminated against because of their heritage.

This really hit me about seven years ago when I started digging deeper into my family’s story. I was spending so much time working with and learning from Indigenous friends and colleagues who had such rich understandings of and appreciation for their families’ longstanding (like, several thousand years’) connection to this land. If I was really identifying as ‘Canadian’, why didn’t I have a stronger personal connection to this country and its people? So I went on a personal fact-finding mission. 

I was thrilled when I was chatting with my mom one day and she said “well, you know you have an ancestor who was a Red River Settler, don’t you?” I said, “what does that mean?” and she said “I don’t know. But here’s a USB stick with our family’s history on it - look in there.” What I learned from that USB is that my great-great-grandfather John Nielsen was part of the Wolseley Expedition in 1870.

The Wolseley Expedition (or Red River Expedition) was a government military expedition that was launched at the same time that the government was passing The Manitoba Act, which guaranteed 1.4 million acres of land in what we now know as Manitoba as a dedicated land for Métis people. The expedition was retaliation for Louis Riel’s execution of Thomas Scott, and not so subtly intended to punish the Métis for standing up for their recognized rights. By the time the expedition made the 3 month journey across Northern Ontario and into Manitoba, Riel had fled to the United States, where he stayed in exile before coming back up to fight in the Red River Resistance and ultimately being the only Canadian executed for high treason to this country (for fighting for Métis rights) in 1885.

Now for his service, my ancestor, John Nielsen, was granted 160 acres of land in the province of Manitoba, which surely would have belonged to a Métis family. John brought his family out from Ontario and learned to farm in Manitoba for about a decade before moving with a mission to Saskatchewan, where my family has “homesteaded for over a century.” 

It has been incredibly impactful for me and my work to learn this story. To fill out my identity as a Canadian. To connect my personal story with the story of Indigenous people in our country. I am now able to better understand that my privilege growing up as an upper middle class white girl in Calgary can be directly traced back to racist government policies of assimilation. 

The fact that my parents and their parents were encouraged and supported to pursue post-secondary education, to own property, to have stable careers and loving family lives, all relate to the fact that John Nielsen was a white militiaman in a government expedition to quash the ability of Métis people to maintain their identity and way of life. The same Métis people who were integral to the formation of this country through their pivotal roles in the fur trade, as navigators and negotiators between Indigenous and European traders.

Learning this history didn’t change my interest in reconciliation, but it most definitely deepened my commitment to seeing my privilege as a responsibility. To make sure that I do everything that I can to use my privilege to help build a country for future generations that celebrates and recognizes the unique rights and identities of Indigenous Peoples, rather than a country that fights tooth and nail to force a whitewashed set of values and way of life on all who call this country home.

My mom passed away just over a year ago, quite unexpectedly, from pancreatic cancer. One of the ‘affairs’ that we needed to get in order was to deal with the parcel of land she owned, 8 miles east of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. It was part of the Nielsen homestead lands that had been passed down to my mom from her mom, Bessie Persson (John Nielsen’s granddaughter). It’s about 20 acres of forest/marsh that were affectionately known as “Bessie’s trees” by her siblings and relatives. As far as I know, the land has been untouched, as it was considered too much of a swamp to be used for “productive” purposes, like farming.

While my mom was in the hospital, I had an idea that I shared with her. Bessie’s trees were discounted by our farming ancestors, seen as holding no real value, so they were left untouched. To me, that means that the trees, plants, berries, and medicines on that land are indigenous to that territory, which may be a bit of a rare thing, given how prevalent settlement and farming is in that part of Saskatchewan. How wonderful would it be to partner with an Indigenous organization in the future to use that land for traditional Indigenous practices, like harvesting or ceremony, particularly for Indigenous youth living in Prince Albert, which is a mere 5 minutes away? I was fortunate enough to be able to share this idea with mom before she passed, and she loved it.

So I am now the proud steward of Bessie’s trees. And I look forward to one day partnering with an Indigenous organization to have my family’s homestead lands used to contribute, in a small way, to the revitalization of cultures that my ancestors were once sent to destroy. To start this journey, I’ve contributed 5% of my revenues to the Indigenous youth organization Canadian Roots Exchange over the past year. While I thought it was important to begin with a financial commitment, I look forward to continuing to deepen this relationship over the coming years, discovering new ways that I can use my privilege to advance reconciliation, and one day partnering to see these lands used for healing and a re-storying of what it means to identify as Canadian.

The Stories We Tell

This reflection comes from Brittany Brander, Manager of Brand & Communications at the Business Council of Alberta and one of Forum Community Relations’ cultural agility coaching clients. To learn more about one-on-one or small group cultural agility coaching, please visit this page.

Whether it’s the simple retelling of the events of our weekend or the grand ideals we build as a nation, stories are how we make sense of the world, how we understand our past, and how we shape our future. In them, and through them, we find meaning, purpose, and value.

And the stories we tell—and the ones we do not—matter.

But who decides who has the right or power to choose which ones end up in our history books and which ones do not?

Since time immemorial, it has overwhelmingly been the “winners” who have held the power of the pen—the power to determine how history will unfold in the books and minds of our children and grandchildren and influence their view of the world.

The narratives we have constructed of Canadian history, economy, and society are centuries old. And we have folded these narratives into legislation and policy which have led to the systemic displacement, dispossession, and discrimination of Indigenous Peoples. This legislation still defines many aspects of the Indigenous experience today.

For years, these narratives shaped my own settler view of Canada, a view that I began to challenge when I started working for a museum that was critically challenging its own telling of Calgary’s history. During my time at this organization, I was given opportunities to look at history from another perspective, to understand on a deeper level the consequences of telling an incomplete story.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission and their 94 Calls to Action launched an important journey for Canada and for Canadians—to question and challenge the stories we are told about Indigenous Peoples and the DNA of Canada’s social, economic, and political fabric. And we are slowly and painfully deconstructing the harmful narratives that have kept the First Peoples of these lands from creating and participating in prosperity.

But we have a long way to go.

And by confronting and challenging the narratives we create and build, we can rewrite a centuries-old story and advance reconciliation.

The task is not easy. But we can do it. And we must. For our future.

What's one thing?

What's one thing that Canadians can do to help advance economic reconciliation?

Check out this 2 minute video to find out.

Lost in translation

By Anne Harding

It was 2007 and I was less than a year into my first role in Aboriginal Affairs at Petro-Canada. Our Manager at the time, John, had recognized that at the age of 50 he was the youngest person in the department, so brought on two bright eyed and bushy tailed new recruits to shape, train, and mould in our approach to Indigenous relations. I thought I had won the lottery. My first six months were entirely focused on hanging out with community and corporate elders, asking questions and soaking up their knowledge and wisdom.

Then that winter, I got my “big break” and had the distinct privilege of becoming the “community liaison” for a drilling project in a place I had never before heard of:  Déline, NWT (a mere 1600 km and three airplanes from my home in Calgary, AB). That winter, I fell in love with Canada’s North. The jagged rocks of the Canadian Shield in Yellowknife followed by the vast expanse of the open northern tundra was exotic and beautiful, though it was the people that truly captured my heart. The openness and kindness and joy for life that I was met with was contagious, and I felt I could breathe more deeply up there.

I so wanted to do right by the community of Déline. And I wanted to do right by Petro-Canada. As the company representative who was “on the ground” and in the community, it was my job to translate the interests of the people in the towers and the interests of the people on the land. Before my time with the project, the company had spent a couple of years building strong relationships with community members, which resulted in an Access and Benefits Agreement that clearly spelled out expectations for both community and company related to the project. At least, everyone thought they were spelled out clearly.

What I learned that winter has shaped my personal, academic, and professional life. It turned out that even though the Agreement negotiations had happened in good faith and with the best of intentions by all parties, the expectations were not clear on either side of the 60th parallel.

When the company had talked about “making best efforts to include Indigenous businesses in the project” so the community could benefit from the economic activity, the company thought that meant that if there was an Indigenous-owned business or joint venture that was qualified to do the work and reasonably competitive on price, that business would get enough extra points in the procurement process to win the contract. 

The community, however, had a different interpretation of what “making best efforts” looked like in real life. The fact was that at the time of the Agreement being signed there were very few local Indigenous businesses that could do the work that the project needed. So the community expected that Petro-Canada, which had said in good faith that it wanted the community to benefit from the economic activity of the project, would put some effort in up front to support the community in building businesses or partnerships so that they could be involved.

What resulted from these mis-matched expectations didn’t make headlines. There were no protests or rallies against the project or against Petro-Canada. The results were simply disappointment from a community who thought they had done all the right things. They had ensured that the Agreement included environmental protections for the land they hold dear, while getting excited about the new relationship with industry that came with the promise of economic activity and capacity building for the remote community. And without the revenues associated with an active well (the project resulted in what was affectionately called a “money injection well”), there was little more to be done except scratch our heads and wish things could have felt different.

When I think about the term economic reconciliation, I think about my time in Délline. What would have happened if both parties had advocated for intentional Indigenous economic inclusion, rather than just “best efforts”? What conversations might have emerged if the good faith negotiations included not just good intentions but also a discussion about specific actions that could be taken and measured? What innovative business models and new partnerships might have been formed that would outlast the six month drilling project, leading to lasting community prosperity?

It’s been over a decade since my time in Déline, and progress toward greater Indigenous economic inclusion is being made. Many companies in Canada are responding to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action #92, which calls on all of Corporate Canada to look at the ways in which they might repair, strengthen and advance relationships with Indigenous people and communities across the country through the lens of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And there are also many companies who still believe that they do not have a role to play in economic reconciliation. To everyone working in the private sector across this nation, I hope that the next time you have an opportunity to affect the economic participation of others in your organization, you’ll ask yourself if and how Indigenous businesses might be involved, and take action to turn those “best efforts” into true economic reconciliation.

What does Indigenous Economic Reconciliation mean to you and how can it be accomplished?

By Steven Francis

“Reconciliation” for me is about the recognition of legal rights – treaty and Aboriginal rights per section 35 of the Constitution Act, 1982, - and the history of Indians, Métis & Inuit and their respectful place in Canadian society. Other dimensions or elements like economic, environmental, social & cultural issues are also important for meaningful “Reconciliation” and the related process on a go forward basis.   

Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation?

Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation is about ongoing s.35 implementation. Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation could be assisted by: (1) a local or regional “moderate livelihood” definition; (2) an Indigenous Policy requiring economic inclusion for Indigenous Peoples when projects are approved by Canadian Governments; or by (3) Indigenous economic inclusion in legislation or a regulatory mechanism.

An important dimension of/for Aboriginal (Indigenous) Reconciliation must include economic issues, i.e. a revenue stream linked to Government as in British Columbia and to resource development proponents and infrastructure companies or businesses for impacts to land and rights; recognition that Aboriginal (Indigenous) People have not been fairly compensated for sharing their former Lands and its proceeds with other Canadians since Confederation or when Treaties were negotiated; and a legislated or policy approach requiring local Aboriginal (Indigenous) People to participate and benefit from natural resource development occurring anywhere in the country.

Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation will not be achieved everywhere in Canada quickly, so it must remain a continuous work in progress and be an enduring commitment by all senior Canadian Governments, including the federal, provincial and territorial Governments regardless of political party. 

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Report in 2015 challenged many Canadian sectors, the churches and the citizenry generally to address Indigenous issues and reconciliation from their own perspectives. In addition to enhanced and improved awareness, six of the 94 Calls-to-Action (CTA) dealt with professional learning & development, specifically, medical and nursing schools (CTA 24); the Federation of Law Societies (CTA 27); Law schools in Canada (CTA 28); federal, provincial, territorial and municipal governments (CTA 57); journalism programs and media schools (CTA 86); and the corporate sector in Canada (CTA 92).            

Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation can be a relatively easy policy solution that is local or regional or sector specific that enhances community well-being (i.e. social conditions & infrastructure); aids resource & economic development; supports a sustainable environment; and preserves rights and the land for the future. It will also contribute to better socio-economic conditions for people and enhanced self-sufficiency of communities.

How to do Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation? 

Aboriginal (Indigenous) Economic Reconciliation should be undertaken by Governments in consultation and partnership with national Indigenous Political Organizations, like the Assembly of First Nations (AFN), the Métis Nation Council (MNC), and the Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami (ITK) over 12 months as a starting point. Doing so, will signal to all their constituent members and communities that change from the “status quo” can be addressed, so that local conditions and circumstances improve for more Indigenous Canadians within a decade.   

Alternatively, federal United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) legislation could be a mechanism that deals with Indigenous Economic Reconciliation and the many issues requiring attention between Indigenous Peoples and other Canadians as was done in British Columbia in 2019. For instance, the BC Government has begun implementing provincial legislation in conjunction with the three Aboriginal groups in BC, the First Nations Summit, AFN BC, and the Union of BC Indian Chiefs, in a coordinated and ongoing fashion. The resulting efforts should lead to marked improvements in socio-economic conditions for Indigenous people in BC, however, only time will tell. 

From my point of view, concrete actions should be undertaken that inform and enhance reconciliation between Indigenous People and other Canadians, so that everyone that lives here comes to know a more complete history of the country, with the possibility that relationships between everyone change for the better and become more respectful and collaborative in perpetuity.