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Episode 6 - Indigenous Roundtable
60 Plays11 months ago
In today’s episode, “An Indigenous Roundtable”, Maureen Bulbrook and her sister Christina Ninham are both lawyers with Indigenous heritage who have witnessed and experienced the injust treatment of Indigenous Canadians. During this conversation with Humanist Canada members Derek Forgie and Bettianne Hedges, we dive into contemporary Indigenous issues, such as the sincerity of land acknowledgments, the legal fight for Indigenous rights, and the path towards truth and reconciliation.
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Transcript
Introduction to the Podcast and Humanism
00:00:09
Speaker
Welcome to the Voice of Canadian Humanism, the official podcast of Humanist Canada. Join us as we delve into thought-provoking discussions, explore critical issues, and celebrate the values of reason, compassion, and secularism through the Humanist Lens.
00:00:26
Speaker
Welcome to The Conversation. I'm Jared W.
Indigenous Roundtable Introduction
00:00:30
Speaker
Clegg. In today's episode, an Indigenous roundtable, Maureen Bulbrook and her sister, Christina Ninam, are both lawyers with Indigenous heritage who have witnessed and experienced the unjust treatment of Indigenous Canadians.
Contemporary Indigenous Issues
00:00:44
Speaker
During this conversation with Humanist Canada members Derek Forgy and Betty Ann Hedges, we dive into contemporary Indigenous issues, such as the sincerity of land acknowledgements, the legal fight for Indigenous rights, and the path towards truth and reconciliation. Let's begin.
00:01:04
Speaker
I'm very pleased to introduce to you today, Derek Forgy and Jill Fletcher Douglas, two of our program committee volunteers. And Derek is going to introduce our guest today. It's true. Hello. Hi, everybody. Yes, my name is Derek. I'm going to be with you for this. I am a relatively new
00:01:23
Speaker
humanist to the game. And I have the task of introducing my first guest ever. This is very exciting. First, we have Maureen Bullbrook. She's indigenous counsel for the Office of the Children's Lawyer. And I insisted personally that she bring her sister along, who is also a legal lay lawyer. Christina Ninam is also here. So we say welcome to you. Welcome. Hello. Hello. Thank you for being here on this Saturday afternoon. Yes, thank you for inviting us to speak. This is great.
00:01:51
Speaker
My sister said, we're speaking on this day. I said, okay. Perfect. We sign each other up for lots of stuff and say, Hey, we're doing this. Okay. That's good. Like any good comedy team, you just got to go with it. He's going to roll with it.
00:02:08
Speaker
We always compare ourselves to the two guys that are up in the balcony and on the Muppets, you know. Oh, Steller and Waldorf. Yes! I didn't know they had names. They have names. I'm pretty sure they've been married for a good 50 years, but anyway.
00:02:28
Speaker
They just have a chemistry that is undeniable. It's a good healthy relationship.
Land Acknowledgements Debate
00:02:34
Speaker
The first thing I would like to get out is sort of the irony of acknowledging that we're actually not doing a land acknowledgement. I was asked by the humanist to know sort of not bring it up or not to the land acknowledgement off the top because
00:02:48
Speaker
I don't know what your experience is, but with me, I've heard sort of ranging opinions on what it land acknowledgements mean, which range anywhere from, you know, condescending lip service all the way up to it's an important first step in the road to reconciliation and then sort of about 20 different opinions in between. That's my experience, but I'm really curious to know what your relationship or what your feeling is towards land acknowledgements. Do you appreciate them or do you find them, as the kids say, cringy? Where do you stand with them right now? I'm curious.
00:03:19
Speaker
So from my perspective, I mean, the land acknowledgments are part of the recommendations of the TRC, right? There should be some land acknowledgments that are said. My issue sometimes is that it only provides like a lip service and, you know, sorry here, you know, we have this land that, you know, you were stewards on for a very long time and looked after and thank you very much, but you're never getting it back, right?
00:03:46
Speaker
For me, land acknowledgements should have an educational component to them. That's one way people are going to learn about why they're actually doing them. And there should be some information that's contained in the land acknowledgements. And sometimes we even get it wrong about which First Nations that they're acknowledging that the land that they're on.
00:04:12
Speaker
And sometimes they don't always get a lot of land acknowledgements and knowledge, which treaties that they're on, but they only go back so far. And there's, you know, other treaties that they're missing in the land acknowledgements because they're not doing the research and they're not doing, you know, getting that information to share. My experience too is, you know, my colleagues at my work,
00:04:38
Speaker
they do ask, you know, for my input for land acknowledgements to see how it is. And for example, if it's someone, if it's about say youth homelessness, one of the things that I liked and that I've encouraged is, you know, if you're going to speak on a topic, like tie it into the land acknowledgement about the statistics of Indigenous people tied into that topic because then it makes it more real, right?
00:05:05
Speaker
I get frustrated because most of the time, probably like 80% of the ones I've been to don't even pronounce the names, right? So they can't say, you got Anishinaabe or they can't say Anishinaabe or they have a hard time with like whatever they're trying to say. And then I'm like thinking, how respectful is that? Like you're literally doing a land acknowledgement for acknowledging people that you can't even pronounce. Yeah.
00:05:31
Speaker
The second thing is one of the things that we've done in presentations we've given is we did foster parent training at one of the agencies. And when they came in, we actually like basically asked for their car keys
00:05:50
Speaker
And we changed some of the names that people had and we took their car keys. And basically we end up saying, well, this is our car now. You don't ever get it back. And if you want to ride somewhere, sometimes we may give you a ride, but really know we're gonna just do whatever we want with it. And it's ours now. So I think that in itself, like really, I think people like, oh my God, like is that what happened? And we're gonna call it a Porsche, not a Porsche.
00:06:21
Speaker
Yeah, exactly. It is so like, it's really, I don't enjoy them. And unless they're gonna say what they're gonna do to try and address it, just sort of joining some type of revolution to ensure that equality happens for everyone. And so like, I just don't like them.
00:06:40
Speaker
Yeah, that's what I keep hearing. I hear that a lot. And the through line that I seem to hear is it does feel like lip service, especially when nothing follows it up.
Tools for Understanding Indigenous Lands
00:06:51
Speaker
So what I do, because I have limited time, whenever I'm at the mic or I'm doing one, I add another little step, which is the simplest, easiest bit of homework, which I encourage people
00:07:02
Speaker
I kind of make, I don't really make it optional, I make it kind of mandatory, I say go to nativeland.ca and type in your address, not just where you live, but also where you work. The place where you spend a lot of time, go to nativeland.ca and find out what land you're on. And I know that that website is not 100% accurate either, but at least it gives you a chance to go, oh, I'm sitting on Haudenosaunee land right now.
00:07:25
Speaker
maybe the and the hope is that that will be like a gateway to them going well maybe I should learn what that word actually means so yeah I do so the thing I keep hearing is like it means nothing if it doesn't go further than that so and I love the car key analogy that is so good I may uh
00:07:42
Speaker
At the risk of, they're just so sounding colonial, I may have to take that and use it. Use it for sure. It's a great one because it's not, it's not a water bottle where everyone's like, who cares? It's a water bottle. We take their keys during the training and they're like, what do we do?
00:08:01
Speaker
That's so good. Ask them what kind of car they're driving, of course. We want to make sure it's resource rich. That's right. Make sure you mispronounce it like Miss Ebushi or something.
00:08:17
Speaker
I would like to get to the wedding table question, if that's
Work in Indigenous Child Protection
00:08:21
Speaker
all right. You know, when you go to a wedding and sometimes you're at a table with people that you don't necessarily know and more often than not, people will say, so what do you do for a living? And you give them kind of a concise answer. So for the folks who don't know what you do, can you just walk us through a typical day of what your job entails and what you do for a living?
00:08:38
Speaker
And our jobs are the same but different. So I represent, I stopped taking parent files in family law matters and child protection matters. So right now I represent children through the Office of the Children's Lawyer and I've been doing that for 20 years. And I represent First Nations. So I have quite a few First Nations in their child protection matters and helping them assert their inherent jurisdiction in the court over their children.
00:09:07
Speaker
Right now I supervise the indigenous child files across Ontario, the panel agents. I'm not allowed to supervise my sister though. And I also represent children too, in port matters, mostly child protection. And occasionally I'll take on a parenting decision making file and represent a child in those
00:09:33
Speaker
Can you go back further just to break your flow, Derek? Can you go back further? Where did you grow up? What was your experience, your lived experience, and your motivation? Your motivation is actually quite obvious, the need of your- I wanted to be a psychologist. I didn't want to be a lawyer. Well, I learned that law school is easier to get into.
00:09:58
Speaker
Ah, so the they take far more people into law school every year than they do here. So basically, we grew up in Hamilton, and we have four brothers, two older, two younger, my sister is less than a year older than I. So she did a victory lab before it was cool so that we could go to school together. We did we went to the University of Windsor together.
00:10:25
Speaker
And we did our undergrads and then we went to law school together. And then in law school, I got my husband who was from Oneida. So that's where I veered off there when I was done, I moved to Oneida. And then my sister, she stayed in Windsor for a bit and then moved back to Hamilton.
00:10:44
Speaker
So did you grow up in the city of Hamilton or? Yes. So not in the reserve, on the reserve, but in the city. I grew up in Heggersville, so just off Six Nations. Yeah. We really dealt with more indigenous people than we did on the daily, because we grew up in like a fairly homogenized area. We were probably one of like three native families, maybe. And so
00:11:11
Speaker
We didn't go to school. It was not a diverse school. Yeah. Yeah. What a different experience. Even, you know, we were literally looking at this from both sides. And my day today, you're probably right. It was more, huh, interesting. Okay.
00:11:27
Speaker
Yeah, not that it's competition, but you won. I've only did three years in Hamilton. I went to Elizabeth Bagshaw's school in grade two. Do you really? You know that Elizabeth Bagshaw? I knew I was, yeah. I have virtually no memory of it, so.
00:11:43
Speaker
So I'm a North Ontario guy, so Matawa, Ontario is where I'm from. So we had a very high, well, ratio with Indigenous students. And again, it wasn't until I was in my 30s, looking back on it, I was like, why was this culture never celebrated? Like, Matawa, Ontario is such a vitally important community.
00:12:06
Speaker
in the story of Canada and the history of Indigenous people. And I'm like, why are we talking about Jacques Carche every week? Why is it? You know the name. The name. Indigenous. I know. It's right in the name. It's like the extent of my Indigenous education through my entire elementary school and high school career was Madawa. It is an Ojibwe word for where the waters meet.
00:12:35
Speaker
Anyway, Jacques Cartier, what a guy. That's it. So I had to do all the work myself, which we'll circle back to in a sec. What I'm curious about is going back to the important work that you do. My wife is a preschool teacher.
00:12:52
Speaker
And I think she has one of those jobs that's kind of thankless in that she has an age, it's two and a half to five, where she has such influence over who they'll become and they'll remember her the least as far as age goes. And you have one of those jobs too that is so taxing and so vitally important and so thankless. So what I'm curious about, what gets you up in the morning? What gets you out of bed? What do you look forward to in this obviously taxing and difficult and emotionally heavy job?
00:13:20
Speaker
Oh my God, Derek, right now that's a loaded question.
Systemic Challenges in Indigenous Rights
00:13:24
Speaker
You can take a caller. Should we take a caller?
00:13:30
Speaker
Um, so my sister and I have been practicing law for what, 23 years now. Um, cause we were called on the same day. Uh, and just to let you know, yeah. So mine was an M she got to cross the stage before I did. So she's the more senior lawyer and I'm the oldest. Um, so, you know, effecting change is so slow.
00:13:57
Speaker
And when we look at it from an indigenous perspective, I think it's even slower. You know, indigenous people have been dehumanized since contact. And it's still happening today. And, you know, trying to make arguments. And so one of the pieces of legislation that came out was the Act Respecting First Nation. You know, it may teach children, the families,
00:14:25
Speaker
which came out in January, 2020. Well, we've seen a couple of cases in 2020 that came out, and then suddenly, you know, the judges here in Ontario, and I have to be cautious about what I say, but they were very comfortable with like, deferring to the CYPSA instead of looking at this new piece of legislation. So now, like last year, there was a big push of education for the federal legislation, or I'm gonna call it the Federal Act,
00:14:55
Speaker
and the education on that. And one of my roles in my job is to try to educate my panel agents and have discussions with different communities and the education piece is pretty important. But sometimes it's really hard when people are like, is it gonna make a difference? And the default and the test under the federal legislation is the best interest of the child test.
00:15:24
Speaker
But when you keep that in the colonial system and the way of thinking, you know, how is that best interest test going to be any different than what they apply with the CYFSA? But I'll pass it over to my sister before I say something I shouldn't. So I get really frustrated because I really.
00:15:44
Speaker
I think the Federal Act is really poorly drafted. But one of the things that they're trying to do is to actually address the systemic policies of genocide assimilation and oppression. And the difficulty that we have is in 2017, when the Child Youth and Family Services Act brought in the changes for indigenous children, they basically
00:16:06
Speaker
try to assert change then, but again, it's like the legislation is determined by judges that are almost, it's ingrained in them to maintain the status quo. So you can't create change and the statistics keep getting worse and worse and worse. So when we get a newer judge that comes out and has a great decision, like I love Justice Wolf, her decisions are fantastic. She comes in and she actually gives decisions and she's indigenous.
00:16:36
Speaker
So when I look at the cases, and I read the cases, I read them in a different way than other people read them. And like I read them in the way I think that she actually intends, as opposed to how they interpret it because of their already colonial view of the world. So even just yesterday when I was arguing emotion,
00:16:58
Speaker
Um, the judge, so there's factors that are supposed to be considered in the legislation dealing with the best interests of the children, you know, like physical, emotional, um, men, medical, educational, and cultural needs among numerous other issues that you need to think of when you're determining best interests. And my argument was that the cultural needs need to be given equal weight as the other needs. And you, like, you can't just pick and choose.
00:17:27
Speaker
which one is going to be more important than the other. But there's already a case law now that the judge himself was relying on saying that whether the parent is indigenous or non-indigenous doesn't really matter. And I'm thinking that in itself lies in the face of the whole system change that they're trying to create. But to try and express that, I mean, I did talk about the hard part and staying in the colonial box and trying to get out of this colonial box to make sure that the
00:17:57
Speaker
policy of assimilation doesn't continue is really, really hard because you're effectively trying to change the way that they themselves have been lawyers and how they were taught as lawyers. I'm not a big fan of lawyers. I actually think that lawyers are
00:18:15
Speaker
there for a system like the whole premise of our system everyone says oh our system is broken our system is not broken our system is designed to oppress and we are figures in the oppression the consistency and the oppression of the system so to say oh we need to fix the broken system no we need to overhaul the system because equality matters
00:18:38
Speaker
You know, representation matters, freedom matters. And it doesn't matter whether you're indigenous or you're not indigenous, but where you come from, who your people are, we should all be treated in a fair and equal manner. And as soon as you have like
00:18:54
Speaker
thousands of Indigenous children that are not treated fairly and equally, and that's justified and asserted and continuing to be asserted through the system, then there's a problem. There's a problem. Like, even if you look at the Stats Canada, like 53% of the children in care are Indigenous.
00:19:14
Speaker
In Canada, it's gross. That's unreal. Gross is the word. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I felt like I felt like I was just in the last act of the name of the father. That was so good. That was such an impassioned plea. Thank you. Appreciate that. I don't know if you know, I don't know if you've seen the last five minutes of In the Name of the Father, but it's that kind of concise. Daniel Day Lewis. Yeah, Daniel Day Lewis. You just Daniel Day Lewis me just now. My father died in prison so we didn't do. How dare you? It's very good.
00:19:42
Speaker
My soapbox is really big, but it's getting smaller as I get older. Okay, well, going back to what you just said, I'm curious if what you bump into, and this is another loaded question for you, so Braceford, I think you're okay with it. Do you bump into more
00:19:57
Speaker
as a problematic thing, attitudes or law? What is a bigger obstruction for you? Is the attitudes or was the law in the way? Yeah, good question. I would say, I would have to say attitudes first, but only because the law is written and I think it's poorly drafted legislation. And I think Canada continues to assert authority over indigenous people, but the difference is we have laws. I don't know how many people have a great law that has existed since time immemorial.
00:20:24
Speaker
literally for like hundreds, if not thousands of years. And we have fought it. We never tried to kill our kids. We have never had a policy of trying to murder our children, unlike the Canadian government. Yet the Canadian government has their courts, they appoint their public servants to determine what's in the best interest of the indigenous children that survive their policies, knowing that it's gonna affect these kids for the rest of their lives. And the difficulty comes in with, if you're getting a judge with the attitude
00:20:52
Speaker
where they're going to do what they think is right, pursuant to their subjective view of what is right, then that in itself is problematic. There's one case that I really struggle with, and it's a horrible case, it's the TE decision from the Court of Appeal. I struggle very strongly with it because the lawyers in Ontario call it the party case unless you're indigenous. When you're indigenous, it's actually a case where
00:21:17
Speaker
A First Nation in Ontario tried to assert their jurisdiction over one of their kids for a customary care agreement. And the Court of Appeal basically said, no, you need judicial oversight over this customary care agreement over one of your children. And since you even tried to assert jurisdiction and we're disagreeing with you on how you did it, we're going to order $10,000 across against you.
00:21:40
Speaker
So like that comes out of their child welfare budget. Like I'm thinking, are you seriously really coming out with decisions like that in 2023? Like this is like past 2000, like this has been really 24 years now, but we've had this case out now since I think it was last year.
00:22:01
Speaker
But yes, it's a gross decision. And one of the things that drives me crazy and it is, it's the facts are wrong. The court of appeal drafts this. The fact, I know the facts are wrong because I was part of the original decision from the Superior Court. And so it's difficult because the one lawyer ended up asserting that her client gives the kids traditional indigenous cuisine.
00:22:23
Speaker
which includes corn soup, which it does, but she also included, it includes hangover soup. And I was floored, like, what is hangover soup? Like it took me a month to find out why hangover soup was apparently you can Google it, but I was too appalled to Google it. But so to me,
00:22:41
Speaker
Once she puts that out there and the court does not make comment or reference to say, how could it possibly be traditional Indigenous cuisine when we didn't have pasta? We had tomatoes, we did not have pasta. So like, how is that traditional? Please explain. It's poverty food because we were not allowed to leave the reserve because you needed a pass to leave the reserve. So they brought in like,
00:23:05
Speaker
poverty food that was cheap and easy to feed people because they wouldn't let us off the reserve. They took our guns. We couldn't go hunting. They really restricted what we had and the resources that we had. And then like without the court knowing that and without the court saying something about it or holding her accountable to even saying why was she allowed to say that and not get any reprimand from it is beyond astounding to me because this is like the court of appeal of Ontario and the name of it.
00:23:36
Speaker
Yeah, that frustration that I'm seeing and hearing, like this is something that I keep bumping into is what I find fascinating is that every single thing that you said should not be controversial to anyone. Like anyone should hear those speeches and go, well, yeah, that just makes sense to me. And yet there are people who still exist walking this earth who are in the system that find your impassioned speech
00:24:03
Speaker
controversial or like that's the thing that I found frustrating too. And I found that, okay, here's what I wanted to ask you. My wife and I have been endeavoring our best to get caught up with the things that we weren't taught in high school and elementary school. And it's been like a 10 year journey. And I think for the first five years of it,
00:24:21
Speaker
like speeches like you just said, I've been sharing stories like this that I've learned with other people. And for a long time, it would ice a room. Like you would see people avoid eye contact and take their drink and go, so the J's game, you know, I would see people turn away from me and look at me like I had a tinfoil hat, like I walked into the room screaming into a banana peel. And then it's only been recently, like the past five years,
00:24:44
Speaker
ish that I have found people are listening now and I found like I don't sound crazy anymore and these stories now sound like like I find the empathy has grown and I have find the understanding is better and I'm curious to hear if your experience is the same and if you feel there is a bit of a shift or if it's just the same old frustrating doors you're hating up against. So when I think about that piece you know we had the
00:25:10
Speaker
the RCAP report that came out in 1996, right? That had like 400 recommendations, something like that in there. Yeah, so it's the Royal Commission on Aboriginal People. And that came out in 1996. And then we have the Truth and Reconciliation Report that came out in 2015.
00:25:40
Speaker
Um, anyways, you know, so everything says the same thing all the time. And it started earlier around the seventies. So what else?
00:25:52
Speaker
many of those three reports, those three significant reports that were commissioned by the government of Canada, they did set out the same, basically recommendations. And a lot of them weren't implemented initially when the report came out. It was almost like it was ignored, totally ignored. And then the MMIWG report came out, I believe it was 2019. And then in 2020,
00:26:21
Speaker
is when the 215 were found, right? The bodies in May of 2020. So that's when, you know, people were thinking, oh my God, now we have to be appalled. We found these children in unmarked graves from residential schools, right? But, you know,
00:26:39
Speaker
It was appalling for that year after those 215 were found. And my sister, that's when she actually started being more firm and standing higher up on her soapbox, not really filtering. She stopped filtering what she was saying, which people need to hear that too. And I think at that point, they were more ready for it anyway.
00:27:02
Speaker
But, you know, I don't think anybody knows, like after 215 and then, you know, a few of more graves of unmarked graves were found. And then suddenly it's like, you know, even though that progression of, you know, unmarked graves and, you know, finding these Indigenous bodies.
00:27:21
Speaker
you know, I think people stopped counting after a while because then they thought this is old news and then some other piece came in. So I think for about a good year, I think it was heightened, for sure, where people were prepared to listen. And maybe my sister can speak more on this, but you know, there was the Idle No More movement, right?
00:27:44
Speaker
Right. And it's still ongoing, but no one, no one here realizes that, you know, the, I don't know, more movement didn't just disappear. Right. It was more publicized in the news around the world than it was here in Canada. So I'll let my sister take over for that because I know she'll have lots to say. And it's funny because it is when the two 15 came out that my colonial fragility order broke.
00:28:12
Speaker
And so now I see what I want because I had enough. And it's funny because the ignorance is prevalent. I think the difficulty, one thing I do say, and people really have a lot of difficulty and they do get quiet is that Canadians benefit off your person of indigenous people every single day, every day. The fact that I live out all night, which is like 20 minutes from London.
00:28:34
Speaker
We are still on a boil water. We get water bottles and it's very frustrating because it doesn't make sense. How does it make sense? Why is it okay? I don't know why it's okay. It's a state of offensive. Yeah. If a subdivision in London didn't have water, like my gosh, it would be started the news every night and every platform. There was a class action that, um, we ended up getting, uh, water money.
00:29:03
Speaker
And it was like really kind of sickening. It was about, so for, I think it was 630 days, we got, I think it was like $2,400. And if you look at Walkerton, when they had theirs, they think there was like 11 days that they had the issue and they got $2,000.
00:29:22
Speaker
And to me, I'm thinking, I don't care about getting money. Just fix it. Just fix it. Just let. You know what? I'm not going to say that I'm not happy, and I'm very grateful because I can shower in my water. There's a lot of First Nations people up north. They can't even shower in their water. They can't use their water. They can't touch their water. The water is actually contaminated, and it gets like they'll get really sick. I was going to turn up.
00:29:50
Speaker
these reserves that still, all these years later, have this horrendous water that they cannot use, touch, drink, be anywhere near.
Historical Context and Systemic Oppression
00:30:02
Speaker
Nothing's been done. Right. And it's been literally duckies. And then when they send water to other continents, it just drives me crazy. Because I'm thinking, hey, why don't you just fix me half an hour away?
00:30:20
Speaker
Maybe because we live here in Canada, which is a very resource rich country. There's actually lawsuits from a lot of people that are looking at settlements.
00:30:32
Speaker
Like they actually, when Canada became Canada, England sent the trust fund dollars to Canada, at which time Canada used the trust fund dollars for a lot of indigenous nations to build the foundation of Canada, which includes like Osgoode Hall and stuff like that. So they ended up using it to build Ottawa. They ended up using it to build their governing structures. And now they're trying to be held accountable in the Canadian court. The difficulty is when you're trying to assert
00:31:01
Speaker
your rights in a Canadian court that has no benefit to actually say that we should have rights, then it's problematic. Even the most recent Supreme Court case on the Reference Treaty Federal Act case, the premise was basically that we still have to argue how we have inherent jurisdiction over our children.
00:31:25
Speaker
Like, to me, that's pretty basic. Like, we were here first. We had governing structures. Our villages were tens of thousands of people. We had systems. We had politics. We had families that took care of each other. We didn't have jails. We didn't have poverty. We didn't have homelessness because we all lived in one big house. And so if we all starve, if someone was hungry, it's because we're all starving. So to me, like, our system was so much kinder.
00:31:55
Speaker
and more holistic and more environmentally conscious. But it wasn't capitalist based and it wasn't like colonial based on the whole premise of subjugation of people, like even when you look at the land.
00:32:11
Speaker
the land issues, the land acknowledgement, like they sit there and they have, I think a lot of people have a hard time acknowledging that there's more than one nation for the land because of the way the land was viewed. So we did not have the simple title ownership of land. And that was not an assertion until the Royal Proclamation really. So we had overlapping land rights with many, many First Nations and we would use the same land, but at different times. And that's where I think that the huge difficulty comes in for people to even understand that.
00:32:40
Speaker
And it's like, we didn't do that. And like, they want us to do that. They still want us to be Canadian. They still want our land and they still want our resources. And, but I'm going to keep going on this little tangent just because I think this part is important. When the Indian Act defines us, we do not get to define ourselves. And I think the problem with the Indian Act is that that's the only thing that's actually binding Canada to keeping
00:33:09
Speaker
what they agree to with all the treaties and stuff before. But when we don't get to define ourselves, then I think that is a huge issue. And when we're defined under legislation, then I think it's automatically going to be problematic because we are Indians under the Indian Act. My sister and I and our brothers, my sister and I have kids and our kids are Indians under the Indian Act and they're
00:33:36
Speaker
We're six twos, but they're lucky because they're six ones. So they can have kids with whoever they want to. And that's a section under the Indian Act. So when they have their kids, our girls, when they have their kids, they will be Indians under the Indian Act. All of our brothers have kids and all of our brother's kids are nonstop as Indians. So they are actually not Indians under the Indian Act. So they have no benefit.
00:33:59
Speaker
of being Indian despite our brothers being their parents. So to me, like there's a huge irony where this Canadian system gets to determine what's right and just, and this oppressive system that continues our oppression. Wow. Well, you mentioned the Indian Act. Whenever I see, whenever people are, you know, show some patients and they listen to stories like this, and then they listen to people like you, or they listen to, you know, people like me who are trying to get them caught up on stuff,
00:34:28
Speaker
and you see that little glimmer of hope in their eye and you can see that their empathy is kind of dripping off of them and they wanna learn more and there's a bit of guilt and there's sadness and it's all there. I usually recommend them to read 21 Things You May Not Know About the Indian Act. The book's about this thick and it's a really good start. It was kind of my Morpheus to use a matrix term. It kind of like, I took the red pill and off I went and my life was changed forever. And me reading, I think it took me eight months to read that book because every other page
00:34:56
Speaker
is a jaw-dropping chapter and I had to throw it across the room and storm off and learn about something else like it just constantly you're constantly struck by shocking things and you flippantly sort of touched upon something that I've been regularly amazed by my entire life growing up in a very
00:35:13
Speaker
you know, high indigenous culture per capita in a 3000 person town, and then going to Canada College in North Bay, Ontario. Over and over and over again, I am amazed at how respectful I am treated, even when I knew nothing.
00:35:28
Speaker
Even when I didn't even start my education, even when I wasn't taught anything, there was such an unbelievable respect. What made me think about it is you talking about your shower. It's like, well, at least I can shower with the water. There are some people who can't even drink it and you're finding a silver lining in something terrible. And this is a thing that I've seen over and over and over again from the Indigenous community is I have no stories, literally zero.
00:35:50
Speaker
I have no examples of a time when I was treated poorly by indigenous people from a racist lens. Because I'm a straight white male living in North America, I literally have no examples of somebody treating me poorly because of who I am. And of course, there's never an excuse for racism, but man oh man, if I would never fault somebody
00:36:12
Speaker
for for reaching the end of their patience or or or losing their cool on me because I look like their oppressor. I would never fault somebody for that and yet I've never sensed it. I've never felt it. I've never experienced it and I just I tip my cap because it astounds me of the resolute and the patience and uh
00:36:36
Speaker
And basically, yeah, basically the respect and the patience that your community has over and over again in this face of inexcusable travesty. This is me giving you a compliment, which I know you're comfortable with. Wow. Wow. You know, growing up,
00:36:55
Speaker
I have a different experience there. Growing up, my father was always very supportive and, you know, endless curiosity. So we did attend quite often outside Brantford, the school and the museum, and it was a regular stop.
00:37:14
Speaker
But, and this is something I want to wade into and help me along here. The, I was never, the magic of the indigenous spirituality, I always found a little difficult, because I've always been a humanist, you know, not of any religion. The spirituality was always so loom, so large,
00:37:39
Speaker
that I had trouble kind of getting through that in order to understand the day-to-day challenges and issues of my neighbors. As I did with maybe other cultures that I lived with, and I know I'm being clumsy here in my language, but I want to kind of look at this as a humanist to help our members
00:38:05
Speaker
speak to that because I belong to a group of women here who have an Indigenous study group.
00:38:15
Speaker
What they study is the spirituality of the indigenous people. And they feel that is what they're doing to try to understand. That frustrates me. And I know that for someone who comes to it without spirituality, there is that bit of that fog that it's hard to get through. And please, that's clumsy. So help me along with that.
00:38:43
Speaker
Well, most we can't brush all indigenous communities with the same brush, right? So we all have our different ways of ceremonies and connections. But essentially, the spirituality for most indigenous communities like all over the world is the connection to the land, right? The connection to the land that everything on Mother Earth is connected and we all have
00:39:10
Speaker
We're all living things. We all have the right to exist. No one and no living thing is better than the other. And if a life is given to provide life to someone else, I mean, of course you should celebrate
00:39:31
Speaker
not to kill, that's not the reason, but to thank for that living thing for the substance or whatever as a human, right? But I think the connection is more, and the spirituality is always tied to Mother Earth. I think that's exactly the connections, the relationships and the connections that is the first thing that they attacked when they got here.
00:40:01
Speaker
Because it's the language and the children and the women that really ultimately make your community. The language helps you understand who you are in relation to the world. And one of the things is they did not like our language and they were languages. And because our languages are actually very, very different.
00:40:24
Speaker
So I got this, I can't really see it, but it actually means great peace. So on my 50th birthday, I decided I'm going to get this for my birthday. And I'm going to try and live every day with a great peace and wake up with a good mind. And so one of the things that I wanted to get on my other arm, which I wanted to get the word power. So
00:40:54
Speaker
one side is ease, one side is power. And I went around and I asked a number of people about how, how do, like, what's the word for power? Sorry, this is great peace. We all know that scum up both is great peace. And so no one, there is no translation for the colonial word of power. So when you actually, in our language, there's no
00:41:22
Speaker
assertion of power and control per se. So what you say is, I have strength, or I have resilience. So that's the way it defines. And if you look at the way that the language is, there's a lot of words that we don't have, because it's not in our language, because we didn't think about things in those ways. So when they got here, and there was no literal translation to a lot of their words, because people came and they were already subjugated by the whole idea of kings,
00:41:52
Speaker
and queens and dominance and paying taxes and being part of this thing where you don't own anything you like you really hear even still people don't own land because it's P simple and they can take it whenever they want. But really, like it was that attack on our language, and then the attack on the children to stop to remove the Indianness from the children, and then to raise them to be like nice little white kids that they were never going to
00:42:20
Speaker
And then the attack on our women, which is still happening now, if you look at my murder missing Indigenous women and girls, it's still happening now. And one of the things that is really frustrating, and I actually removed myself from Facebook because when you're Indigenous and you're on Facebook, you have a lot of people that you see.
00:42:41
Speaker
the feeds that you see are from all across the country and they're real feeds from real indigenous people and they're put on and you're seeing them, which you would never see in the news. Like I would never, you would never see this stuff in the news because it's, it's really like really oppressed or repressed and they don't want Canadians to see it because they prefer to, for people to live in ignorance than to see
00:43:06
Speaker
What's going on? And one of the things that really frustrated me is the Buffy St. Marie issue when it came on. But that's not why it's frustrating me why you guys are thinking about it. What's frustrating me is the fact that they brought it up at the same time when they were trying to have all these news press articles and all these things to get the women out of the dump in Winnipeg. The Indigenous women.
00:43:34
Speaker
buried in the dump in Winnipeg has not been part of the news since Buffy came out and no one's heard anything about it. Bob Canoe or whatever his name is, I think it's Bob Canoe. Bob Canoe, yeah. The premier of Manitoba. Yeah. So he's indigenous. He said he's going to do something about it, but I haven't heard anything. And that frustrates me because like, it's one of those things where it's totally off the grid now. People don't care. People don't know.
00:44:03
Speaker
Cindy Gladie's pelvis was used as an exhibit in court for the charges against the guy that was done. And then it's my understanding that they actually lost the pelvis. And so no one loses a pelvis. Someone took it. Like, why did you even have an indigenous woman's pelvis there in the first place? Like, why did they have to physically, to me, it's appalling that these things continue to happen.
00:44:32
Speaker
So it's the attack against our children, which we know 53% of our children are in care or involved with the society across Canada. We know that Indigenous women are still having issues. We know that they don't want to help contribute to the language basis in order to try and get more Indigenous people. Like chronic underfunding of education is significant. I actually paid tuition for my daughter to go to school in town.
00:44:58
Speaker
So I took a teaching program because I really thought about changing. So I actually have a Bachelor of Education and I can, I'm on the OCT list, but I didn't do it because when I did the practicums, the differentiation in education was so significantly different because of the chronic underfunding that like my husband and I chatted and we decided we're going to put our daughter in school in town. And one of the difficulties that we had with that, which was really, really hard to
00:45:29
Speaker
But I still struggle with that decision now is that she has a disconnect now because she didn't grow up with the kids in her community at the community school. But she technically is bilingual because she passed the Delph and she did really well. And she has the BET so she can say she's bilingual and work as in French, wherever she wants and anywhere. So it's like this thing where I'm like, you got to figure out what's going to be best for her. And I guess we'll see.
00:45:59
Speaker
I won't be able to see that probably for another 10 years, but she's 19 now and she's in university, but she's awesome. And so my concern though is that with the attack on education, with the attack on languages, with the attack on our children, with the attack on our women, it's not going away. And the hard part is it's finally starting to get some recognition with people like you guys where you're getting it.
00:46:27
Speaker
And it's like, I don't know. It's like just sort of some huge systemic overhaul of this broken system. Then I think it's just propagating the same statistics.
Child Welfare and Systemic Barriers
00:46:41
Speaker
Okay. colonialism that is permeating to this day. It's institutionalized at this point.
00:46:51
Speaker
And you mentioned there was actually a couple of points that I kind of would like to circle back on just for my own personal curiosity. How much so you have this systems in place you have cultures you had your own justice systems you've had all of these things in place.
00:47:09
Speaker
this government comes over, as you pointed out, that the people are from a totally different system and want to put that power play. And then they steal the women, they steal the children, they do everything they and eradicate the languages to do everything to to displace and make you fit in or or just eradicate.
00:47:31
Speaker
So going back to the number of children that are in care, 53%. So I just find it interesting and ironic that you hear you had a system and now they're not allowing your children to go back into your communities because your system, you're broken, but
00:47:50
Speaker
This is the system that broke you guys in the first place. So this whole catch 22, but how much of the number of children are they using as an excuse that, Oh, there's not enough kinship. Um, I'm not sure what the word is that I want to use, but, um, that there's not an appropriate kinship for this, for this child to go into.
00:48:14
Speaker
in order to stay with the family or how much of it is as though we don't have enough indigenous foster care families and they can ship while we're removing this child. Obviously there's not an appropriate amount in the extended family. So how much of that is an excuse? How much of that is an issue? How much of that would you like to see changed in terms of how?
00:48:43
Speaker
The whole system is gross. And then like one of the problems that they have is they always say it's a resource issue and it's a resource issue for everything. And, but the thing about it is it's like for a lot of indigenous people, they don't want to invite the society into their home. They don't want to say, well, I'll take my cousin or my niece or my nephew or my grandchildren, but really I don't want to deal with them.
00:49:11
Speaker
Like, I don't want to deal with the society and my house has issues there's stuff, but you know our house might not be big enough and like, I mean if you think about it, my husband was awesome like he was like so awesome. And he, the house he lived in had no hydro and I had no indoor plumbing, and he was just like awesome and he.
00:49:32
Speaker
he had a rough goal, a really rough, rough youth. And, and he ended up going to university and he that's where I met him. And he was just like, so resilient, and so, like awesome. And he but that was like something where he overcame that. And he actually ended up becoming a lawyer at 40 because he ended up doing other stuff. And so I think if, if you look at
00:50:01
Speaker
Like would he have been as awesome if he were removed and placed in care with the non-indigenous family? I don't know. I don't know if that would have been something like the way that benefits Canadians or I think education, the system of education is the first basis of institutionalization for children to learn how to be
00:50:25
Speaker
Canadian and learn how to be members, good members of society to get them ready to work to basically contribute to the system and make sure that the system is running smoothly so that the rich people can stay rich. And we're all contributing to that. So if we look at how they're trying to push that into our systems, our kids don't often learn very well in the same system because they are not good with desks, they're not good with the
00:50:52
Speaker
structure they're not good with trying to conform to how a student is typically supposed to learn. They're actually finding a lot of non-indigenous kids don't learn that way either but it's like this because of the way that it's implemented then it's like this whole forcing of it. So like I think just coming back to your question I think that the whole system is broken
00:51:16
Speaker
And I think that until they actually look at having it where we get to say, hey, what about this? And then have it respected by the courts instead of argued because it doesn't, it's not confined within their colonial box. So even with going back to like the home, like say if you have a kin placement that's prepared to take the child.
00:51:40
Speaker
I mean, it might be a home that has, you know, an old house, right? Or wood stove, right? Which, you know, if you put and apply the standards that the ministry implements, then they're going to sit there and say it's on a suitable house, right? First of all, the wood stove would be
00:52:04
Speaker
hazard. But meanwhile, for this family, it's what heats up their house during the wintertime. And then, so the federal legislation, the federal act that came out in 2020, was supposed to help address the issue of the overall representation of Indigenous children care. And under that piece of legislation, the federal act confirmed
00:52:33
Speaker
that indigenous communities have the inherent jurisdiction over the child and family services of their children. So we have this piece of legislation that's saying we have it and confirming it because the federal government is recognizing it. But yet, despite that confirmation, the courts are still saying we need to do the judicial oversight of that inherent jurisdiction.
00:53:02
Speaker
but which is, you know, doesn't make any sense overall. But also in the federal act, there's the ability of different First Nations community to get engaged in coordination agreements to develop their own child welfare laws, right? And I'm thinking, okay, first of all, I took insult to that piece because it implies that the First Nations communities were lawless.
00:53:29
Speaker
Right. So you can develop your child welfare laws. It's like you mean put it in writing so that it makes it easier for you to understand, despite the fact that this, you know, the communities have had their own laws since time immemorial. Right. It's just not written. It's passed down through tradition and even the spirituality piece. Right. So
00:53:53
Speaker
Yeah. So now you have these communities that are engaging under the federal legislation because from my perspective, it's a big piece for the source of the funding. That's how they're, these first nations are going to get their, their funding once they implement their child welfare laws under the federal act. So we have some nations that are doing it and we'll see how it goes. Um, you know, it's still relatively, I would say, I hate to say it because it's been out since 2020.
00:54:22
Speaker
But a lot of the nations are now saying, Hey, uh, and I think there were a lot of nations were actually waiting until the February 9th, um, referendum question on the federal act to come out before they, they started to serving and implementing their, their legislations. But yeah. So hopefully with some of these nations, by the way, when they enter into the coordination agreements, they have to have certain provisions and the legislation.
00:54:51
Speaker
right, even though they're asserting their own inherent jurisdiction, there has to be certain things in their legislation to be what would be qualified under the legislation of C-92. So in itself, it's still, nations are still having to seek the permission from both the Canadian and federal governments to assert their inherent jurisdiction over their children.
00:55:20
Speaker
Oh, wow. You've painted quite a picture here.
Promoting Allyship and Education
00:55:28
Speaker
It's very clear in this hour that we've been talking that your road is very rocky. And I've heard everything. I mean, I'm being euphemistic, but you've said more than once, tear the whole thing down. So we've got a picture here.
00:55:43
Speaker
So in the spirit of trying to make this rocky road that you're on a little smoother, you know, because you've, it seems like you've got potholes here and you've got, you've got a, no, you cannot pass this barrier. There's like a lot, I'm going to spare you the construction analogies, but you get my idea. There's a lot of problems on this road that you're on. So let's try to clear it up for you a little bit in some way.
00:56:05
Speaker
as best we can with our little viewership here. In the spirit of allyship, and I think that's the reason why I was called into this call in the first place is because I'm endeavoring to be as best an ally as I can.
00:56:16
Speaker
And that's why I have the privilege of talking to you today. At least that's what I think. But again, is that fair? Is that fair to say? Is that what I was called in today? Okay, good. So I would love to know from where you're standing, what makes a good ally? And my follow up, the sort of second part of this is I would love to focus more on even well-meaning people
00:56:37
Speaker
What is a thing that you bump into or are frustrated by? Because sometimes racism is obvious, like you mentioned, the hangover soup. That's one that's clear and present and obvious. But sometimes you have more subtle obstructions from even well-meaning people. So what is, you know, if you had a magic wand, what's the thing you would like to clear up from people? What makes a good ally? And what is a common misstep that you see from people that you'd love to clear up?
00:57:06
Speaker
I always like to hear like yourself, Derek, you know, people trying to educate themselves, right? Educating themselves, not just relying on, you know, my sister and I coming up and then, you know, we have a conversation and then suddenly that's the only, you know, information that they're receiving.
00:57:25
Speaker
you know, take it further. And there's books, oh my God, there's still libraries, there's still paper books, there's still like, there's lots of, like, there's a lot of misinformation on the internet too, and a lot of misinformation in the history books. But mind you, there are pieces, you can piece it together and see where the races and the raw tutorial are. Like, it wasn't uncommon to read a book about indigenous people and read the word savage, right?
00:57:55
Speaker
Right. And that was, that was common up until frigging with the 1960s. Like we're talking like, even today, like some people would, would use that, that word. Right. And then even like the, I think it's, um, always nice when people ask about the political correctness on, you know, how would, how do you refer to yourself as like, uh, like first nation indigenous, like how,
00:58:22
Speaker
Or, you know, because you still have some people that are saying native, right? Which, you know, 20 years ago, that was the word, right? Or aboriginal. And some people took that word to you to sit there and go, aboriginal? What do you mean? Like, I'm an original person. And with the app in front of it, it makes it sound like we're abnormal. Right? Right. So I always think the education piece, the understanding, you know, and not being offensive.
00:58:52
Speaker
about, uh, like coming across as, you know, it's not a comments made, you know, sit there and be offended by, you know, Hey, it's not me that's doing this to you. Right. It wasn't me that, you know, I wasn't the one, but it's like, okay, a good ally would be like, yeah, I understand where you're coming from. I get the history of colonialism. I understand, you know, that, that indigenous people are dehumanized. I want to learn more.
00:59:21
Speaker
And I will take that step. Right. That was, that's what makes a good ally in my perspective. I agree. I actually think that's the wanting to learn more and become more aware.
00:59:34
Speaker
One of the things that I always present on one of the very, very first things I say is that in North America, if you live here, you are a treaty person. Like it's not just the indigenous people that are the treaty people. We are all treaty people in North America. Like, so for people to think that they're not, it's like your government has benefited from these treaties. Just because your government continues to benefit from not following the treaties does not make it right.
01:00:04
Speaker
And so we're on the premise that we're all treaty people, then we should basically understand. And one of the things I have conversations with people that tell me that they're allies on one hand, but then they say that they don't think that they themselves shouldn't have to pay for the sins of their family.
01:00:24
Speaker
their ancestors and I'm like okay I get that but we have to live every single day our lives are lived in the consequence of the ongoing sins that you're living by taking advantage of these treaties and using the resources our resources against us and so like when I'm dealing with a lot of things like when my husband died like I had to deal with so much stuff because
01:00:52
Speaker
of the Indian Act, which is totally different than the estate legislation off reserve. So in order to say, hey, you know, I know that you get the benefit from being Canadian because most Canadians love Canada.
01:01:04
Speaker
And so I have no problem with you loving Canada. Go ahead and love Canada. It's good to love we're here. I love being hooded and a Shawnee. I am Ornida. I'm hooded and a Shawnee. I'm a turtle fan. I'm not convenient. And just because the government decides in 1956, it's either 54 or 56, six to eight years after the... So when the Citizenship Act was passed, they actually excluded indigenous people.
01:01:31
Speaker
So they didn't include indigenous people until about four or six years later. And then the whole premise of including indigenous people was to enfranchise them on a whole, because for, since Canada became Canada, they actually, since before Canada, there was a gradual enfranchisement act. There was a gradual civilization act. And then the gradual enfranchisement act basically tried to say, you need to enfranchise and have all these terms, but we'll discuss that at the next one. And so,
01:01:58
Speaker
the difficulty I have is that it's this allyship and people are trying to learn more but it's their the ignorance that is there that they still need to keep open on because it's like when when when you're surprised when someone says something then feel free to ask for clarification because if you're just trying to say oh no it's not like that
01:02:24
Speaker
then I'm just gonna just stop talking walk away. I love talking to people when their cup is in full, if that makes sense. That does make sense. Yeah, I get that. Yeah. For me, I say you have to also unlearn things. It's not just about it's not just about learning things. It's about unlearning the things you've been taught your whole life.
01:02:44
Speaker
And that was a big one for me. That was the big one for me was just like, reconciling the fact that my entire, almost head to toe, start to finish, my education system failed me almost stem to stern. And so you have to acknowledge that first. And you also have to get over the fact that nobody's calling you a bad person. There's this wonderful guy named Rick who goes to the same school my daughter does.
01:03:12
Speaker
And we'll get into this. We'll get into these conversations. I'll come with a new chapter that I just read. I'm like, can you believe this? You know, I'll be shaking my fist about the Oka Crisis or something. And I'll be coming in real hot. And Rick is the one who will go, hey, just be easy on them. They didn't know. They weren't taught this.
01:03:31
Speaker
They were led astray and you got to dial it down and he's always the one who has to talk me off the ledge. He's the one that gets me to cool my temper a little bit. So what I usually do for people who have that, like I talked about that glimmer in the eye and you can almost see an ally forming. It's almost like you can see them coming around and going, my God, I want to fix this.
01:03:51
Speaker
I want to make up for last time. I want to get caught up. What I usually recommend is I go with 21 things you should know about the Indian Act. I tell them, just take a look at the seven grandfather teachings and look up your address on nativeland.ca. I would love if you could add to that list. What does a good ally look like to you and what would you like more people to do to be part of the solution, not part of the problem?
01:04:14
Speaker
I think asking questions, asking questions from everyone, not just indigenous people. Like I have, I don't know what it is. I, I, I don't think I look excessively friendly, but people would just. That's not fair, but continue. Well, it's weird. Like I have literally like four or five times like strangers.
01:04:36
Speaker
I didn't know about everything that was going on. And like this one lady, she must have been in her sixties and she was so sad. And she's like, I, when she saw me, cause I, I actually am wearing black today cause I couldn't find my orange shirt, but I actually had like six orange shirts. I'm like, where are they today? But anyways, I'm.
01:04:56
Speaker
So I wear orange and then they just come up and like, I didn't know. And it's like with the 215, it was around last time and people were just coming up and it's like, yeah, your government did this. Your government actually figured out how to establish the Canada's food guide by starving indigenous children. And they literally used indigenous children to, and people to try and figure out what was good and what was bad. And they like.
01:05:21
Speaker
And then they're like, it's just like the sharpness because there was no one there to stand up for kids. And there was no way that indigenous people even had a right to get a lawyer till like really, really late. And then they were wondering why everything's coming out now.
01:05:37
Speaker
Because really in the last 50 years, that's when we were allowed to get lawyers. And that's when we were allowed to assert our rights. We were allowed to leave the reserve. We were allowed to do these things that we weren't allowed to do before. And then it's just problematic. And one of the things that a lot of Canadians don't know is the fastest growing population right now is the Indigenous population. They have more Indigenous people under 25 than there are over 25. And it's like, be ready.
01:06:05
Speaker
Like, be ready. Sorry, I just wanted to add to that is that, you know, so seven grandfather teachings is great, but that doesn't apply to every First Nation across like, you know, North America. So find out how many nations there are actually, you know, like First Nation and even the Inuit communities and the Métis
Diversity and Misconceptions in Indigenous Communities
01:06:26
Speaker
communities. I mean, they're all important communities.
01:06:29
Speaker
So find out how many there are, find out how many there are just in the general area, how many are in each province, right? What the different languages are. And because that's one of the problems that when people talk about like, even when we have the discussion, sometimes it's like I have to remind it like, you know, it's great just to use the word indigenous.
01:06:52
Speaker
Right? And, but at the same time, yes, we're Haudenosaunee, right? So, and we should start using that more, but we don't want to disregard the other, you know, people, like here to sit there and say, we want to exclude them. That's why we generally speak about Indigenous pieces and Indigenous people in a general sense. But I think it's important to know that we're different, like we're all, our nations are different.
01:07:21
Speaker
We have some languages, you know, different communities might speak Ojibwe, but they have a different dialect, right? So, you know, and yeah, we all have our different teachings. As for Nishoni people, we do not have the seven grandfather teachings. That's an Ojibwe thing, right? So, and my sister mentioned earlier, Nishoni, we have the Great Law of Peace, right? So, you know, it's important to recognize that we're not all the same.
01:07:51
Speaker
And a little fun fact I'm going to share with you. Please, please do. So the Great Law was actually implemented during a solar eclipse. So when they actually brought it and all the weapons were to be put under the tree, they were trying to get other people and then they were able to basically make the sky during the day dark. And then so that was enough on the day of the solar eclipse to get all the nations to agree.
01:08:19
Speaker
And that's how it was actually formed so they know that this path right now that's going to be tomorrow is the first time that this path has been taken in like 1000 years or so I can't remember the exact date but it's like 1000 years ago.
01:08:32
Speaker
So they actually have ideas about when they think it might have been formed, but they have different dates as to when this particular path of this solar eclipse covers the homelands. So it's actually the path is covering the homelands of Haudenosaunee people, which goes through Ohio and to New York.
01:08:53
Speaker
Like if you look at the way the New York Freeway and then the 401 follow all the way up into Quebec, like that's, like it's not a coincidence that the highways are there. Those are pathways. Fascinating. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. That is a fun fact. You weren't joking. That was, that's exactly what that was. That's fascinating.
01:09:17
Speaker
Yeah, okay. And not to put you find a point on it, but I would love to ask this too. I remember when I was involved in LGBT activism, people like my grandmother, who were totally on side and were there, would find themselves saying stuff like, oh, yes, I absolutely support the gay lifestyle. You know, like, she would say stuff that was warm and kind and loving, but there was just a little like, okay, it's not a lifestyle. This is just part of the human condition.
01:09:46
Speaker
Are there any, are there any terms floating out there that just make your eyebrow twitch a bit? Like, is there anything like, let's not say that anymore. Do you have any of those that are, that are, that are sticking on you? Oh my God. There's too many. Yeah. We try to push things out of our, our mind. When I was younger, when we were going to school, we heard the word spa a lot. Yeah. We were called like,
01:10:14
Speaker
savages we were called dirty and we were yeah like you're just you're just you know horrible or indian like you're ugly like we heard all sorts of stuff so yeah yeah we actually there was like uh religious people that came over and told
01:10:35
Speaker
I don't think they realize we're indigenous because they told us that Indians were sent over to North America and we're brown because we're evil. And that, like God. Yeah. So we became, that's why we're brown. I'm like, okay. He realizes he's in their house, but yeah, it's stuff like that. And there's other worst words, like, um, they,
01:11:03
Speaker
they have other worst words and that's just like whatever and it's it is hard but a lot of it is nice because even though like it's only been like 25-30 years a lot of change has actually happened and like I a lot of people have a hard time with like
01:11:21
Speaker
change what I'm finding right now is talking to like some white men they feel like the attack now is on them and I'm like um don't even get me started just because the pendulum started moving a little tiny little bit
01:11:38
Speaker
Totally. Like it's like, did they feel attacked? It's like, don't feel attacked. You're only feeling attacked because you're taking it in this personal way, where it's like the equality, we're trying to assert equality and rights for, and to just show another thing that we have is as indigenous people, we're born into roles and responsibilities. We are not born into rights and privileges.
01:12:02
Speaker
And I think non-Indigenous people are born into rights and privileges. And I think that's the way that they're taught how to be as little people growing up. Whereas Indigenous people are born and we have these roles that we have to fulfill. And we have these things that we have to have responsibilities that are automatically put on us as soon as we're basically born.
01:12:26
Speaker
there. So there is a difference. Oh, Christina, you worded that so well. Thank you. That was wow. Yeah, that's great. And if it's any consolation for you, I have as as as sitting up here on my pile of white privilege, I have I have never felt attacked. I have I have only felt welcomed by this community my entire life. And that's being being immersed and immersing myself any any chance I've had.
01:12:49
Speaker
I've always felt welcomed and every single victory that I've seen from any of the communities is as I see as a victory for this land. I see it as a victory for humanity and I always have and I'm looking forward to more of them. I want to see many more victories. That's what I want. It only enriches us as
01:13:10
Speaker
as human beings, you know, to understand the culture and the land and the history of our land and the people that were here before us and all. I like that. We'll continue to expand around us. Jill, do you have anything before I close? Yes, I wanted to. I'm a very practical person. So what can we do locally, provincially, federally to help things along?
01:13:38
Speaker
I always think that's a great question and I get to ask that and I mean the only thing I can really say is like contact your member of parliament and your member provincial parliament to basically say like why is stuff being ignored and why is there a water issue, why is it okay for indigenous like
01:13:58
Speaker
representation or chronic over-representation in every significant negative system in Canada, including health care, like health care and education and child welfare and incarceration, suicide rates drives me crazy when
01:14:16
Speaker
Oh, there was a lot last year. It's just like really, really sad. And then right now there's a huge drug epidemic across Canada with everyone and it has a serious significant impact on a lot of major, a lot of reserves in a major way. So I don't know what else to say other than that because they just, the government just continues to ignore it because if you set it aside and you ignore it, it'll go away.
01:14:42
Speaker
I get it. It's going to go away. And they've been saying that for over 150 years. Literally. Yeah, literally. And with the residential schools, you know, some of the perpetrators of the abuse were still alive. They were never charged. And they're still getting, you know, they're still alive and they're still getting like pensions, right? And why not question that? So those are pieces why people don't think of it. Like why, why weren't they like charged? Like we have
01:15:12
Speaker
were crime criminals, you know, that are in their 80s, 90s that are being prosecuted. And it's like, why not do that? Like, they're part of the genocide, right? So, and, um, oh, I was going to say, I forgot about the other, oh, the, even the damages, um, when it comes to Indigenous people suing, right? Like, we tend to see lesser
01:15:38
Speaker
awards, awarded amounts for Indigenous people as compared to non-Indigenous people? 100%. And then we have deadlines. Like why? So there's no limitation periods on a lot of things, except for Indigenous people. And because they, the government wants to clean up. And even when they did want it. So, I mean, if we look at Germany, and we look at everything that happened with the Nazis and with the Jews, they literally have museums
01:16:06
Speaker
to sit there and show everyone why we can't do this again, why this is an issue, why we need to learn from our history and our mistakes. But in Canada, they actually have tried to destroy all the records and they're trying to hide and burn down the schools and make sure that it's like this.
01:16:22
Speaker
secret that never comes up and the awareness and the evidence is gone. And they've literally, like starting from Harper, I think it was, they've literally started destroying records. And it's like, why? Like, why are you trying to destroy records? Because I decided out of mind and it's easier if we're all dead.
Colonial Authority and Doctrine of Discovery
01:16:42
Speaker
And I think part of the problem that even when you do have the discussions, if you do call the MPP or your MP, the reality is that the racism
01:16:52
Speaker
and dehumanization of indigenous people is so ingrained in this institution and in the government that it tends to, it's like, isn't that the normal thing to do? Isn't that how we're supposed to, you know, we're not supposed to consider them people. So it's really hard to get people to actually, you know, take the stance. Like even, so even with the I don't know more, like,
01:17:19
Speaker
movement right at that point when suddenly it was just buried under everything. It was made worldwide use but at the same time was pushed aside here so that no one would see it right. And I would think at that point we so much emphasis on what the Pope would say about it. Who cares at that point?
01:17:39
Speaker
That became the headline and took away from the entire criminal part of the issue. It's actually interesting if you look at it though, because the Pope when he got here, so the focus on Canada's
01:17:58
Speaker
assertion of authority is the doctrine of discovery. The doctrine of discovery is based on terra nois, it's actually a papal degree that was made that asserts that if you're not Christian, then you are not people and you're not human. So when that happened, and contact happened, we were not human, and we were basically treated like cows. So like, that's where, I mean, there's a lot of people, especially in like the south,
01:18:22
Speaker
or they would eat them because they were like cats. If you're not Christian, you're not human. Or they would have sex with our women. And then because they would have sex, it was considered bestiality, and they were going to go to hell. So they actually had to change that. And so that assertion, the doctrine of discovery, that was a big thing when the pope came. Because when the pope came, they actually asked, they wanted to rescind it. And what they did,
01:18:50
Speaker
Yeah, right. Because it is a promise. It is the promise of colonial assertion of control, power and authority for the Canadian government. And so when the which the Canadian government still relies on and still has used it in case law within the last two decades. So when they assert that, and with the Pope basically saying it's been repudiated, then Canada is still enforcing it because they
01:19:19
Speaker
do not have a right at the point of saying that they like with the Royal Proclamation they basically asserted their authority and a lot of it was premised on the Doctrine of Discovery. So really it's a gross disgusting system premised on the genocide assimilation and oppression of Indigenous people right from the go like start.
01:19:40
Speaker
And then they came and they saw how resource rich our country are like the whole like continent was really. And then it just like started this frenzy and then it started changing our systems to basically align with colonial systems. And that I think is the biggest problem that we have.
01:20:00
Speaker
Right, right. Well, I'm going to wrap this up. But we are coming back June 9. We're going to do a live discussion open to anyone that wants to participate. And a lot of the same faces here. But thank you, Christina, Maureen. This was difficult to listen to, but so valuable. And thank you for that to take the time to walk us through this things that you shouldn't have to continue.
01:20:28
Speaker
to tell us, you know, I'm the big Royal Us, but thank you for your patience in doing that. Again, June 9th, we'll be back and please look at all of our platforms for more information on that. Thank you to all who've attended that will watch this recording via, again, all of our platforms, all of our programming is generously supported by our members and our donors.
01:20:55
Speaker
And please watch our website. And to those watching who are not a member, please consider becoming a member because it does indeed, Humanist Canada is the voice of humanism in Canada. And our role is to bring all of these Canadian voices forward and ensure that they are heard. And we want more involved. So thank you very much, everyone. Really good discussion.
01:21:25
Speaker
Thank you for listening to The Voice of Canadian Humanism. We would like to especially thank our members and donors who make our work possible. If you feel that this is the type of programming that belongs in the public conversation, please visit us at HumanistCanada.ca and become a member and or donate. You can also like and subscribe to us on social media at Humanist Canada. We'll see you next time.