The path towards Truth and Reconciliation continues across northwestern Ontario.
Dryden Mayor Greg Wilson says it is important to keep the work and conversation going every day of the year.
Wilson issued the following statement last week on the first Day for Truth and Reconciliation:
Fellow community leaders and citizens of the north.
Thank you for inviting me to participate in today’s welcome and acknowledgments.
Municipal and Indigenous political leaders traditionally have little to do with one another due to structures and processes created by Federal and Provincial governments as far back as 150 years ago. Yet geographically speaking we have (or should have) much in common to discuss and work together for. With all due respect to many Provincial and Federal leaders; most politicians and civil servants in Toronto and Ottawa do not live here. The people who do live here share the land with all its resources, challenges and opportunities.
The City of Dryden wishes to recognize and honour what is technically a numerical minority in Canada; a minority that has long-suffered under the weight of over-zealous government policies created even before Confederation, and a thousand miles away from where we live. Our flag raising at City hall earlier this month was one small symbolic gesture of solidarity with indigenous communities who have grieved, and continue to grieve, the loss of their children and grandchildren to residential schools.
It has been said that “…the greatest griefs are silent”. Anyone who has lost a child, grandchild, or sibling will surely attest to this. Yet Indigenous families and communities across Canada are finding their voices. I am very pleased to see the slogan “Every Child Matters” on the flag. In every culture, is it not our common humanity that unites community and neighbours through family, …specifically through children?
Are not our children the common thread of hope and promise, woven into the fabric of community regardless of land, language or culture they are born into?
Bullying by any lobby group or government to get us to think or act a certain way should not be tolerated or promoted in a democratic country if the goal is true social equality in the spirit of the Seven grandfather teachings. The word “Equity” should not be code for hostility or bullying by those in positions of power. There should be no room for hatred and arrogance on the road that leads to true reconciliation.
I fear that some of our own government’s current efforts at reconciliation risk only increasing division and distrust, hatred and fear. I sometimes wonder what well intended actions we take today will be judged by future generations as having been short-sighted and narrow-minded in their time. We must all walk humbly on this matter.
I ask you, ….If in the past few centuries, governments and service organizations had truly believed that every child mattered, would they have taken children from the safety and love of their parents and tried to indoctrinate them the way they did?
Who should take primary responsibility for the well-being of your children and grandchildren, how they are educated and by whom in this century? The question remains today; How can the ethnic, family and cultural values of the children be respected and safeguarded in a homogenous provincial educational system? Who should have final say about the long term mental and physical health of an underage child ….the parents or the government? One of the benign evils of our times is the thinking that responsibility for making major life-changing decisions for children belongs, (as a matter of practice, not exception), to the government first and then to the family.
Almost 100% of us were educated in government schools. Educators and governments wield much power and influence over our children and families. I believe the rights of minorities must always be respected and guarded through respect of the role of parents in the family unit. The most significant safeguard in the educational system must be the parents, not the educators and government, however well-meaning. The message for all citizens in the 21st century is not to blindly follow the edicts of political leaders who say they have your best interests at heart. True democracy is meant to protect citizens and especially families and children from potential tyranny at the hands of those who abuse their power just because they sincerely believe they know what’s best.
Canada must learn from the costly lesson of acting as a wedge between parents and their kids if we want to build a better future for all cultures. Canada today is still not a tolerant society. The correct definition of tolerance is not that we all must agree with each other but that we respect those with whom we disagree instead of trying to subjugate them by force.
Local leadership is and should always be much more accountable to the community it serves than leadership from people who don’t live here.
I ask you again. …if governments were as zealous in their efforts to uphold the rights of minorities and honour original Indigenous treaties, would the residential school system have been built in the first place?
Martin Luther King’ dream nearly six decades ago that his four little children would one day live in a nation where they would not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character was not a call for colour blindness but in the words of one of his children this year, it was a call to get to a place where, “…we look into the substance of a person…to rid ourselves of those kinds of prejudices and biases that we often bring to decisions we make [about others].”
As a country, a Province a region and as a town we must get to the point where we respectfully reach out to others, one human being to another with a humble spirit.
I may not always be able to identify with my Indigenous and non-indigenous neighbours from a cultural, political or social standpoint, but as a parent I am able to get much closer to understanding and sharing in another family’s grief and sorrow, hopes and dreams.
I hope there is room for this important cornerstone of humble TRUTH AND LOVE as we seek to build a model of true reconciliation in this town and in this country!
Miigwetch!
