Dear Editor:
RE: County not ready to add land acknowledgment at every council meeting, Dec. 2.
I read the first line in the article … this was a bit of a shock. As a First Nation person, I have come to expect that the governments of Canada operate as if Canadian history starts at a point when the first European showed up and discovered what is now Canada—and that is not that long ago.
Canadian society has since operated on this precept as if First Nation people did not exist prior to European discovery. This point is important as Canada, its provinces, its territories and religious allies worked hard to remove the Indian from the man.
What does that mean? It means assimilation of the First Nation into Canadian society by removing the link to our culture and lands. Treaties would live on and since there would be no legal First Nation people, the treaties would be historical artifacts. The centerpiece of this assimilation policy was the Residential School System, where Canada took over the parenting of First Nation children, to remove and replace First Nation culture, language, and the connection to the land in each child. The impact of the assimilation policy on First Nation people has been significant and continues to have daily societal impacts on First Nation people today and has left us feeling excluded by Canada and its provinces.
As I read the rest of the article, I do appreciate the important work that has been undertaken by the committee, as I also believe the staff and political representatives should understand the history of the land of Wellington County in which they work so hard to manage and regulate how land is used in a good way.
However, I do not understand the reference to the courts, as court judgments will not affect historical fact; and secondly, local governments take direction from the province, thus provincial policy will continue to guide the legal aspects of the relationship between Indigenous people and municipal governments, this also does not change historical fact.
Land acknowledgement is not a one-way message; recognition that the land has a history before European contact is important to recognize. I also need to see that local government also can represent me as a First Nation person who lives here in Wellington County.
Recognition of the First Nation links to the land and the historical context is an important step in societal inclusion for Indigenous people. As I see it, land acknowledgment cannot be stagnant, it must also be live and continuous, and educational, the simple act of reading a land acknowledgment with a historical fact into the minutes of a meeting of local government can be quite impactful for Indigenous constituents of Wellington County.
It should not be placed on a shelf and dusted off every couple of years; regular recognition through a land acknowledgement is a vital part of reconciliation.
Merv McLeod,
Fergus