The empires of England, Spain, France and
Portugal divided up the world, and they were
very active in terms of exploring the world
and taking our lands illegally, that were
already occupied by Indigenous nations
worldwide.
So they went to the pope of the Catholic church
to validate the illegal taking of the lands.
And what did the pope do in the 14th Century,
he issued a papal bull.
The papal bull provided instructions that
Indigenous peoples are not human, or Christian.
Because Indigenous people are not human, they
don't have sovereignty in government.
I remember reading it and thinking, "That
doesn't make sense.
How can you simply take over somebody's territory
by saying, 'You no longer exist.'
or 'You never existed because we didn't know
about you.'"
But it wasn't until I was older and starting
to educate myself on our history and what
had happened, and why our communities are
in these states was when I heard the Doctrine
of Discovery for the first time.
So I just remember reading it and thinking
like, "This can't be real.
This isn't something that makes sense.
This is something that's inhumane and not
something that was fair to the people that
were the protectors of this lands."
Another word for this is terra nullius,
empty land.
And the land is made empty not by clearing
the people out, but it's made empty through
law.
Chief justice, John Marshall basically said,
in simple terms, "We are sovereign because
of the Doctrine of Discovery.
We have the right to govern this land because
we discovered it."
And he wasn't talking about we in the American
sense, he was talking about we in the white
man sense. And that therefore those nations
that were here, those Indian nations that
were here are now semi-sovereign nations.
So they're no longer sovereign.
They are dependent upon our sovereignty, our
willingness to let them retain some elements
of sovereignty.
It's relevant because not only is it basically
the root of the whole structure of property
law in Canada, and the United States, and
Australia for instance.
But it is thoroughly enmeshed in the structures
of our law.
So deeply that it's often difficult to even
spot it.
This fiction.
This hidden foundation still lives with us
because we don't assume, by and large, that
Indigenous peoples today are primitive, or
have lower social skills on this kind of hierarchy
of civilizations.
But nevertheless, the law continues to assume
that sovereignty of the Crown is paramount.
The Crown title is underlying all of our land.
When in fact, that comes from nowhere.
It comes from just an assertion.
The underlying question is how, in the Canadian
context for instance, where does the Crown
get its right to hold underlying title for
all lands, which is the way that our law is structured.
Where does the Crown get its jurisdiction
over all matters.
And there's the sense that this came out of
the ether.
It was always thus.
Starting at the time of the first colonial
incursions into the Americas, there had to
be justification.
Why did the colonial powers have the right
to take over these lands and assert their
sovereignty, or their jurisdiction?
What did they do about the fact that there
were people here already who were living in,
using these lands?
Exercising their own laws.
Having their own political structures.
There had to be some sort of justification
to allow that colonial authority to be asserted.
[music]
Sadness surrounds me.
Traveling through aboriginal homeland.
See things that others can't.
Longhouses.
Smoke bellowing from center.
Surrounded by wooden palisades.
Brown women tending the three sisters.
The corn, the beans, the squash.
Men wandering through the bush hunting for
deer and other sustenance.
Children running through the woods playing
games. Laughing.
Mohawk river flows.
Creator's artery bringing fish for harvest
and waterway for travel.
Can smell the sweet grass, the strawberries,
the first fruits of summer.
We occupied the whole Turtle Island, US and
Canada.
All of North America.
And our nations and our people were granted
inherent rights by the Creator.
It wasn't an empty land, and there were lots
of government sort of structures.
The Mi'kmaq had different provinces.
They used to come together on regular meetings.
The five nations and then the six nations
of the Iroquois Confederacy.
These were people who were mostly farmers.
In Ontario it's estimated that there was about
90 to 110,000 people living here when the
Europeans came in.
When the Jesuits, for example, came in 1615
along with Samuel De Champlain, and counted
the Wendat people, the Huron there.
They lived as 40,000 people between what's
now Barrie, Orrillia, and Collingwood and they were
in villages of 2,000 people and there were
200 miles of roads that were connecting these
villages.
And there were trade routes everywhere.
They found parrot feathers in the Arctic.
You know, the trade routes were the incredible
way of getting around and ensuring that people
were able to survive.
So if you've got all of this territory in
corn from the early Honi Sohni peoples, and
you've got northern hunters with moose meat
and deer meat, and you know, there's gonna
gonna be trade.
This area was settled because of the wealth
of the waters as well, not just the land.
We were highly organized and structured in
our governing systems.
And we had a concept, clan systems of the
various nations on Turtle Island.
And really, major functions, duties and responsibilities
of each of the clans in the kinship
clan system that formed the basis of how we
structured our governing systems.
The essence of the clan system is that you
respect the gifts that different people bring.
So some people are really good hunters, and
some people are really good cooks, and some
people are really good with money.
And some people are good intellectuals.
And the essence of the clan system is you
respect what each of them bring, and collectively
we figure it out.
What I often refer to is, who made the laws?
Who made the rules?
The female side.
The grandma, the moms made the rules in the
family, the home and the community.
And as men we had to enforce them.
The whole concept of buying and selling land
was a foreign concept to us.
We didn't believe in it.
We didn't believe that the land could be bought
and could be sold, and that we were letting
people use the land and it was not a permanent
transfer.
It is about thriving cultures, with political
structures with their own legal norms, with
their own systems of exercising jurisdiction,
with their own property laws.
And many of those societies continue to today.
So a really wonderful example of that in the
Canadian context right now is the archeological
discoveries that have been confirmed within
the last two years on the BC coast.
So in the area of the Heiltsuk First Nation.
One is the excavation of a 15,000 year old
village site that the Heiltsuk community today
knew about.
So within their living memory they knew that
this was a place that this was a place that
their community had used 15,000 years ago,
and had continued to use for the past 15,000 years.
But then I see blood.
My ancestors covered in red.
Lifelessness.
Settler's blood too.
Who was right?
Who was wrong?
Both wanted good life, good land.
Now I see farm lands.
Wonder if they grow the three sisters.
See hard pavement that was once soft trail.
Good to walk with deer skin moccasins.
Old stone buildings and homes carved out of
once pristine land now replace longhouses
and a good Creator given life that was before.
Over the years, 50 years now that I've been
walking that way.
So I've met many first peoples.
But I've been able to develop relationships
with them as people.
I began to learn the facts, the truths, the
history.
The fact that we signed treaties that the
Indian people, as we talked about Indians,
had been here for thousands of years.
And we were the new comers among them.
And we were the people who came and lived
within their territory, their homeland, and
they accepted us as neighbors, they were willing
to take us in.
There's an innate respect in our people for
everyone and everything because everyone is
a creation of the Creator, is created by God.
Therefore that's an automatic respect.
And so we just went along with them and helped
them get along, and helped them survive.
There's a complicated set of factors that
broke this relationship that was quite strong
at one point.
Settlers needed indigenous peoples for knowing
about the land, how to survive, food.
Often it was just men coming along, and so
there was partnerships formed, and the children
were mixed between European and indigenous
parents.
And that went on for 250 years in North America
and was quite strong, and developed distinctive
cultures in many of those places.
I think what started to erode that was the
development of a mercantile system that could
alienate or separate people from one another
through trade that then had war attached to it.
Canada has not got the reputation the United
States has, where there was a lot of killing
and shooting, and burying of bodies.
You know, in Canada it was a little more subtle.
These people that were here were in the way.
And so how do we remove these people in a
way that isn't blood letting, but confines
them someplace else?
And so that was the remove people from their
lands, put them in a space where we can contain
them, control their access to resources.
You know, with McDonald, John A MacDonald,
our first Prime Minister was "Let's just starve
them to death.
If they can't eat and they can't survive,
they can't make babies, the can't continue."
Of course if you want to disorient any population,
the first thing you must do is somehow break
their contact with the land because the land
on which they live is the source of their
identity, their medicines, their food, their
ability to self sustain.
And then that didn't work, so let's just take
their children away and we'll teach their
children how to do things our way.
Let's help them by taking their kids from
them, and raising them in Western ways.
Take them in, you strip them of their clothes,
you shave their hair.
You douse them with lye.
You put them in identical clothing.
When they try to speak their languages you
put pins through their tongues.
You punish them corporally.
You tell them that their parents and their
communities aren't worthy of emulation.
Can you imagine a five year old, or a six
year old taken from their parents, institutionalized
and then everything good about being a First
Nations person is no good.
Their beautiful long hair was cut.
Their beautiful languages weren't allowed.
Their access to their families and their ceremonies
were disallowed.
Everything they've known, their pride in who
they were as a First Nation, it's no good.
Your family's no good, your community's good,
your First Nation's no good.
In fact, you're no good.
And on top of that, you put on that, physical
abuse, then sexual abuse and mental abuse.
You're not healthy coming out of that institution.
The Doctrine of Discovery is something that
we could say clearly was behind the Residential
Schools because it was about Christian and
European superiority, and the notion of remaking
Indigenous people in that image.
For their benefit was the perspective, for
their benefit either in this world or the next.
And we know the impacts of the Residential Schools didn't stop with the closing of the
Residential Schools, that those impacts spilled
over into generations and are causing intergenerational
trauma even to this day.
My Grandfather had to allow his kids to be
taken from his home, or he'll get his treaty
card taken away.
I can't remember what it is.
But it was something that was that important.
And for a man to see his kids getting taken...
it just makes me scared.
Like, how would I react if that was me?
With my kids?
Or anybody else's kids?
How could you live the next day?
And that's where that addiction comes in,
because you're weak, and you're sad, and there
is nothing ... you don't have your spirit.
Your spirit is lost.
I carry my parents' hurt.
I'm the first generation that didn't attend
Residential School.
And 
I think what is hard is that I still hear
their stories, and to know their pain and
suffering is the saddest thing.
I think virtually all the social ills in Indigenous
communities today are the result of the disorientation
that occurred for Indigenous populations because
of that Residential School.
And it's primarily an emotional and spiritual
dislocation.
Yes, it was physical and economic, and social,
and other kinds of dynamics like that.
But for Indigenous people ourselves, it's
that emotional, spiritual disorientation that
becomes a major complication in life.
And for me I've always said it's about the
loss of spirituality.
The loss of knowing who they are as Indigenous
people, Indigenous youth.
That's one of the legacies of the Residential Schools.
So a lot of our young people don't know who
they are.
And a lot of our elders have
traditional culture.
They don't understand where they came from.
They don't really speak about it anymore.
So that's really sad.
With the Residential Schools, there was a
lot of impacts.
You know, right to abuses.
You know, physical, mental.
You know, even like lateral violence, and
all of that stuff.
It's really sad.
Martin Brokenleg talks about us.
The need to belong to something.
And if your family has been destroyed, your
family life has been destroyed through drugs
and alcohol then you don't have a family.
You don't have a family to belong with, so
therefore they may go where they can find
a family, such as gangs, or other negative
influences like that.
Read Rupert Ross's Indigenous Healing.
Essentially what he says is that the first
generation of indigenous children going into
schools were so overwhelmed they simply shut
themselves off emotionally.
And of course, as a therapist, I've seen that
happen for lots of people, but certainly with
Indigenous populations.
And it's the right thing to do.
If you're a vulnerable kid, or a vulnerable
adult, and life is simply overwhelming, it's
probably best just to shut down.
Hunker down and hold on.
Because that's what that generation did.
There's a cost, and the cost is you never
become skilled in managing your own emotional world.
And then you can't teach those skills to your
children, and to your grandchildren.
And when people can't manage themselves emotionally,
they drown those emotions with alcohol, numb
them with drugs, or busyness, or sex.
Or they turn those unmanaged emotions inward
and they become depression and suicide.
Or they turn them outward and they become
vandalism and violence.
All those issues that we see them as pathologies,
that we see in Indigenous populations, I think
Ross is right.
It's one of the legacies.
It's the psycho-emotional and spiritual displacement
that is equivalent of the land displacement
that the Doctrine of Discovery is trying to
generate in the first place.
Aboriginal communities are profoundly affected
by the issues of institutional racism in the
penal system.
Five percent of the Canadian population is
Indigenous.
25% of the men, and 35% of the women in penal
Institutions are indigenous.
In parts of the country it's higher.
In Manitoba, 65% of the men in Stony Mountain
are Indigenous, and I believe it's now about
90% of the women in Headenly, which is the
women's prison in Manitoba.
Those are shockingly disproportionate levels
of incarceration.
Today we have new kinds of stressors.
We have the missing and murdered Indigenous women.
You know, in the last 70 years we've had child
welfare.
And those are kind of adding to that already
toxic stew that's been generated over the
course of time.
So intergenerational effect, or legacy effect
is something that I also call it, is about
people not having the opportunity to sit down
and have a discussion about what's going on
in their community, within themselves, within
their families, and actually be able to process
that to the extent that they can say, "Take
a big breath here.
I know there's not something terribly wrong
with me.
I'm actually suffering from something that
has been handed down through generations because
we have not have the opportunity to resolve."
The Doctrine of Discovery is the principle
that all the underlying title to property,
all the underlying authority and jurisdiction
rests with the colonial Crown.
It's a legal fiction.
I've spent much of my life as a therapist,
and it's stunning when a client realizes they
have lived much of their life within illusion.
Like for example, I can't sing.
People will say.
Well, the truth is most people can sing because
if you ask them, "Who told you you can not
sing, and how old were you when they told
you that?"
They'll be able to identify both.
It's when, in fact, they were a vulnerable
child that someone said to them, "You can
not sing," and they believed it.
And so then they build their life experience
on that illusion.
Well, that's what western culture has done
with the Doctrine of Discovery.
It has built a reality.
It's set up legal precedent.
It believes it is true, but it is a legal
fiction.
The Doctrine of Discovery, as you know, has
been validated by the Supreme Court in the
US for implementation.
Because the English common law system applying
in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, parts of
India.
That's Supreme Court decision applies here.
And it continues today.
The Crown has not recognized Indigenous sovereignty.
We still, by and large have this Indian Act.
The Indian Act was passed in 1876, designed
to assimilate us.
It's still the law today, and there's been
very few amendments from that, almost 150
years ago.
140 some odd years ago, 'til this point.
The Indian Act is archaic.
It's designed to make Indians into good Victorian
citizens of kind of the 1870's.
It's very purpose is to erase the presence
of Indians through their attrition, and then
teach them how to be like good citizens of
that once upon a time era.
The form of laws constructed for Indians today,
based on those objectives of the Papal Bull,
the Doctrine of Discovery, and those Empire
and Canadian policies, have resulted
in systemic racism in the laws of Canada for
Indians.
I often laugh when they say, "Well, we have
Indian laws."
No.
There's Indian laws.
Those aren't Indian laws.
Those are laws made by Canada respecting Indians,
it's not our law.
How do you take a whole population of people
on a national scale, and tell them that they
have no right to make a decision.
The idea was, we will make the decisions for
you.
We will make decisions about housing.
We will make decisions about economics.
We will make decisions about your education.
And if you have a decision to make, we'll
make that decision for you too, right?
You don't get to make any kind of decision
without actually going through us.
And the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs still
has the authority to make those decisions,
still has to resolve questions around by-laws.
I have will, I have a job, I have two cars.
I have a house.
But if I die this week, the Minister still
has the power to change my will if she so desires.
As of today, now.
Indigenous people are falling between the
cracks of Federalism.
If we think we're trying to solve something,
we ask the federal government to do it.
And they try to apply their authorities.
Or we ask the provincial governments to do
it, and they try to apply their authorities.
But that's still other people making decisions
for us as Indigenous peoples.
What we need is some place where our authorities
are recognized.
And yes, we'll make mistakes, but we'll also
then correct their mistakes like all other
governments do.
And if we don't correct them, right?
There's going to be consequences for that.
That needs to be a part of the way we think
about our relationships.
We've won hundreds of Supreme Court decisions,
and the latest one being the Williams decision,
the Tsilhqot’in decision.
The Supreme Court said, "Aboriginal rights
and title are recognized."
We've always said that.
Now we have the highest court of Canada, the
Supreme Court of Canada saying the same thing.
We have the judicial branch of government,
the legislative branch of government, and
the executive branch of government.
So we have the judicial branch of government
clearly saying something that we've been saying
for years, that Aboriginal rights and title
are recognized.
We've always had it.
We have pre existing rights as Indigenous
peoples.
We have the judicial branch saying that.
If the legislative branch keeps up with that
now, they have to get in line with what the
judicial branch is saying.
So I mean, all the laws have to keep up.
The executive branch, the policies, have to
keep up.
So if the legislative, and the executive branch
don't keep up with what the judicial branch
is saying, you have a disconnect.
So we have to really work hard, and in partnership,
and in a collaborative way with this government
to fix all their illegal and racist laws and
policies.
And that's a lot of work, but it can get done.
That will really be reconciliation in action
when that happens.
What do we want our country to be built on?
Do we want it to be built on this notion of
other people being inferior?
Or can we build our country on the idea that
we can agree, and we can find ways to persuade
one another.
I think that persuasion is more in line with
our Canadian values.
To me, being Métis is being twice blessed.
I'm part of two family trees that are rich.
My First Nation grandmothers, and my grandfathers
that were often from Scotland, or Orkney Islands,
England, and there's also the French Métis.
In Canada, prior to Canada becoming Canada,
and Provinces becoming Provinces, the Métis
people arose in what we refer to as the historic
Northwest, and developed their own distinct
language, culture, identity, known as the
Métis Nation.
Often referred to as Riel's People.
What you see along the routes of the fur trade,
in particular in the Northwest, is these distinct
communities emerge.
But in particular in the Red River settlement
area, a coalescing of an identity, a nationhood.
It was peoples.
And what is a people in international law,
and domestically, is there's a common language,
there's a shared history, there's a territory,
there's a collective consciousness where they
assert themselves as a people.
And of course, the Métis were not here at
first contact.
They emerged as a distinct people on the plains
nearly 200 years ago.
And that is who the Métis people are.
Are you Métis?
It's not only being of mixed ancestry.
It's more than that.
It's about identifying with the culture and
participating as you're able, right?
What the Métis story, though, is it's really
a story of denial, neglect, and not recognizing
that that is a people.
Interestingly they did when they needed us
back in 1869 and 70.
There was no way through what is now Manitoba
without dealing with Riel's people at the
Red River settlement, and Métis people pushing
back and saying, "No.
You will deal with us."
And that begat the Manitoba Act and the promise
of 1.4 million acres of land in what used
to be the postage stamp province of Manitoba.
That people hood was recognized.
You treated nation to nation, government to
government to get that deal that brought Manitoba
into Confederation.
And then allowed for treaties to be negotiated
in the rest of Western Canada, as well as
the rest of Western Canada to be brought into
Confederation.
What, you know, Canada did though, was had
amnesia of "well, we recognized you as a people.
We had this treaty relationship.
Nation to nation, government to government
in 1869, 79.
But we got what we wanted."
As railway was going across the country land
was becoming more precious, and Métis people
were asked to leave.
They didn't have the right title to a land.
So it was like, "Well it's not yours.
You must leave."
So there's that land piece.
Métis have had to go to court to prove that
they have rights, and they're defined by colonial courts, right?
And they're defined in a way of not ... and
as a right by right perspective.
Doctrine of Discovery assumes Canada's got
it all and you've got to pull it down jurisdiction
by jurisdiction, right by right, what we will
recognize, or accept.
And I think that that still plays out for
the Métis daily.
The concept of the Doctrine of Discovery has
always been a part of Métis life.
The impact of that.
But having it named, that was an important
moment for me to have it named.
It's kind of interesting.
It's like one of those sci-fi movies that
it takes different forms all the time.
Whether it's the Indian Act, or whether it's
denial of Métis rights.
And we don't realize it, right?
And to a certain extent Canadians are fed
it in different ways, right?
It's the idea that you hear, the negative
comments you hear of, "Oh well.
We're giving First Nations, Métis everything."
You know.
Those sorts of comments, where it's not a
recognition of Canada's built upon these solemn
promises and relationships that we've been
doing a lot of sharing over the last 150 years.
And you know, you're seeing it from the view
of well, because you discovered, you've got
it all.
There's a lot of work that has been done.
But there's a lot of work left to be done.
But the Métis are still here. Yeah.
Inuit are not First Nations, and we're not
Métis.
We are one of the three indigenous peoples
of Canada, and we are part of a global Indigenous community.
We are a minority Indigenous population within
Canada, and often Canadians know nothing about
us.
When I come down here to the schools to talk
about our way of life in the North, the children
ask me, "Do you live in igloo?"
Yes we do.
I do live in igloo, but on the second floor.
In my part of the world we do not have any
say as to what we should do in our lives.
It was all governed by the people from the
South.
After World War II, in the early 1950's that's
when massive change happened at an incredible
speed.
Forced relocations, coerced settlement communities,
children being taken from families for Residential
School.
Entire populations being taken for TB treatment
in the South.
The killing of our sled dogs once people were
coerced into communities.
A position of people who were responsible
for us in those communities through basically
an Inuit style Indian agent.
All of this happened in such a short period
of time in many parts of the Canadian Arctic.
We do not fall under Canada's Indian Act.
And we have modern treaties which are very
different than historical treaties or other
First Nations groups that don't have any treaties
at all.
We co-manage about 3.5 million square kilometers
of this country, about 35% of Canada's land mass.
And we have self governments, we have created
a territory through Nunavut, through our land
claim agreement in Nunavut.
So our reality is underpinned by a very different
reality than most First Nations.
The changes have come in rapidly.
Right now, to the North, our people are taking
ownership of themselves, and to their land.
And how they should govern it.
They're trying very hard to stand up.
The underpinning of what we see as normal
today, and the treatment of Indigenous people
the way we imagined, the way Canada or the
United States imagined land governance, respect
for rights.
All is underpinned by these foundational documents,
and especially the Doctrine of Discovery.
Only about 16 to 18% of our Aboriginal title
held land becomes fee simple land that's owned
by Inuit.
And we don't have full access to subsurface
resources, or offshore resources the way that
other nation states do.
And that is all a product of the way in which
the Doctrine of Discovery influenced the way
governments thought about us, and the way
that the general population thought about
Inuit.
It isn't just looking back and apologizing
for something.
That doesn't mean anything to anyone anymore.
It is a narrative of a relationship.
And you can get beyond the challenges that
we faced in the past.
We can get beyond the human rights abuses
that we have endured based on this Doctrine
if people understand what it meant.
Why it changed our societies the way it did,
and how the repudiation, and now working with
Indigenous people.
Working with Inuit and respecting our self
determination demands that we stop and pause
and say that the way that we understood the
world was wrong.
Anything that we can do to tell a narrative
that is truthful to the past, and hopeful
for the future, with the respect that's necessary
to us as a people, is essential in reconciliation.
And also, just in being a good loving person,
and a part of a good and loving society.
We are left with Kenolonkkun,
the great love from the ancestors.
And with that we go on to grieve and heal.
To be strong like our ancestors.
To keep a good mind.
First of all we've got to open ourself to
listen to the truth, and we've got to accept
the fact that the truth of our relationship
from the First People's point of view is a
different story all together.
And there has to be healing.
We must find ways to keep talking with one
another, sharing with one another, and allowing
healing to happen before there can ever be
reconciliation.
There's a huge gap between what is experienced
by settler communities and what is experienced
by Indigenous people in terms of health, in
terms of threat of violence.
In terms of education levels, in terms of
rates of incarceration.
There's this gigantic gap.
This gap has to close.
That's reconciliation.
Because this gap represents everything we
talk about.
It represents the 80 plus boil water advisories.
It represents the 1,200 missing Indigenous women and girls.
It represents the 40,000 kids in care, First
Nations childen in foster care.
It represents the disproportionate number
of our people in jails.
It represents over crowded housing.
The five to seven times youth suicide rate.
All these negative things.
That's what this six versus sixty third gap
represents.
If you think that indigenous people are a
problem to be solved like poor people are
a problem to be solved, some people think.
Or, anybody else who's experiencing oppression.
Are a problem to be solved, then there's a
possibility that your paternalistic at best.
And paternalism and racism are on the same
continuum.
Right?
It starts off, and this is the story of Canada.
It starts off as good intentions.
There are people that say, "Why should Indians
be any different?
Why should be treat them in accordance with
these treaties, or these special Constitutional
Rights?
Why don't they just get on with it?"
You know?
"My ancestors came here from England, or Scotland,
or France, or the Caribbean, and yes the first
generation was hard, but we've made it better
for ourselves.
Why don't they just do that?"
Which ignores the fact that we're being held
down from doing that.
It's true that we can leave our reserves and
go to the cities, but there are all these
structures of terra nullius travel with us.
They've taken a lot from us.
A lot of our stories.
We were an oral people, you know?
They've practically almost taken our language.
And I'm really trying to learn Blackfoot
from my grandparents, but there's a lot of
work that we as Indigenous people have to
do to ensure that we don't completely loose
everything that makes us Indigenous, that
makes us Siksika, that makes us whatever
nation you come from.
I work with kids all the time.
I got young people from this community that
I watched going down because of drugs and
alcohol, and said, "Okay. Stop.
I want you to do something different.
I want you to come with me.
I'm gonna go to this conference," or "I'm
going to go to this event and I want you to
come and I want you to listen.
I want you to listen to what Maria Sinclair
has to say about history.
I want you to listen to what I have to say
about our communities and the impact that
has been there because of things that you
know nothing about but you're gonna learn."
And I've watched those kids be successful
because now they know something they didn't
know.
One teaching that I really like is that the
heart ... Well.
Something that I've come to realize is that
the heart has the capacity to collapse time.
20 years can go by after you've been hurt
by a parent or an auntie, and boom.
It collapses all that time.
You feel the same way.
So that speaks to the intelligence of the
heart.
Indigenous communities have a lot of work
to do as well to overcome their victimization.
And so that entails healing, but it also entails
overcoming anger.
As Indigenous people, we have to be the educators.
We have to really profess the history as it
happened.
And not try to cover it up anymore.
The Doctrine of Discovery has become ... for
some people it's almost an every day language
now.
Where as before it was not.
Nobody knew what it was, basically.
But now a days there is some interest.
Some desire to know what it is about even
though it may not be favorable.
But I think in order to have a healing in
our lives, and reconciliation we have to know
what Doctrine of Discovery, what it is.
The shining water that moves in the streams
and the rivers is not just water but the blood
of our ancestors.
If we sell you land, you must remember that
it is sacred, and you must teach your children
that it is sacred, and that each ghostly reflection
in the clear water of the lake tells of events
and memories in the life of my people.
The water's murmur is the voice of my mother's
mother.
I think a simple declaration of repudiation
would be sufficient, but there are many who
would question whether or not that would be
far enough, or go far enough.
And within government, I think they wouldn't
quite appreciate what the significance of
that is, and because they don't know what
the implications are, they resist the temptation
to do it, or they resist the effort to do
it.
There are many who within government tread
carefully when it comes to changing precedent.
And so for that reason alone, just the fear
of what it's going to do or what it's going
to cause to them, and how it's going to challenge
Crown sovereignty, or undermine Crown sovereignty
for that matter, is I think it's a real question.
It's a real open question.
We've come to expect that the land that we
live on is ours.
And that we should expect a kind of certainty
in that.
And I think that talking about things like
repudiating the Doctrine of Discovery, it
kind of unsettles that certainty that we've
come to realize.
But what it, I think is crucial for us, is
to understand that there really is another
truth, and that truth is that we live on Indigenous
lands, that we work on Indigenous lands.
And that what we have to be about in the future
is a recognition of that truth, and then finding
a way to move forward together in that truth.
Once you pull out the lynch pin and open that
door, then there are going to be all these
implications that are going to follow.
In the calls to action, what we suggested,
recognizing that that was going to be an area
of resistance, what we suggested was let's
develop together a Doctrine of Reconciliation
through a proclamation on reconciliation
and a covenant on reconciliation because regardless
of what one things about repudiation and the
implications of it, we can go further and
redefine our new relationship with those documents
as well.
When I think about the Doctrine of Discovery,
the image that comes to mind, and it's not
an image that I am at all happy about, but
here it is.
Spiritual arrogance of the worst kind.
All Christian churches who relied upon the
Doctrine of Discovery on principle I think
have to make it very clear that they're no
longer relying upon that.
Or that they recognize the invalidity of that.
Christianity got entangled with this process
of colonization.
It was kind of fuel to the fire.
And that's a devastating thing to come to
grips with.
I think that our churches are one of the biggest
institutional racism organizations in Canada.
I mean, if you look at the structure, where
are the Indigenous people in that structure?
Well, I think if racism is grounded on an
understanding that somehow we're going to
be saved from ourselves as a people, than
I think racism is rife.
I am very proud to be a Catholic Christian
and also a Mohawk woman.
We as church people need to be strong enough,
and not to say, "Oh no.
It didn't happen."
Or, "Well I'm sorry."
Just listen and you don't have to say anything.
I first heard my first truth telling about
experiences in Residential Schools in 2010,
and that was a game changer.
The whole ground shifted under me.
'Cause you can intellectualize this stuff
to a certain degree, but then you hear stories
from survivors and your head and your heart
and your spirit connect differently, understand
differently, learn differently.
And it was sort of in that context that with
the Doctrine of Discovery, you can see the
schools as a mechanism of this underlying
concept.
And so to see that as an ideological concept
that has shaped so much, of not just church
practice, but the history of European colonization
in North America and in other places around
the world.
It's shocking.
It is very difficult to point and say, "Well,
here it is."
That's why the Doctrine of Discovery, I think,
is a helpful way of describing it.
It describes a systemic evil.
A way in which a particularly dangerous and
noxious idea becomes a part of the way people
look at the world.
It becomes a part of a world view.
So as much as the churches are repudiating
the doctrine of discovery, we have a larger
challenge, which is a political challenge,
which is to have it removed from our Constitutions.
Then the second part of that is, I think the
theologies are still really strong within
our thinking, and we haven't taken the time
as church in our process of reconciliation
to do that deep self critique that is going
to be necessary to change our world view.
One of the greater weaknesses of the TRC,
in my mind in Canada, is that as denominations
we are still separated.
And every denomination has apologized for
its mission history.
I think.
There have been many apologies.
But we've never agreed that we would act collaboratively
as people of faith.
How we reflect on our baptismal vow to respect
the dignity of every human being, and to strive
for justice and peace among all people, here
is an opportunity for us to talk about the
history of our own church, and our struggle
to be faithful as a church to that kind of
commitment associated with our baptism.
A Christian person as an individual has a
two-fold responsibility.
Number one, they have to realize that they
have been deeply influenced by these ideas.
And they have to apply spiritual discipline
and insight into resisting and countering
these ideas in their own minds and hearts.
And this is true for indigenous people and
non-indigenous people both.
This insight, I think, helps people to begin
to move into advocacy, and to start promoting
ideas and policies in their communities and
their organizations that will counter the
impact of these ideas.
You might as well expect all the rivers to
run backwards as that any man who was born
free should be contented to be penned up and
denied liberty to go where he pleases.
If you tie a horse to a stake, do you expect
him to grow fat?
If you pen an Indian up on a small spot of
earth and compel him to stay there, he will
not be contented, nor will he grow and prosper.
I have asked some of the great white chiefs
where they got their authority to say to the
Indian that he shall stay in one place, where
the white man sees that he can go wherever
he pleases, and they can not tell me.
Let me be a free man.
Free to travel, free to stop.
Free to work.
Free to trade where I chose.
Free to chose my own teachers.
Free to follow the religion of my fathers.
Free to talk, think and act for myself, and
I will obey every law and submit to the penalty.
Reconciliation, I mean, just the dictionary
meaning of it means ... it can mean a couple
things.
One to be friendly and harmonious again.
So that's a good thing.
But then it can also be taken as maybe your
people should just reconcile yourself to the
fact that this is the way it is.
And sometimes I'm concerned that the latter
is the case.
Reconciliation is not about being a spectator.
It's not about sitting back and waiting for
government and churches, and corporations,
and business to change the way they do things.
It's about changing the way you do things
too.
One of my favorite things to say is that living
in the sacred is far more rational and sustainable
than the destruction of the economic paradigm.
We know the economic paradigm isn't working.
Why do we keep thinking that it's so powerful
and it's so rational?
And even Western laboratory science, it's
not sustainable.
We need to go back to having reverence for
the land, and reverence for the water, and
reverence for that Chaudiere Falls,
where Creator placed the first sacred pipe,
the ultimate symbol of reconciliation.
What if we're a gift?
We are a gift in that our voice is important
if Canada's going to understand who it is.
Everybody has to accept what they did.
Why that happened.
And if we can get on that level, I think this
world will be much more better environment
to live in.
I do a lot of public education.
I speak to a lot of non-native people.
I'm working with the Banff Centre.
We have an allies program and people come
from all across the country.
And one of the things I say to people is 97%
of the population of Canada has experienced
some form of trauma, and the other 3% are
lying.
We are all in this together.
We all share the same way of coming into the
world.
We all have children.
We come together to raise children.
We all can get together to eat together.
We can pray together.
We can dance together and sing together.
We have to do it together, human being to
human being, face to face.
And I just say, "Don't be afraid.
Perfect love casts out fear."
Our people are so resilient, and they're still
here.
And there's quote, and I don't remember who
said it but it's "They tried to bury us, but
they didn't realize that we are seeds."
As native people we have been sort of buried
in mother earth, but our mother continues
to care for us, and through the gifts of all
of our elements, the seed is beginning to
produce a plant that is growing.
And this plant is rising above the earth.
The relationship in Canada shouldn't be so
adversarial.
It shouldn't be so adversarial.
We're supposed to get along, and mutually
benefit from the wealth of this country.
Nobody is going anywhere here.
We're not telling you to leave.
We're saying, "If we are going to coexist
in this land, in this territory, in this place,
then we now have to talk about our terms of
coexistence."
What kind of relationship are we going to
have?
How are we going to get along here?
And it's like taking a relationship of slavery
and trying to turn it into a marriage.
What the commissioners of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission gave us is a road
map to move forward.
So there's 94 answers to the question, "What
can I do now?"
94 answers to that.
At every service, right over here in the cathedral,
the dean stands up, and at the beginning of
the service says, "We as a cathedral gather
on the traditional ancestral lands of the
Coast Salish people."
Some people think it's repetitious and we've
done it, and it's unnecessary, but it's that
drip of water on the stone that's saying the
Doctrine of Discovery isn't right.
