OTC, community groups announce Vision for Reconciliation
- EFN Staff | September 13, 2019
A new made-in Saskatchewan vision for reconciliation and fellowship has been introduced in Saskatoon.
The Vision for Reconciliation is a collaboration by the Office of the Treaty Commissioner (OTC) and reconciliation groups across the province, and is based on feedback from former residential school survivors, sixties scoop survivors, elders, community leaders, and the public. The vision asks people to 'believe in and work towards a better future for everyone'.
“Knowing and respecting our shared history will help us to continue to move forward together,” said Treaty Commissioner Mary Culbertson.
“Our efforts together in creating this vision have been about coming back to treaty implementation and about coming back to the spirit and intent of the treaties of our ancestors,” she said. “There's a long road ahead but this vision can be used as something that can guide all Treaty People on the journey.”
This vision has been in development since 2014, as the OTC and their reconciliation partners collected thousands of stories from Indigenous and non-Indigenous citizens on the vision they'd like to share with the next generation.
Rhett Sangster, OTC's director of reconciliation and community partnerships, said that reconciliation in Saskatchewan has four core elements: understanding our history, engaging in authentic relationships, developing vibrant cultures and worldviews, and ensuring systems work for everyone.
“At the Office of the Treaty Commissioner, our job is to be a mutual facilitator and have those discussions about how we get back on that path,” said Sangster. “It was through the courage of (survivors) sharing stories that a good portion of us have woken up, and they've showed us that we have a lot of work to do.”
During the public introduction of the vision, survivors were invited to share both their stories and their personal vision for reconciliation. Reporter, documentarian, and Sixties Scoop survivor Betty Ann Adam spoke on how crucial it is to look at the systems that still govern our lives.
“The difficult truth at the core of this area of work is that systemic racism exists. It has existed throughout Canada's history. It has given advantage to those who control the system according to their own beliefs, and to the detriment of Indigenous people,” said Adam.
Adam pointed to Metis being left out in 2017 of the Liberal government's multimillion dollar settlement with Sixties School survivors as current failure of a system.
“We should all be ashamed by a class-action settlement that said it's just too hard to deal with who was Metis and who wasn't. So we're going to leave them out entirely. That's not a system of justice,” said Adam.
“The more people working in the systems who know and understand the experience of Indigenous people, the greater the chance that those systems begin to budge.”