Pathways Toward Reconciliation

Today is Earth Day! When it comes to Earth Day, and respecting the Creator and Creation, it behoves us to listen to Indigenous voices and consider Indigenous teachings. A study published this week confirms what many communities have known for years: To preserve biodiversity, we must turn to indigenous peoples for guidance and management.... The study compared levels of biodiversity in thousands of areas in Australia, Brazil and Canada and was the first of its kind to compare biodiversity and land management on such a large scale. Researchers from the University of British Columbia (UBC) compared 15,621 geotropical areas across three continents, with great variations across climate, species and geography. The researchers found that indigenous-managed lands have the highest levels of biodiversity of vertebrate species. "About 370 million indigenous people live across 90 countries. Indigenous peoples (also known as first peoples/nations, tribes, and other local and traditional terms) currently occupy, own, manage or have land tenure over 25- 50 percent of the Earth’s land. However, legal ownership of these lands is only 10%, as many indigenous communities aren’t able to prove in court that the land they’ve occupied for hundreds [correction: thousands] of years is legally theirs, leaving an opening for industries to establish claims or annexations of ancestral territories for resource exploitation."

A true story of possibilities overcoming impossibilities. Jennifer Ménard-Shand is half Ojibwe and half French Canadian, and three parts entrepreneur-the owner of Staff Shop Inc. Jennifer could have spent her life entangled in her troubled past, including domestic abuse and drugs, but instead found her way back by choosing a path of faith, collaboration, trust and purpose. In this episode, you will uncover many inspirational life lessons.

As part of the Richmond Hill Speaker Series, (April 29, 2021 (10am to 12pm)) three of the editors to "Indigenous Toronto: Stories That Carry This Place" Denise Bolduc, Mnawaate Gordon-Corbiere & Rebeka Tabobondung will be speaking. https://www.onrichmondhill.com/

We still have a long way to go, don't we? We need to set the bar higher for those we honour.

Canada’s shame.

Add Indigenous owned businesses to your holiday shopping list!

https://theturtleislandnews.com//mcdonalds-canada-new-fes/ I read the story from Turtle Island News they did an amazing job by Georgia LaForme This story covers all the bases of this small milestone for indigenous representation.

Tanya Talaga's new Audible.ca podcast Seven Truths, which launches Wednesday, focuses on the Seven Grandfather Teachings that guide the Anishinaabe people: love, bravery, humility, wisdom, honesty, respect and truth. Each episode is dedicated to one of the teachings, and each focuses on different people with stories to share.

Today is Louis Riel Day in Ontario

Isapo-Muxika, or Chief Crowfoot, the renowned Siksika chief and diplomat who helped negotiate Treaty 7, could be the face of Canada's new $5 bill.

Understanding land rights in relation to Caledonia.

Big news for Nova Scotia fisheries!

Land acknowledgment has been a contentious issue between the people of Richmond Hill and our City Council politicians who have refused to make one an integral part of their meetings. Land acknowledgements can become a mere formality, and as such, they become quite meaningless. Who are you, in whose territory do you live, and what does that relationship mean to you? Make it personal. Make it meaningful.

40 years ago in October the Trudeau government of the day announced that they were going to repatriate the British North America Act to Canada. The fear in the... Indigenous community at that time was that all of the treaty negotiations that we had done with the British Crown would be lost. In November I flew to London, England and met with members of the British House of Commons in Westminster and received their assurance that they would guarantee that any Indigenous treaty signed with the British Crown would be honoured by the Canadian Government. This news was very important for me to relay to the Native Council of Canada at a conference taking place in British Columbia. In order for me to attend the meeting I needed to fly as quickly as possible to Vancouver from England. The regular domestic flights in those days would've taken about 15 hours. I decided to take the CONCORDE, the only passenger plane to ever fly SUPERSONICALLY at twice the speed of sound at 58,000 feet above the earth. The flight from England to New York City took 3 hours. Within 5 hours from leaving England I was already on my connecting flight flying over Winnipeg on my way to British Columbia and needless to say made the meeting in Vancouver on time. I delivered the news to the conference that the British government had given their guarantee that they would insist that Canada honour the pre-Confederation treaties that were made with the British government. At the time I was the President of the Ontario Metis Non-Status Indian Association and travelling with Smokey Bruyere President of the Native Council of Canada and Harry Daniels who later became National Chief of the Congress of Aboriginal Peoples. Here it is 40 years later and we are still negotiating pre-Confederation treaties with no resolution in sight. 40 years ago I travelled from London to New York in 3 hours, now it takes me 3 hours travel from my home to the grocery store and back - and it's just a block away! Wishing you all a great weekend with plenty of sun.