Elder and Hereditary Chief Robert Joseph has called on the BC-Assembly of First Nations to create a new portfolio for its organization that will focus on holding governments’ feet to the fire to implement the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. The Ambassador for Reconciliation Canada and a member of the National Assembly of First Nations Elders Council was providing his report to the assembly today in Vancouver.
Chief Joseph said there are a couple of profound narratives that have unfolded of late that will bring about a change in Canada that has never been dreamed about before; narratives that have explored the truth about first nations and have provided Canadians across the country with new insights into Indigenous peoples.
Those two narratives spring from the Tsilhqot’in Nation’s land title decision, and the six years of work of the TRC, Joseph said. There is no dispute now about what first nations have been saying about their rights and title, their place in this world, and the harm they suffered from the residential school system, he said.
More and more Canadians are saying “I didn’t know. How could it have happened?” The words “cultural genocide” has “shaken” a country that perceived itself as good and kind, Joseph said. The impacts of these truths will change the way First Nations people move forward and will achieve the results that they have worked towards for a very long time.
But the window on Canada’s new-found awareness will close if BC-AFN, and in fact the national organization, allows it to fade, so a portfolio that will press governments to implement the TRC’s recommendations is required, Joseph said.
There needs to be effort taken now to keep a focus on the TRC and Tsilhqot’in, otherwise Joseph fears the current willingness of Canadians to engage with First Nations will die, he told Ha-Shilth-Sa. He plans to ask the national organization to create a similar portfolio when the chiefs of the Assembly of First Nations gather in Montreal in July.
British Columbia is the starting place, though, because the organization is very progressive in their thinking, Joseph said. The leadership here can appreciate the past victimization of the residential school era, but can look beyond it into the future, not soak in that victimization.
He encouraged the BC delegates to keep telling the stories of residential schools while the country wrestles with a response to the TRC report. Engage individual Canadians, he told them, engage corporations and industry. He said government attitudes will be changed by changing the attitudes of all Canadians, by creating new allies, to encourage them to become part of the struggle and journey.
By transforming these relationships, Joseph said, the soul and consciousness of the country will be transformed.
First nations have powerful tools at their disposal now to move toward real recognition and reconciliation. Joseph told the BC AFN gathering that all their efforts done to this point have been about reconciliation, but they have been viewed through a political lens. Now Canadians are looking through the lens of reconciliation, an ancient right of first peoples, seen in many ceremonies, which should now be embraced and not resisted.
