City embraces National Indigenous People Day ceremonies

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This article was published 20/06/2018 (2135 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

There were pipe ceremonies to greet the sunrise at The Forks… and drum songs and fiddle jigs Thursday to celebrate National Indigenous People Day all over Winnipeg, the city with the largest Indigenous population in Canada.

A crossroads at the centre of the continent, Manitoba is home to five distinctive First Nations, along with the Inuit and the Métis.

Elders were heard intoning prayers in Cree, Ojibwa, Dakota, and likely Michif, Dene and Inuit languages, at any number of locations from the Red River to the Perimeter Highway.

Dignitaries reaffirmed their pledges to the calls to action by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, led by Winnipeg-based senator and former judge Murray Sinclair.

The longest day of the year has become series of festivals to Indigenous heritage and culture played out in schools, universities and civic spaces.

“National Indigenous day is about celebrating the contributions Indigenous people have made to Canada, Manitoba and Winnipeg in every field and every endeavour,” Winnipeg’s first Indigenous mayor, Brian Bowman, said in his opening remarks from city hall.

“We certainly ask that you share in our food today, and in our culture, and I hope you take away at deeper understanding of our peoples and our teachings,” said Dr. Catherine Cook, associate dean First Nations, Métis and Inuit health for the University of Manitoba’s Max Rady Faculty of Health Sciences. Cook also heads up U of M’s Ongomiizwin, the largest Indigenous health and education institute in Canada.

U of M events included a traditional feast of bison stew and two kinds of bannock at the school’s downtown campus.

“It’s amazing,” said fourth-year science student Nicolas Hince, tapping his feet as a fiddler twanged Manitoba’s unofficial anthem, Red River Jig. “It’s really good energy. It’s culture and everybody is sharing it.”

Asked whether he identified as Indigenous or non-Indigenous, Hince paused. “Both, I guess. I’m 1/8 Métis and I just got my Métis card. And I just self-declared at the university, and I didn’t even know that was a thing.”

Indigenous and Crown Relations Minister Carolyn Bennett arrived to take in the Winnipeg Art Gallery’s singular Inuit collection Wednesday, and then moved through appearances that ran from sunrise to sunset at events for the U of M, Manitoba Metis Federation and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights, among others.

Bennett challenged the audience to reimagine Canada as a country on an equal footing with Indigenous peoples as nations with their own cultures, languages, and jurisdiction over their own affairs.

She called for an end to the forcible removal children from families.

“I’ve delivered a couple of thousand babies in my life,” said Bennett, who was trained as a physician. “I remember that time the child-welfare people were waiting outside (the hospital delivery room) to take that child.

“It just breaks your heart. It’s unacceptable. And we have very good evidence that children removed from their families, their language and their culture, do not do well. This has to stop,” the federal minister said.

“From residential schools to the ’60s Scoop to now, what’s called the ‘Millennial scoop,’ we need serious reform, that looks at the rights and well-being of Indigenous children and youth. That means they have the right to be raised as Indigenous in order for them to be successful.”

Reconciliation in Canada means a major break from the past, Bennett said.

“We are charting a new path. The attitude at the time of signing the treaties was to share the land fairly, but there was this superiority about so many things, from health to education, even to stewardship of the land. It meant the Indigenous way of knowing, being and doing was trampled on,” she said.

“Now we have an opportunity to do it quite differently.”

alexandra.paul@freepress.mb.ca