Category: Reconciliation
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Rethinking Canada Day – and Canadian History – in a New Era of Reconciliation
WARNING: This post contains details some readers may find distressing. When I stood up in the canoe on July 1st in Victoria’s inner harbour to ask permission of the Lekwungen speaking people to come ashore, I was participating in a tradition that is thousands of years old. As we got closer to protocol corner at…
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Reconciliation Contribution Program – Opportunity for Victorians to Recognize Lekwungen Lands, Contribute to Nations
Over the past few months, in partnership with the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations and guided by the insights and leadership of the Reciprocity Trusts, we’ve been working to create a very simple program for local property owners to make a voluntary reconciliation contribution to the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations. Last Thursday, a strong majority of…
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City Supports Songhees Nation in Treaty Negotiations with Province and Canada
In 2017, the City of Victoria declared a year of reconciliation, adopted the five municipal calls to action from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and began a journey of reconciliation with the Songhees and the Esquimalt Nations on whose homelands Victoria was built. We realized quite quickly that a “year” of reconciliation was a naive…
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Reconciliation Grant: The Real Numbers and the Rationale
This past week, the Grumpy Taxpayer$ published a blog post and sent out a newsletter with inaccurate information about the proposed reconciliation grant to the Songhees and Esquimalt Nations that Council is considering as part of our 2022 budget process. The Grumpys are calling the grant a “reconciliation tax” which it is not. But more…
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Late September Strawberries, and the Work of Reconciliation
I wrote this poem while picking strawberries, a few days before the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation – marked in Victoria since 2017 as Orange Shirt Day – to honour and support residential school survivors, intergenerational survivors, and the families of those who didn’t come home. Late September Strawberries maybe it’s climate changeor…
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South Island First Nation Chiefs: “Please don’t lose sight of the young ones that we are honouring”
Along with other mayors, MLAs and MPs across the region, on Friday moring I was invited to stand with the nine chiefs of the South Island First Nations as they released and signed a letter calling for an end to the vandalism that is further dividing our communities and preventing healing from taking place. The…
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Canada Day, 2021, Victoria BC: When Our Neighbours are Suffering It’s Not the Time To Celebrate
Children’s shoes, stuffed toys, and 215 orange children’s shirts on the steps of the BC Legislature. The shirts were laid after a ceremony hosted for island nations by the Songhees Nation Tuesday June 8th. This past week Council voted unanimously to move a planned Canada Day broadcast from July 1st to a broadcast that will…
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Statement on the Discovery of the Remains of 215 Children in a Mass Grave at the Kamloops Indian Residential School
On Monday, the City of Victoria is lowering the Xe xe Smun eem-Victoria Orange Shirt Day flag and the Canadian flag to half-mast to honour the 215 children who died at the Kamloops Indian Residential School, and whose bodies were recently found in an unmarked grave. We acknowledge the deep grief of families from the…
