First Nations, Inuit and Métis leaders say work lays ahead on road to reconciliation

The leaders of the three national Indigenous organizations they look ahead to the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Monday.

The Liberal party of today is not quite the same as the one elected in 2015 promising to foster new paths and nation-to-nation relationships with Indigenous Peoples, the leaders of the three national Indigenous organizations said as they look ahead to the fourth National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on Monday.

“Our reconciliation moment that started in 2015 really had, in the beginning, this blue-sky hope of a changed Canada,” said Natan Obed, the president of Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami, an organization that serves as the national voice for 70,000 Inuit in Canada.

“Now, in many cases, we’re trying to figure out how to implement our clear positions — the things that we hope to do to implement our rights or to build a better relationship with this country. But we’re seeing the challenges in either working with the federal government to do that, or even between Indigenous Peoples.”

Cassidy Caron, president of the Métis National Council representing Métis in Alberta, Ontario and British Columbia, says there was a seismic shift in the government’s agenda around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The housing crisis and the increased cost of living took over headline after headline, but there was a lack of acknowledgment from politicians that Indigenous Peoples have been at the front line of those crises long before they became political talking points, she said.

“With one year left before a federal election, there’s still significant work that needs to be done, and we have the ability to do it in partnership,” she said. “But we need a willing partner on the other side.”

Cindy Woodhouse Nepinak, the national chief of the Assembly of First Nations representing some 630 chiefs across the country, said the lives of Indigenous Peoples are literally on the line of that partnership.

She pointed to the police-involved killings of nine Indigenous people in recent weeks.