A presentation to the Village of Pemberton’s (VOP) Committee of the Whole (COW) on June 7 highlighted ways the community can acknowledge this year’s National Truth and Reconciliation Day on September 30.
“Honouring this day is one step in our journey for reconciliation,” said VOP executive assistant Lyndsey Anic in her presentation. “It can feel like a small step, but at the moment any action that we can take towards reconciliation and to understanding the trauma suffered by the Indigenous Canadians is an important step.”
Last year, the federal government passed legislation to establish the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation as a statutory holiday, which was officially adopted as a holiday for Pemberton by mayor and council during the meeting on August 31, 2021.
Along with the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, September 30 also represents Orange Shirt Day; both meant to honour the lost children and survivors of residential schools, as well as their families and communities.
Anic’s presentation proposed eight actions for the committee to consider. Among them were plans to increase awareness and education of residential schools, reconciliation and the meaning of Orange Shirt Day through messaging on the town’s website and reading lists available for adults and children through the public library. The actions also aimed to foster collaboration with the Lil’wat Nation and the Nukw7antwal Regional Gathering’s Organizing Committee on the best ways to commemorate the day in the future, and the best practices for land acknowledgments and cultural safety and humility training for new council members.
While Councillor Leah Noble liked the ideas presented, like painting some of the town’s crosswalks orange and lowering the town’s flags to half-mast in remembrance of lives lost in the residential school system, her main concern is she doesn’t want to get stuck in a cycle of acknowledgment without action.
“We need actionable things that council and community members can do on a daily basis. I just would like to make sure we don’t park it at acknowledgement and symbolism,” she said.
Mayor Mike Richman agreed with Noble’s concerns, pointing to some of the conversations that he has been a part of at the Nukw7antwal Organizing Committee, in which similar questions were asked like, “what more can we do?” And “how do we bring this to the community level?”
“It’s really a lot of acknowledgement and continued learning, sharing of that learning right down to the community, so to me, that’s where I would like to deep-dive further. How do we share these events? That’s something I want to explore again at Nukw7antwal. We’ve done good work at that table, unfortunately that table hasn’t been together for a long, long time. But we were getting to a point where I thought some good work and some honest conversations were happening,” said Richman.
“And one of the things we said there and at our intergovernmental committee was how do we bring that work to the community level? It could be in a single event, it could be our seasonal events, where we celebrate together to do a whole series of things, but I think that we really need to put a focus on that.”
Falling under the plan of bringing awareness to the community level, down the road Richman would also like council to consider changes to signage as the town builds new infrastructure to highlight things like First Nations landmarks, history and language.
Richman also brought up his desire for Action 43 from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC), outlined in its 2015 report, which calls upon “federal, provincial, territorial, and municipal governments to fully adopt and implement the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples as the framework for reconciliation” to be bookmarked for discussion when a new council is in place after the upcoming municipal election.
In the end it was moved that the discussion surrounding changes to signage and the TRC’s Action 43 will be brought back before council at a later date after consultation with the local First Nations communities and will remain on the agenda for the future council’s discussion.
