Indigenous issues are everyone’s issues

Rose LeMay, who is Tlingit from the West Coast and the CEO of the Indigenous Reconciliation Group, begins today as a bi-weekly columnist with The Hill Times. As an expert on Indigenous reconciliation, Ms. LeMay's voice is vitally important and one that's been sorely missing from the pages of The Hill Times. As Marion Buller, chief commissioner of the Murdered and Missing Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry poignantly declared on June 3, after releasing her exhaustive report at the Canadian Museum of History, "an absolute paradigm shift is required to dismantle colonialism in Canadian society and this paradigm shift must come from all levels of government and public institutions. Ideologies and instruments of colonialism, racism, and misogyny, both past and present, must be rejected." Indeed. This is a pivotal time in relations between Indigenous peoples and the federal, provincial, and territorial governments, and the next four years will be critical to resolving outstanding public policy issues that have directly and negatively affected Indigenous peoples. It's time for the political parties to actively include Indigenous peoples in the political process. In her debut column this week, Ms. LeMay points out that, although "Indigenous issues" are everyone's issues, the top public policy issues affecting Indigenous peoples in this election are: "child welfare, so we don’t repeat the outcomes of the '60s Scoop again in the 2020s decade; the safety of Indigenous women and girls, so that we don’t lose another thousand to murder in the next decade; legislation to implement reconciliation at the federal and provincial/territorial levels, so that we don’t waste yet another generation of Indigenous children’s hope; funding and supports for basic education in the K-12 schools, so that kids can succeed in science and math and enter university; and basic housing with safe drinking water." These are the basic necessities of life and the basics for human dignity and, as Ms. LeMay writes, it's utterly "heart-breaking" to still be fighting for them. Ms. LeMay is calling on all federal political parties in this election to offer real inclusion to Indigenous peoples by hiring Indigenous people in riding associations across the country and thereby building cultural competence; by door-knocking in Indigenous communities and learning to represent better; by including and hiring Indigenous political strategists in inner circles on all issues, not just "Indigenous issues"; by advertising and building voter support through Indigenous media; by challenging all forms of racism; and by changing the actual systems for the better. On Monday, Sept. 9, Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde will release in Ottawa the AFN's 2019 federal election priorities for First Nations and Canada. Federal political parties should be paying close attention because this is our future and our future means finally resolving these outstanding public policy issues that have negatively affected Indigenous people for far too long. "These are not partisan issues. Indigenous inclusion is a moral issue. It’s time we all demand that political platforms give attention to these systems in desperate need of change, so that Indigenous peoples need not fear the systems purported to help them," writes Ms. LeMay. It's time for a paradigm shift in Canada. The Hill Times

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Indigenous issues are everyone’s issues

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