Peter Shokeir | [email protected]
Indigenous musician Matricia Bauer and her daughter Mackenzie Brown performed and shared their insights in celebration of National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21.
The Fairmont Jasper Park Lodge hosted a series of events throughout the day, culminating in a live event on the Beauvert Plateau, titled “Music & Truth: A Healing Experience,” which began with traditional music and ended in a Q&A session.
Jasper National Park is within Treaty 6 and 8 territories, and the land is the traditional territory for the Dane-zaa (Beaver), Nêhiyawak (Cree), Anishinaabe (Ojibway), Secwépemc (Shuswap), Nakota (Stoney) and Métis Nations.
The railway and Jasper National Park, formed in 1907, were created in part through the expropriation of the land and the forcible expulsion of Indigenous and Métis people.
During the Q&A, Bauer addressed how reconciliation didn’t just mean repairing the relationship between the federal government and Indigenous peoples, if that were even possible, but also focusing on the interpersonal level and self-education.
“You don’t have to read a book or go to university or do a dissertation,” Bauer said.
“You can pick up something simple and there’s different ways to be an ally, but definitely educating yourself is a start, and as Canadians, we do need to do that so that we have a platform and something that’s the same.
“So, if every single person was able to take their own reconciliation into their back pocket and deal with that, then we would have large-scale reformation and reclamation.”
Brown agreed that reconciliation can be a lot of small actions.
“It doesn’t have to be this big thing sometimes. So, maybe your reconciliation is you want to learn a different Cree word each day and you want to make sure you’re passing that down, or maybe your reconciliation is that for Christmas this year you try to buy all local, and you try to make 25 per cent of your items Indigenous made. These are small things that we all can do.”
This year’s National Indigenous Peoples Day marks the national 25th anniversary of celebrating the heritage, diverse cultures and achievements of First Nations, Inuit and Métis peoples.
These celebrations also come a month after the remains of 215 children were found buried at a residential school in Kamloops, B.C.
Brown explained that residential schools lasted for seven generations with the last one closing in 1997.
“We’re still on the healing path, right. I didn’t meet my maternal grandma, because she went to residential schools, so it’s not something that’s in the past, but it’s something that with every generation, we have hope for the next.”
