Okay. I'll be brief anyway.
I'm the executive director of the Ojibwe Cultural Foundation. I'm from Manitoulin Island. It's located in Sheg First Nation.
We are an indigenous-controlled and run public arts-based museum and cultural centre. We represent the six first nations of the United Chiefs and Council of Mnidoo Mnising
We also have collection space. We were founded in 1974, so we are one of the longest-running indigenous cultural spaces in Canada. To my knowledge, we are one of the only indigenous cultural centres that has facilitated repatriation from our own collections to neighbouring first nations. In our experience of these matters, it is incredible to see what these objects can do when they come back.
One of the images you saw in the slide show, of the thunderbird on the Great Lakes bag, was seen in an exhibition, Patterns of Power, curated by my colleague Ruth, by an artist in our community. He was really struck by the image that came from our community, which was living and fully housed in Ireland. He created a piece of artwork for our centre, which is the thunderbird. It is the logo of our people, our community, and it is etched in the floor of our building, yet we've never seen the original or anything close to an original.
There's a huge amount of interest in revitalizing traditional arts in our centre. We have a lot of interest in textiles and fibre arts.
At this point, we have not been able to display any original pieces. The closest that we came was inviting an incredibly talented woman, Renee Dillard, from Harbor Springs, Michigan, who is anishinaabekwe.
She comes to visit us after many visits to the Smithsonian institution, where she has viewed similar such fibre arts from our region. Through viewing and accessing them in the Smithsonian, she's relearned some of these techniques and comes back to visit us with the replicas she's made from seeing those pieces. Our community is incredibly excited and honoured to have that level of engagement with these artifacts.
We have an 11,000-square-foot building. We have security, heating, and cooling, and we are in the process of becoming category A for movable cultural property. We have all of the ability. What we lack is the core funding to support continuity of staff.
The fact is that we depend on a lot of FedNor funding, or small and deeply appreciated grants that fund positions for first-time graduates. What happens is that we end up training a graduate; then they work for the year, and we don't have the means to keep them for another year. As soon as we are done the year and we have an employee who is well versed in collections management and care, displays, creating didactics, and teaching classes, we lose them. This happens over and over again.
When we are approved for a certain amount of funding, it's usually six months before we are able to fill the position, because we are not in a major centre. Our access to individuals with the skills that are needed is minimal at best. Being able to retain our staff is a huge need.
I've been informed by different members of the federal government and INAC that arts and culture are not part of the Indian Act, and they owe us no responsibility to fund core positions in this manner. I was told to write a letter to Justin Trudeau about my concerns on the issue.
I'm hoping that in your consideration of this bill, you will listen to some of the incredible people who have spoken today, and others who I'm sure you'll hear from later, and affirm our ability to have continuity of staff to care for, display, and teach about these objects.
Meegwetch.