Thank you, and good afternoon.
I fully endorse former commissioner Wilson's recommendation, but I will add a little bit to that. I didn't know we were going to be here together, and it's kind of ironic.
I want to preface my statements by saying that September is certainly a month that's very significant. For 11 years—actually, 12 years—I was removed from my community in that month. For 10 years I went to the Métis residential school at Île-à-la-Crosse, 30 miles upriver or downriver—I'm not sure—from the Beauval Indian Residential School, and twice to The Pas in Manitoba to the Charlebois residence.
The only significant difference is that Métis residential schools have yet to be dealt with. We're excluded from the Indian Residential Schools Settlement Agreement because they said it was a church-run institution, and the feds didn't give them any money, whereas they gave the same religious order monies for the treaty Indian kids downriver. We're not included in the Prime Minister's apology, Canada's apology, although I was on the floor of the House of Commons to accept that apology for some two or three hundred Métis who were fortunate enough to attend the Indian residential schools—and, of course, we are not included in the mandate of the TRC, nor are we beneficiaries, although generally we could be, but we're not specific beneficiaries to the recommendations, the 94 calls to action, this being one of them. I didn't know. I haven't read them, because there's no reason for me to read them, because I'm not covered by the TRC. In fact, I wasn't even invited to the final session where it was released. I watched it from two blocks away from my apartment, live, while it was happening at the Delta Hotel.
Anyway, it is total exclusion. It is exclusion from settlement with respect to World War II veterans. The Métis nation veterans are the only veterans in this country not yet dealt with. Also, there was the sixties scoop; we're not included in that either. However, we are working with this government to try to rectify these particular issues.
I make that point to state that I never have embraced June 21 as a celebratory day because we really had nothing to celebrate. My position at that time was that once you give us our land back, once you recognize our governments, once you make reparations for the harms done to our nation, then we can celebrate. However, many of our people do celebrate June 21, as you have heard, so it has become celebratory. I don't take that away from anybody. Our people do embrace that.
I would not want to see June 21 taken as a response to the 80th call to action, as was mentioned by the former commissioner, because it takes something that has been embraced by all indigenous peoples and makes it into something narrower—reconciliation based on the TRC's recommendation, which to me is much narrower.
Reconciliation has to be broader, but even so, tying reconciliation to that particular day I don't think is very good. I do support the September date. I'm not sure if it's the 30th or which date in September, but I do support a different day for that. In fact, the former minister of Heritage Canada did consult with me on this, and I said the very same thing: not June 21. Make it any other day, but not June 21, because while I don't embrace it, many of our people—in fact, I'd say the majority of our people—do embrace it, and we don't want to change it to something else from which we then feel excluded. Then we would have to cease celebrating it.
Basically, yes, I support call to action number 80 for those whom it's meant to cover. At some point we probably will participate in it, because I can't believe that Canada, at some point in time—whether it's 20 years, 50 years or 100 years—won't finally deal with Métis residential schools. They are going to have to do it at some point in time, even if they didn't put in monies for the repression we suffered. We suffered even worse, I believe, than the kids at Beauval, because at least there the federal government gave them money so they had decent food and decent clothes. They also had open spaces.
Where I went, we had a yard that was surrounded by barbed-wire fence. Other than going to school and going for meals, we were enclosed like cattle. We suffered the same kinds of physical, sexual, emotional abuses and the same deprivation from our families.
Again, I just want to punctuate the point that it shouldn't be June 21. Any other day in September would be a good one, because that's very symbolic. I didn't hear that before, but it makes absolute sense, because when September came around, we were ripped away from our families and shipped off.
That's my contribution.