Our recommendation centres around ensuring that young people hear a positive message about their culture and their history, and that the average Canadian has a better understanding of our collective history.
We see things like the land dispute in Caledonia. On the surface things appeared to be in harmony and to be going well, but the minute something occurred and we began to look at our inherent rights and at what came first, the chicken or the egg, then the surface began to bubble with racism. All of us have probably seen the various comments and things, so it's just below the surface.
Many Canadians believe that no racism exists in this country, yet we see it on the news almost every night. For us that's a clear example that if you don't understand how the treaties came to be—For example, a young person said this: my professor asked me about who has treaty rights here, and only the Indians put up their hands—but everybody has treaty rights, and the treaties are about sharing those rights. If you don't understand how those came to be, then some of the perspectives you see in the media are from an uneducated perspective. There's lots that could be done to share our mutual or collective history on how we came to share, and to live in harmony in, this part of the world.
So we think that's an important message out there, that we are being portrayed as a burden on this country, instead of our being the welcoming open hand when the lost people found their way here. That's a very different message.
When my children were going to school, they would come and say, it's aboriginal day and they want us to bring our artifacts in. So I told my husband he was going in, because he's the oldest thing I have in the house.