Thank you so much for the kind comments and the question.
As I said fairly explicitly in my opening remarks, recognition has been lacking for a long time. Some of the hard work that has been done in that regard has largely been done by indigenous veterans. It was not something that was necessarily a given through, let's say, Veterans Affairs or CAF. Those veterans have done work to achieve this.
Of course, after the First World War, the government and society were not interested in that story. In fact, we saw amendments to the Indian Act that prevented status Indians from hiring lawyers or gathering politically to try to lobby for some of these rights. We saw a tightening of those restrictions. That's why it's all the more important, as you said, that we're recognizing this now.
As far as recognition in the present day goes, every November 8 at the National Aboriginal Veterans Monument, there is a ceremony to recognize Indigenous Veterans Day. We have also done programming at the War Museum. We're still figuring out what this year's program will look like.
From my perspective, the work I do is also about increasing that diversity of perspectives in not only our temporary exhibitions but also our permanent spaces, because that's something we get comments about: “How come there isn't more here? This is important history.” We're a bureaucracy. It's the public service, and things move slowly, but we are working on it.
There's still a lot more that could be done. I'm hoping to grow the profile of not only Indigenous Veterans Day but also indigenous military service in general. We need more visibility. We need to see it, and we need people to understand this history so they're not asking why we even have Indigenous Veterans Day: “Why do we need a day specific to indigenous veterans?” That goes back to the entire history I spoke about.
Thank you so much for the question.