To begin with, there has to be some kind of acknowledgement of the history that's happened. I know that sounds basic, but as an educator who teaches incoming first-year students and graduate students, you'd be surprised at how many 18- and 19-year-olds have no clue about the history of Canada in relation to indigenous peoples. They don't know about the residential school era. They don't know about the sixties scoop. They're continually getting fed stereotypes that they find on social media or even that they're taught in school.
Education, I think, is a foundational piece for awareness. Whether that's formal education through the K to 12 and the post-secondary system, or informal education through social movements or community organizations, I think there really needs to be a focus on that. That's the beginning, I would say.
The other thing is an acknowledgement that there is an imbalance in power. This is the committee on the status of women, where most of us are aware of the dynamics of domestic violence, for example, and that domestic violence is a gendered phenomenon whereby women are impacted in a different way from men. It's predominantly women who are the victims of domestic violence.
If you think of a violent relationship, there are two parties in it. Imagine saying to a couple, after a woman has experienced domestic violence, that they should get back together, get along, and move forward. A similar thing has happened with the relationship between indigenous peoples and Canada, the result of an unequal balance of power and the violence enacted on indigenous people, with indigenous women mostly feeling the effect of that.
So there has to be another acknowledgement that this unequal power relationship means that great care has to taken when making reparations around this relationship. I say so because telling two people just to get back together and start moving forward really undermines the self-worth of that person—or in this case of an entire group of people. They can be viewed as less than human, and that's certainly how we have been treated.