Madam Speaker, I am honoured to speak in support of my colleague, the Desnethé—Missinippi—Churchill River, and her Bill C-369, a bill that would create a national indigenous peoples day.
I would like to begin by acknowledging that we are gathered here on the traditional lands of the Algonquin people. I thank them for sharing this beautiful land with all of us.
I live in the traditional lands of the Syilx people, the Okanagan nation. Most large public gatherings in the Okanagan are opened with a traditional prayer and the signing of the Okanagan song. The part of that song that I have taken to heart is, “We are beautiful. We are beautiful because our land is beautiful.” Those words emphasize the relationship between all of us and the land that sustains us, that we are nothing if we treat our land without respect. They are powerful words.
I grew up on the boundary of the Penticton Indian Reserve and I still live in the house in which I grew up. I like to tell my friends from the Penticton Indian Band that I grew up on the res. However, I did not grow up on it like those people. As I grew up, I knew nothing of the struggles of the kids I went to school with from the reserve. We did not talk much. I knew nothing of the struggles of them and their families, of the residential schools situation. I did not really know anything about their culture, heritage, or language. I did not even know there were still people speaking a traditional language there.
In 1978, I was out on the Chilcotin Plateau and went into a café. I realized soon that everyone in the café was speaking Chilcotin. I had never heard an indigenous language spoken before. I realized how little I knew of the cultures of the people who were here first, the first peoples of Canada.
In 1981, I met Jeannette Armstrong, someone whom I have come to know and respect a great deal. She grew up a couple of kilometres from me in Penticton. My father knew her mother and yet I never had met her before. She spoke of her family's struggle to retain the culture and language. She spoke fluent nsyilxcen, the language of the Okanagan people. I was totally blown away. I had no idea there were still speakers of that language, that the culture was still retained and so rich.
Since that time, I have learned a lot from my colleagues in the first nations communities of the Okanagan about that culture and what they have been doing to retain it and make their people proud of it and get their kids learning the language again.
Recently, I had the honour and very humbling experience of sitting in on an immersion class in Penticton that taught nsyilxcen. It was humbling to sit there for a day, hearing people speak a language that I knew very few words of, a language that was formed in my home valley. It was literally the language of my land and yet I knew nothing of it.
I still know very few words in nsyilxcen. I know a few of the plants and animals as I am a biologist. Probably the only word I knew as a kid, because my father would call bitterroot, was “speetlum”. Speetlum is one of the four food groups of the Okanagan people. It is the root that gave them sustenance through the year. I know the word for Saskatoon berries, “seeya”, again one of the important foods of the Okanagan people.
However, it was not until I moved back to the Okanagan in the 1990s and started working a lot with people in the local first nations communities on the conservation of their lands, as they were very concerned about conserving the environment of their lands, that I got to hear more of their personal stories. People who were working with me, very dedicated workers, had real personal struggles, such as families torn apart, addictions, life in residential schools, which had sent them to Alberta and northern British Columbia as kids, yet they had come back to work to rebuild their communities.
At the same time, my wife Margaret was working for the Osoyoos Indian Band, building the Nk'Mip Desert Cultural Centre, one of the most magnificent interpretive centres in the country. If people are ever in the Okanagan, I urge them to visit it. It is a real celebration of the Syilx culture and is very well presented. Through her, I met other people who knew their culture and their language. It was such a rich experience, learning all of this from my neighbours. As Canadians, we do not have that opportunity very often.
Some of the projects I worked with brought kids together, kids from the first nations community and non-indigenous kids, to do habitat rehabilitation, plant trees and shrubs. At the same time, they were planting seeds of reconciliation in our communities.
I have seen such a change over the last 20 or 30 years in the Okanagan Valley with respect to the building of reconciliation. People are feeling a lot better about the relations between indigenous and non-indigenous peoples. When I first went there in the 1990s, it was very touchy. However, that has really changed, as people are now taking the time to learn about each other's cultures.
Many of us celebrate July 1 every year as our national day. As well, many of us celebrate June 21, National Indigenous Peoples Day. Although it is not a holiday, I attend the events in my community when I can. I know a lot of people do. In those events, we learn about indigenous cultures, their heritage and their languages. However, it would mean so much more if it were a national holiday.
Therefore, I really want to support my colleague's initiative to create a national statutory holiday. Yukon and the Northwest Territories have set a precedent by making June 21 a holiday in those territories to ensure that people have the time and the mindset to really set aside a day to learn about these important issues, and to take important steps toward reconciliation.
Lim’limpt.