Mr. Speaker, miyotôtâkewin tatawaw. That is Cree for “Guests, you're welcome, there's room here”. If my great-grandmother Lucy Brown Eyes, a full-blooded Cree woman, had been able to be elected to this place, she may well have extended the same greeting in the House from the peoples of Treaty 6.
In keeping with indigenous tradition, I would like to acknowledge that we are on the ancestral lands of the Algonquin Anishinabeg. It is a great honour to be here today to rise in support of Bill C-91, an act respecting indigenous languages.
Along the way, we as Canadians forgot the welcome and partnership that indigenous peoples offered to original European settlers. A colonial and superior mindset began to dominate the land and, over time, misguided and discriminatory policies served to turn indigenous peoples into the other.
The official government plan was to assimilate indigenous peoples. Reservations, residential schools, stripping children and elders of their language and separating families became the norm. Intergenerational cycles of grief, trauma, substance abuse, suicide, missing and murdered indigenous women and girls and societal marginalization ensued.
In the 1990s, Canada paused and held the Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples. I spoke with one of my mentors, who was a commissioner of that very royal commission, Dr. Peter Meekison, just last night. Despite many clear recommendations to improve the lives of aboriginal peoples, successive governments were slow to act.
As part of the 2007 Indian residential school settlement, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission was formed to listen to survivors and make recommendations to the government and Canadians. The commission met until 2015. I remember the last public meetings, which took place in 2015 in Edmonton. I was moved then and I remain moved today.
The work of the TRC informed this government on our steadfast commitment to reconciliation. Signing on to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, ending boil water advisories on reserve, empowering indigenous families to keep their children in their care, closing the gap on education funding and implementing Jordan's principle are but a few examples of our commitments.
With the indigenous languages act we are debating today, we are responding, in consultation with indigenous peoples, to calls to action 13, 14 and 15 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.