Dozens of students gathered at the Orillia campus of Lakehead University on Wednesday morning to learn about truth and reconciliation during a ‘Tipi Talk’ with elder-in-residence Ernie Sandy.
As part of a series of events leading up to Sept. 30, the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, Wednesday’s event was divided into two parts to address both truth and reconciliation separately for attendees.
First, Sandy led a discussion on the history of colonialism, residential schools, and Indigenous peoples, and took questions from students hoping to learn more about the past and Indigenous cultures today.
Originally planned to take place inside the tipi on the campus grounds, so many students showed up that the first part of the event had to be moved into a classroom.
“Prior to the arrival of newcomers … our new neighbours, we were nations in every sense of the word,” Sandy explained during his talk. “We had our own medicines. When I look at it, the way I teach it is the forest was our pharmacy.”
Sandy discussed the oral tradition of Indigenous peoples, the history of restorative justice, and how Indigenous peoples helped the first newcomers to Canada.
He also discussed the differing sentiments on land ownership between Indigenous peoples and settlers, and the “dark shadow of history” that included residential schools, events like the ’60s Scoop, and the subsequent intergenerational trauma that has affected, and continues to affect, many.
Sandy noted residential school students were forcibly removed from their families to be assimilated into Western culture, and removed from their languages, families, and heritage, while also, in many cases, enduring abuse.
“Essentially, it was a world of genocide,” he said, “genocide in a way of destroying a people.”
However, Sandy said, Indigenous peoples are now taking their culture and language back through truth and reconciliation.
“We have the spirit and strength, and with each generation, we’re getting stronger and stronger. There’s Indigenous lawyers and teachers and Indigenous professors. We are healing intergenerational (trauma),” he said.
“We’re certainly standing proud and talking proud, and sharing our story.”
After the discussion, attendees went outside to the tipi to learn about reconciliation, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada’s 94 calls to action.
Tobacco was distributed during the truth part of the event, and was then placed in a fire inside the tipi with a specific intention for action during the reconciliation portion.
Indigenous initiatives co-ordinator Mercedes Jacko explained tobacco is part of the yellow quadrant of the Anishinaabe medicine wheel, which is where the sun rises and everything begins.
“Tobacco has a lot of different teachings … in First Nation ways of knowing, and they hold our intentions. Everything starts with tobacco. What we learned today, we held tobacco in our hands for those intentions, those feelings, that energy, to go into our tobacco,” Jacko told OrilliaMatters.
“In the reconciliation part of today, we’re going to sit with our tobacco and put those intentions into the work that we’re doing with reconciliation and what that means to us.”
