The North Slave Metis Alliance prepared enough food to feed between 5,000 and 6,000 people during their annual fish fry for National Indigenous Peoples Day on June 21.
People started lining up at 11 a.m. for a noon start with countless staff and volunteers having been on site at Somba K'e Park since before 8 a.m. Set-up had been done the day before.
During an afternoon filled with drum dancing, jigging, speeches and well wishes, we sat together sharing fish, bannock, beans, corn on the cob and camaraderie, putting our differences aside. During this one afternoon which concluded with festivities by the Yellowknife River, we truly wanted to be wrapped in the blanket of truth and reconciliation.
We are so far from achieving the desired goal of different peoples living peacefully and equitably together but for this one sun-drenched day, we experienced how mutually satisfying such a vision could be.
On Sunday morning at the United Church, Elder Ruth Mercredi led a sharing circle describing the many hurdles First Nations have to climb to achieve their own wholeness once again. In her talk, she reminded us that First Nations had had their culture, spiritual practices, language and, in fact, their entire belief system forcibly removed in a genocidal attempt to take, in Sir John A. McDonald’s words, “the Indian out of the Indian.”
The beatings, rapes, murders and torture may have dimmed their lights, but it did not extinguish their flames. In a sometimes too slow but steady pace forward, First Nations are regaining their identities and thus their true selves and power step by step, one day at a time. It is a joy to see. Overcoming the toxic shame that became part of their identity, along with the brainwashing and diminishing, they are finding a way forward.
There are still many mountains to climb. In a Facebook post earlier in the week, one university educated commentator remarked that people on the street should quit being lazy and go get jobs and that the rest of us should stop being bleeding heart liberals. A truly head-shaking moment. It was a surprising statement from someone who should know better and had likely been a recipient of one-sided colonial benefits which came from this land and essentially belong to someone else. All that it proved was what Ruth said: real intelligence comes from the heart, not the head.
You can hear more of her teachings at the wellness camp by the Multiplex - open to anyone with a willingness to learn.
For First Nations, reconciliation means regaining self-respect and pride and learning to nurture their own inner beings, speak their truth without shame and worship the creator in the way that is meaningful to them.
For our part, we need to extend helping hands without enabling, practice tolerance in the throes of the sometimes intolerable and see the wounded child in every cry for help. We need to understand that while many of us enjoy the benefits of our white privilege, First Nations in the larger Northern centres and the communities have almost nothing and live in what has sometimes been described as third-world conditions. While we have come a long way in the last few decades, our culture has a long way to go to dismantle the stronghold of colonial structures built so long ago in ways most cannot imagine,
Tonight at the Tree of Peace, there will be a community discussion on homelessness as local shelters can no longer meet the needs of the many broken and wounded on our streets. We all have the opportunity to be part of the solution.
National Indigenous Peoples Day is not an annual one-off, it needs to be practiced every day with all of us making the effort to understand what even Indigenous people, lost in their struggles, cannot yet see themselves. Our ancestors caused this suffering and our job is to help heal it.
June 21 demonstrated the beauty in diversity where we learn so much from each other. Let's hope that we will see more healing in the year ahead.
—Nancy Vail is a longtime Yellowknifer with an interest in social justice.