Shaun Newman Podcast - SNP/WS Roundtable #5 - Truth & Reconciliation Part 2

Episode Date: October 6, 2022

On part 2 of the Truth & Reconciliation discussion I am joined by: Melissa Mbarki - Is a Policy Analyst and Outreach Coordinator, Indigenous Policy Program, at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. Jocelyn Burzuik - President of Sundance Construction which operates out of Manitoba November 5th SNP Presents: QDM & 2's.   Get your tickets here: https://snp.ticketleap.com/snp-presents-qdm--222-minutes Let me know what you think   Text me 587-217-8500

This is Brian Gitt. My name is Patrick Moore. This is Dr. William Macchus. This is Bruce Party. This is Tom Ovaluongo. This is Steve Barber, and you're listening to the Sean Newman podcast. Welcome to the podcast, folks. Happy Thursday.

Who? Thursday. Thursday? Throwback Thursday? I don't know what you do. Wherever you're at, hopefully the day is good to you. Today's going to be an interesting one. Obviously, as podcasters will know,

assuming you tuned into this one in the morning, I released it early. We got an election day to day. Tonight, we got a new Premier of Alberta. So hold on to your hats. We'll see what happens here. Also a reminder that QDM and Tews tickets, they're coming to Lloyd Minster, November 5th.

In the show notes, you can purchase. And we've got under a month, and that is going to be coming to the Gold Horse Casino. It's going to be a fun night, a comedy show followed by a live podcast, of course, supper and vault. A good way to get out with the misses or Mr. or bringing a couple of friends.

out it should be a fun entertaining night hopefully a couple of laughs in there for us all because I think at times we could use a little bit of that regardless here is the part two of truth and reconciliation I hope you enjoy and please send along your thoughts I know the text line is always open to all you find folks and I don't shy away from it so so buckle up because here we go good evening and welcome to the Sean Newman show on the Western standard tonight we have part two of truth and reconciliation I'm joined tonight by two guests who will be entering the studio here. Melissa and Barkie is a policy analyst and outreach coordinator,

Indigenous policy program at the McDonnell Laurier Institute. And then podcasters will remember Sundance Construction, her Twitter handle or her actual name, Jocelyn Berwick, president of Sundance Construction, which operates out of Manitoba. So first off, ladies, thanks for hopping in and doing this with me. Yeah, no worries. Nice to see again, Sean. A reminder for the conversation tonight, it's a roundtable format, so feel free, you know, as we get rolling along here to hop in and, and I mean, honestly, you got comments you want to make. Don't feel like it always has to come back to me. That being said, let's start here. You both have listened to Part 1 with Tom Flanagan and Nathan Gita. What sticks out to you that maybe has been itching at you here for a couple days that you want to start off with? And certainly Jocelyn will start with you.

And then from there, Melissa hop in and we'll see where it goes. Well, I listen to the podcast. And I think that everything that the guys had to say was totally 100% valid. I understood their perspective, all those things. But when you go back to truth and reconciliation is that the actual report is, is 94 recommendations and 94 different calls to action. And I don't necessarily agree with all 94 of those. and the idea of the burials is 0.71 through 76.

And that's part of the story of truth and reconciliation. It's not the whole story. That's not, and truth and reconciliation isn't just about what happened. It's what's about still happening. So it's important. It's important. And the idea that there's a role that it has to play. And I think that was my biggest takeaway from it is that it was,

it was missing the other side of it, is that why do people whose families have been touched by truth and reconciliation, how are they impacted? And yeah, so I think that was the part that was missing. And yourself, Melissa, what did you think of the part one and what stuck out to you? I thought their points are really valid.

You know, it's something that the non-Indigenous communities will take away from it all. But like Jocelyn said, there's something that's just missing. It's the people aspect of it that's missing. It's the survivor's stories. It's, um, I grew up in a community with an open residential school. And there's a lot to the story that's not being heard, you know. And, and this takes me back to the days where they were going through court hearings and,

you know, they were getting compensated. That was a really tough time because for years, actually for decades, uh, a lot of didn't believe their stories. You know, they they said a lot of really mean and nasty things to survivors, you know, and accusing them of lying about their experience. And now we're kind of going down that same route with, with the unmarked graves. And, you know, a lot of people questioning it. Well, we're just starting. That's just one part of the story. And we're just starting to locate them. We're not even at that point where we're going to start talking about exhuming them. in my community, we found 34, not unmarked graves, we found 34 remains of children when a waterline broke. So my story, our story isn't out there. And I have to ask the question, why? Is it because it's only 34? It's not a huge enough number.

But we actually found remains. You know, the RCMP had to be called in. They had to do an investigation to determine if they were current or if they were older remains. and you know we had to go through that process so it's a very lengthy process and it's not something that's done overnight you know ladies um i i said this at the end of the part one i feel so uncomfortable sitting here you know i think it's an important topic to talk about obviously it's it's uh um it depends which side of the coin you fall on which side you want to hear more about right that's that's kind of why i went we have to have a part too because i after i was done i was like i know there's more

of the story. I know I need to round this out somehow. And tonight is certainly an attempt. And I say attempt because that's exactly what it is. When you say we have to address what is happening, Jocelyn. I think both of you in your own ways are directing some attention to some of what's happening. But maybe to the listener, what are things that are going on currently on the different reserves that really stick out and people need to know. know about? Well, from my perspective, so my perspective is that my family is both, depending on which side of family we're looking at, members of Treaty 1, and then the other side of my family being Métis. So we have, we have crossover in our family and the family stories that have all been

impacted, but the number one impact of residential schools is just, they're so broad. I mean, so we're dealing with a disconnect, right? I mean, people say, where does all these problems on our first nations, but media communities and non-status communities? Where does this come from, right? Like, where does, where did this stem from? Well, this stemmed from not just the residential schools, but it stemmed from the entire policy, that Indian Act policy and how we deal with the iterations of the Indian Act. And that was loss of culture. Loss of of language, loss of faith, integration with new faith, and trying to move that all ahead. And people talk about is that what are the impacts?

Well, when you take anybody out of their community and what grounds them to who are, and you just, you break something. And so when we're talking about truth from reconciliation, is that that's part of the story, loss of language, loss of culture, loss of family. People talk about, well, First Nations or Mady communities or non-status, we choose to live communally or we choose not, and they talk about how that impacts us. But it's not just that.

It's all the components of that. It's like it's about language preservation. It's about cultural preservation. It's all of it. In all of those people, all of those points, they create a connection from one. to another, crossing multiple families, multiple histories, multiple traditions. But it connects all of us.

And that was lost. So then we go into what was the impact of that? Well, then you listen to the survivor stories, and then you have creepy trains of addiction, poverty, the cycles of abuse, and then all of those things that compound on each other, and those are still present in the very same. government policies that rule all of these communities. And it doesn't matter whether you are Méti or otherwise or non-status or status,

is that we all get impacted one way or another. I'm fortunate in a sense that Manitoba, the MMF, just as self-government agreement. So I have some part of sovereignty still attached to my identity now. But that's not the case with others, though. this is not a past, this is not a past issue. It's a continuing issue. It never ended. So policies, government policies haven't ended. And this is not a person to person issue because most people get this and they understand it and it's really awesome the way people interact. But our government still continues the policies that impact and continue all of

of these impacts and it's it's there. It hasn't stopped. It's never changed. It's never gone away. One of the things I guess I struggled with is the past thing. You say it's not a past issue because one of the things that was brought up and the first one is we emphasized too much on the past

and we're trying to fix things that happened, you know, and I'm being a little facetious here, so I apologize, but you know, 100 years ago. And we keep focusing on the past, we keep focusing on the past, we keep focusing on the past. Why aren't we worrying about the future? And what you just said, Jocelyn, is that it continues on right now. What about is right now is continuing on that us morons sitting over here, and I mean exactly me, not the listener, goes, well, I thought, I don't know, you have Truth and Reconciliation Day. You had the Pope come visit.

You got all these different things. and I know I sound like a complete nut or moron folks, but I'm just trying to what else is going on that needs to be pointed out and feel free Melissa or Jocelyn to hop in on this one. I can definitely hop in on this one. Only residential school was in my community. So I'll try and explain how this all interconnects with today. So the kids that I went to school with,

the residential schools that I was in grade school with, a lot of them they committed suicide. by the time they were in grade six. A lot of them had addictions by the time they were in grade seven and eight. And a lot of them dropped out at around grade eight-ish. And, you know, this was a pattern. You know, the children that left these schools were left harmed, either physically, mentally, emotionally, they were harmed.

And there was no services for them when they left the school. There was absolutely nothing to help them. There was nothing to help them with whatever. was going on with their life. So what end up happening is they end up getting into addictions. They became parents. They didn't know how to parent. They didn't have an education. They didn't have the life skills to be able to parent. So now they're parents of children. These children are handed down the only thing that their parents knew. So now we're dealing with a generation of children who not only are harmed from these schools, but now they're raising children. These children are

ending up in CFS. These children are ending up in jails. These children are ending up in the system again. And this is a continual cycle that is getting worse. And if you look at what happened on the James Smith Cree Nation, that can happen on any community today, on any one of our communities because we're dealing with meth addictions. We're dealing with parolees going on to reserves. We're dealing with violence. We're dealing with just a whole slew of social issues. So that's how it plays in today.

This isn't something that happened 100 years ago. These schools were open when I was a kid. So that wasn't that very long ago. And we like to point the finger and say, okay, well, this was 100 years ago. This happened in the 60s. No, this was something that happened fairly recent. And the thing that I find really, really surprising is that a lot of people didn't know about these schools. You know, I kind of put it out there, you know, this TNR, this Truth and Reconciliation holiday.

And I'm like, well, why, if you were alive when these schools were open, why didn't anybody petitioned to have them closed? And all that I've heard is that we didn't know about them. You know, like we didn't live near them. We didn't even know they existed. So how would we know what's happening in these schools? We didn't even know they existed, never mind the abuse that went on. So this is how, you know, this is what we're dealing with today. And the fact that people didn't know is very concerning.

Like, how did the government hide this? How did the government hide these schools? And that's a question that I asked. every day now because how did you not know how did the general public not know and see and I hate to bring in COVID but this is exactly what I'm gonna do I'm gonna go for the past two and a half years we demonize part of our population and and I'll point to anyone who's listening to this on the podcast to the episode that just came out on Wednesday which is Ben Trudeau talking about how Quebec French

Quebec in particular was demonized for a very long time by the English part of Quebec and he talks very openly about that and so it's very concerning Melissa because we see it happen not only to one portion of the population but different portions of the population under the same governments right I don't mean just under the government today but over the course of Candace history this is played out over a course of different populations at different times where you know we grew up like where I am from we grew up about a half an hour as the crow flies from a residential school which I had zero I

was there and you know when I got talking to a few old timers a few knew it was there and a few had no idea it was there right and some of it is you know I think maybe a you've brushed a little bit of it is a lot of people didn't want to talk about it I've had a couple of first nations men come on and talk about it and it was like pulling teeth a little bit and I mean that you know in a nice way if there is such a way because you know to open up wounds like that and be open about it is probably not the easiest thing to do. And one of the questions I had was, you know, I got young kids. I'm like,

why would you let them do that? And it turns out, well, they didn't want to let them do that or a few of the different family and they, and the government kind of just ran right over them. So it's, it's not as easy as like, well, this, because the more questions I ask, the more answers I get given where I'm like, uh, uh, that is confusing, right? And I've never learned that before. I guess I come to, how do we end the cycle you know you talk about all these you know it's a cycle of like drugs addiction parents I you know I I'm trying to you know reiterate what you said Melissa you did it way better than I did but if we look at this and we see the root problem reconciling

that and talking about it I think is a start but it's like how do you end the cycle so we can all I don't know is move on the right way to you know approach it I don't know. But once again, I throw it back to you too. If I were to say something, I would say, where do you start? You start with self-governed. You start with sovereignty. People say is that we need to rethink Canada and we need to rethink our relationships with First Nations.

And the indigenous and that, I say is that let's go back to the basics. Let's go back to the basics. And let's go back and actually truly recognize what's, sovereignty means, sovereignty of the indigenous, but also sovereignty within Canada. And First Nations, when these treaties were started, they were not about, you know, ruling over one group or another. They were a partnership. A partnership. It was a give and take. It was an agreement to live together and share resources, share education, share knowledge. So how do we change that? We need to change it at the top. At the top of our government,

they need to get back to the idea of how to actually deal with a framework that brings a logical, rational system of self-government back to the conversation. Because after Jody Wilson-Rabul left government, that conversation ended. So you don't step down and deal with all. the other issues with poverty, resource development, all those things, that is not getting dealt with at the government level because they choose not to recognize all of that. It's a trickle-down effect. So start with the sovereign individuals, start with the sovereign communities, start with self-government, and then all the rest of that can start to work. And I didn't really understand this until I actually saw the self-government agreement with the MMF. And over the last two years, I've been able to

to see firsthand. What is the MMF? The Manitoba Medi Federation has a self-government agreement with the government of Canada that recognizes the

Méti Nation. Just in Manitoba. So the MMF has a, this, this government. So we actually have, so between the all our different cabinet ministers with portfolios and the president, et cetera, going down.

But what they've created now is with Mito, we have the economic development portion of that to help Mady businesses. We have the other side of that, where we have the pharmaceutical side, we have a housing development and infrastructure side, we have language preservation, we have education, we have homeschooling,

we have the cultural development activities. And the MMF deals with not just Manitoba in Canada, but they deal with governments and countries outside of Canada to create that partnership. And we, here I am in my community, but I have two sides that I live in. So one side I live as a Canadian who served in the military and done many things as a Canadian, but I also have a self-government agreement through the mating nation, and which allows our community to grow and to be preserved in terms of that identity throughout.

So it taught me that this can actually work. First Nations should not be denied the same thing, the same ability to be able to heal. If the mating nation can do that, why can't First Nations? Thoughts, Melissa? So I'll tell you why. There's just way too much bureaucracy on top of us. You have the individual First Nations community. You have AFN that kind of sits on top of us and, you know, deals with the government on our behalf.

As an individual, I cannot vote in any of these policy changes. It's up to my chief. It's up to the chiefs in Canada to be able to make those decisions. And then on top of that, you have the federal government. And in and amongst all of this, you have a department that deals with us, which is Indigenous Services Canada. So I do agree, you know, we do need to be sovereign. We do need to be able to make our own decisions. And we don't need to be going through all this red tape to get something as simple as clean water.

That just shouldn't be happening today. And, you know, on top of that, another thing that we're dealing with is poverty. some communities, it's pretty extreme. So we need to start looking at ways that we can, you know, self-sustain ourselves, where we can make decisions for ourselves, where we can make decisions for a community, and where we can make decisions on things such as natural gas, oil and gas pipeline development. These are things that we should be able to make decisions on. We don't have as much autonomy as, let's say, a Métis Nation. We don't have that much autonomy. And that needs to change, like Jocis. Lynn had said, we definitely need to put some policies in place that give our communities more

decision-making capacity because right now we don't have that. A lot of people think we do, but we actually don't. You don't have any decision-making power? No, we don't. When you look at, so if we were to think of a First Nations community, like a county or a municipality, they get like a certain budget, they get like a certain amount of money every year so that their area can function. That's the same thing with the reserve. get a certain amount of money for everything, whether it's roads, schools, band office, you name it. We have to make sure that we can cover the cost of our bills.

Now, where it goes wrong is that there's certain things that aren't included in that budget like water, like roads, housing. This is kind of intermingled into it, but we don't have control over that. We're given a budget for housing every year. Sometimes that budget is half spent before it even gets to us. Same thing with water. You know, we can't go to, let's say, an environmental company and say, hey, can you come and drill us a service well? Can you come and do some testing for us for us?

We absolutely don't have that power to do that. We have to depend on the federal government to do that for us and to actually make these calls for us and to do that work for us. I feel really, really dumb asking this question, but here it goes. What happens if you don't involve the federal government in the drinking water? Me and Jocelyn to give Melissa, and if you're tuning in from the Western Standard, I suggest you go listen to that episode. It's a while back, but Jossam's on, we talked about clean drinking water. But ladies, what happens if, like, you're sitting there, you got no clean drinking water?

What happens if you just go hire somebody to come out and drill well? It's, you know, I don't know, $5,000 or you get the point. It's not like it's going to, you know, break the bank. It's not $5,000. And that's the problem is that it's the dollar amount that's required. to drill wells. Depending on where most of our First Nations are located, it could be,

you could be going through bedrock, you could be going through other things, you could be drilling deeper. And then it's how do you get that water once it's been drilled out to it. So if you look at northern Manitoba, northern Saskatchewan, northern Ontario,

those aren't well-driven water treatment plants. Those are surface water treatment plants. So they draw from surface waters. And that water is high methane content, high organics, a whole bunch of different things in there. Very few wells are drilled in those areas because you're going through the Canadian Shield. It's geology. And we don't have that money. So I'll give my reserve as an example.

Our water plant broke down back in 2000, I'm going to say 2014, 2013. and we didn't know what the issue was. It took almost a year for someone to come out and actually look at it. It took another year for them to determine what the problem was. And then it took another year to come in and change the filtration system. It took three years of our plant not running when it was a simple filtration change. So that in itself cost, I think it ended up being about $50,000 to fix. We don't have that kind of money.

And we actually had to pull from a lot of our social programs, especially for kids, for teens. We had to pull money to fix that. What did you do for three years? We had blue jugs. If they can bring us blue jugs and deliver us, you know, jug water. Who brought you blue jugs? Well, what the federal government does is they contract through a company in an urban area,

such as Regina or Saskatoon. They come out with their big van full of jugs every week or every, two weeks depending on when it is and they deliver it to the community and that's how we have water. Yep, that's 100%. She's bang on every single community across those regions. 100%. That is what happens. I sit here and I go, I just, I guess I just, I don't understand.

And then that's why I sit here and I keep asking questions because I go, you know, this has been a discussion since I had Jocelyn on. And I don't understand how provincial government just doesn't step in and take care of this. I don't understand how it just doesn't get taken care of. I don't understand. And that's part of my sitting here in disbelief that, you know, a water treatment facility can go down. And then it can last three years for such a simple, like, I just, I look at you two ladies and beating the drum and just knocking down some of one. walls and tearing somebody a new asshole, pardon the French, but I just go like, how doesn't,

how isn't that effective? How on earth does it take three years? Well, the provincial government isn't the solution. The solution would be giving that decision making and autonomy back to the First Nations community, giving them a budget for water and saying, okay, your budget for water, maintenance, what have you, is X amount of dollars every year. If you go over, we can discuss it at that point, but we don't even have that decision making right now. I worked with an oil and gas company and we drilled a lot of water wells. Like we did it in a matter of two weeks. We went and connected water facilities to homes.

We, you know, set up temporary campsites. We had it all done within a week. Like, it's possible. There's just no motivation from the government to do it. Well, Melissa, where are you sitting at currently? What province? Alberta, correct? I'm in Edmonton, yes.

Eminton, perfect. Well, you're in the land of ingenuity. Like, we look at a problem and we go, okay, boys, what do we need to do? Well, way we go and boom, right? And if you go back to the settlers and the little communities they formed in the conditions they lived through, that's exactly what they did. They literally, you need a barn. Okay, we're all out there. And a week later, you get a barn up.

And you need Wells, Doug. They found ways to do that and so on and so forth. It went. And yet this problem is like everybody's turned a blind eye to it and I can't figure out if that's complicity from Complicity? Geez, ladies, I can't spit it out tonight from the government and I'm learning a whole lot about media You like part of Tom in the first talking about the graves and how media portrayed it I understand his thought process there because I've seen the media really construe a lot of different things

And so when I sit here and I listen to this, and I listen to Melissa talk about finding 30 plus children in a waterline break and, you know, the investigation that comes and how that isn't like, what on earth is this? And things like that. I go, so is it just government? Is it government and media? Is it, you're both kind of like nod in your heads a little bit here? It's government and media. And I will give you an example of that. So they have this graph.

ISC has this graphs of all the water advisories they lifted. My community was on one of them at one point in time. They took us off because, and this goes back to the bottled water, they took us off because we had bottled water. So we were no longer technically on a boil water advisory, but they had fixed a few things and a few things had tickets, had numbers. So they could show that they fixed three things in my community, but that didn't necessarily mean we had clean water, clean running water.

So that's the misconception that's out there with these graphs. it doesn't accurately portray what is happening in these communities. Jocelyn, any thoughts? Yeah, it's 100% because I live through this. Like, this is what I literally live through. So when I get contracts to look at something or somebody has an issue, I have to come up with really creative ways to be able to figure out how we're going to find some funding for it, who to talk to, and go through all those steps because the First Nations or the media,

status communities, they know what the problem is. They get the expertise in to figure out what the problem is, but now they have to find budgets for them. And it's exactly the same. And there's no difference between the federal government and the provincial government and how they do this. So if I'm dealing with a First Nation community via ISC, the process is almost identical to the process I face. If I'm dealing with, say, in Manitoba, indigenous municipal relations, dealing with a Métis slash non-status community. And it takes forever to get anything dealt with. And there's no sense of urgency on the part of bureaucracy or government or consultants.

Like they literally don't care. They don't care in any of what they do. Like they don't care in solving the problem. If the plant goes down on the Friday, we'll wait till Monday. we'll get somebody out there after that. It's not a concern to deal with these communities right away. And it doesn't matter where these communities are. They get treated exactly the same way.

So the problem is there's no sense of urgency on the part of government officials. And then no budget. They have budget for everything else, don't have budget for First Nations or Métis communities. You know, the government doesn't seem to have a lot of urgency with a lot of things. and I sit here and I listen to both you ladies talk and I go there has to be a way to solve these problems. You mentioned sovereignty in different ways

so you can take matters essentially into your own hands I think is kind of the way I hope I'm distilling it down. You know, the actual title of the show has been Truth in Reconciliation. You know, we just had to kind of rewind this a little bit. We just had September 30th, the second National Truth and Reconciliation Day. One of the things that, well, actually, no, I'll stop, I'll ask, what did you think of the second iteration of it, you know, not having Trudeau A end up out surfing and being an absolute and complete moron? But what did you ladies think of the second go-around? Were the things you

like, things you didn't like? what was your overall thoughts? I thought it was, I thought this year was a little bit more well planned, well thought out within indigenous communities. From last year, we kind of had a year to look at what we wanted to do. I seen a lot more indigenous people wear orange shirts.

You know, I've seen like, I call them a wave of orange everywhere I went. So it was really nice to see that. And it was really, it was really nice to see survivors come out and actually tell their story. be open to sharing, be open to telling about their experience. So in that regard, it was really good.

You know, it was really good from the indigenous side of things. What I really didn't like from the day was a lot of people questioning the unmarked graves. You know, and this goes back to the media and how they told the story. We have no say in the way the media tells our story. So they can elaborate, exaggerate as much as they want. But the backlash comes back to us. if they embellish things they shouldn't have. And I think our communities, I think the indigenous communities,

I think we really got it hard. You know, we really got some hard feedback because of that. But that actually wasn't our fault at all. You know, we weren't the ones telling the media that there was mass graves out there. They just assumed there was. We knew that most of those graves were individual graves, like the ones found in my community.

You know, we knew there were of children. We don't know exactly, you know, the placement of when they all passed away. And this is where reconciliation comes in. This is where the government can hand over records. This is where the church can hand over records and tell us exactly who's there, which child is there. So that possibly, you know, they can reconnect with some of the family members that are living today who didn't know what happened with their children. So this is, you know, it was a mix of emotions. It definitely, you know, it was a lot for us to go through because there was a lot of questioning about mass graves.

And that shouldn't have been, you know, that that wasn't our story. That wasn't what we were telling. We were telling, you know, non-Indigenous people that we found unmarked graves. That's what it was. And the media went ahead and embellished it. And, you know, we got the backlash for that, unfortunately. Does, I don't know the answer to this one once again. Does First Nations have a news outlet?

Like, have they actually, like, got together and started, I don't know, geez, you know, the Sean Numa podcast just, it started as a pretty little small entity, and it is still a small entity, I might add. But have they got together and started building something like that that can tell exactly what Melissa is saying, like tell their side of things so that they can, you know, try and get, and I put, your truth, you know, you kind of get what I'm getting at, but give your side of the story? There isn't a media outlet. I mean, there's APTN. You know, and they, you know, they tend to, you know, deal with facts, but they also tend to follow kind of legacy media as well. So. Well, then that doesn't count. So, but sometimes there, you know, there are some really good

journalists out there who do report on accuracy and they do report on what they're seeing. But that is kind of, you know, we see it every single. so often. But the one person that really kind of broke this and really told the story as it was was Terry Glavin. He was the one who was out there just stating facts. He interviewed Cadmus the Lorham. He talked to the chief at Kamloops. And, you know, he based his story on facts, on his discussions that he had. And that's one person that did that. And he got a lot of backlash as well. So I mean, I wish we had a media outlet that was non-biased that told the story as it was. But unfortunately, you know, that's what we struggle with right now.

Yeah, it's a pretty big problem, as we've all seen, I think, at this point. I was saying to Jossum before, you know, this was a couple days ago, like, part of the problem with being balanced is there's so many sides to, let's just take this story, right? I have friends and family, good human beings that are dealing with gangs and situations that have come out of not only First Nations but different parts, but right now they're dealing with that. Nobody in media will talk about it. Nobody and the politicians won't talk about it. Nobody will talk about it. It's kind of like don't talk about that. Meanwhile, that's what they're seeing. And yet you have you two ladies on it and you tell me a different story. And I've certainly had on different, once again, First Nations men who've told me some stories and you're like, oh, okay. So you start piecing together this like really complex thing. And you go, how on earth do we move forward?

Ladies, how on earth do we move forward? And you go back, Jocelyn, is it the sovereign thing? How do we piece this back together so that we can move forward? Right now is that indigenous in Canada. that we were not considered outside of the Métis self-government agreement and a few other First Nations that have those same agreements. They're not considered, you know, kind of like real people. Like they're not considered their, you know, the stories and that. They're not taken to be as valid as they should be.

Are you talking, apologies, are you talking the 600 plus different reserves out there? they're not taken as real people? Yeah, I'm talking about, but we're not, not from a person to person level. This is not on Canadian to Canadian level. I'm talking about the institution of how indigenous are treated in Canada. This is not, this is not a difficult, this is not a difficult question, right? This is not, you know, something you need to rack your brains over. you know, it's a matter of getting back to the basics and understanding how do you reconcile

with an entire nation of people within a nation. You look at the Maori. They have that. Canada can do exactly the same thing. But our government needs to be willing to stop treating indigenous in Canada as a ward of the state. we have to have some form of autonomy, partnership, resource sharing, respect. But you have to understand is that reconciliation will happen when these two groups come together. We work together.

But you still have to respect where one side is coming from and you have to respect where the other side is coming from. We were supposed to be a partnership and kind of like a, not just a blending of people, but a bridge from one nation to another. We're supposed to be a bridge. And that's what has to get recognized. So we need to, A, stop saying is that reconciliation is about in the past, and that treaties are in the past. A treaty is a very, very, very current valid legal document

and is used in constitutional court in Canada every single day. So stop saying that they're not valid and that they have no impact on life today because they do. And the impacts impact us with poverty addiction, the ability for a community to grow to pull itself out of poverty, for it to be able to create the systems that we need in order to become thriving communities. Because that's what we need. We need First Nations, many communities, non-status communities have to thrive. They have to grow. They have to be prosperous. They have to have hope. And then when you have those things, they're going to fold. together and we'll have two wonderful communities of people that that can build something better

together. But until our federal government recognizes that, that one piece, the rest can't happen. I got a, I don't know if the federal government's going to do that, Jocelyn. That's just my own, my own thought. I feel like anytime we put a big decision like that to the powers it be, they're probably going to disappoint us every single time. Would you concur, Melissa, or do you agree with Jocelyn? No, I definitely agree with Jocelyn. You have the Indian Act, which is a very, it's a very archaic piece of paper that needs to either go or there needs to be some serious amendments that are done to it. Anyone who falls under the Indian Act is considered status Indian, and I fall under that. And it is, it is.

is a very, like Jocelyn said, it's a system where somebody essentially takes care of me. It's really weird, but, you know, it's, it's a, it's a very broken system and it treats us like children. Like, we don't have the decision making skills, you know, for not only ourselves, but for our communities. So that needs to go or it needs to be rewritten, however, which way the government choose to do it. But I think we're at a point in our lives where we're seeing it's not working. You know, this dependency is not working. This, you know, having somebody constantly make decisions for us, not necessarily, you know, for the betterment of us. It has to go. It has to go. If we ever want to move forward on anything, on autonomy, poverty, anything, you know, that has to go. And I think a lot of

people are agreeing to that today, maybe not necessarily a couple decades ago, but today they're starting to see how restricting it really is and how it's really impacting us and how it's not allowing us even out of poverty. You know, the government's making decisions for us still to this day in regards to what kind of resources we want to get into, what kind of jobs we want to create, what kind of businesses we want to have. The government is there every step of the way, and that has to go. It has to go. Yeah, I guess, I'll try and rephrase my thought because I agree with what you're both, I understand what you're both saying. I think when you go back early into Canadian history, the English, the French, and the First Nations were all supposed to be equal.

I think that was the general concept. And instead, that didn't happen, you know. Certainly different groups have been persecuted ever since this country came into formation and, you know, I don't need to give a history lesson here. What I hear you both saying, I think, is that you need the government out of the way. And it needs to be autonomy. It needs to be decentralization. You know, I come from a small farming hamlet. It's not even a town.

That's how small it is, right? So you can't treat that the same way as you treat Emmington. And you can't treat Emmington the same ways you treat Toronto and et cetera. First Nations would be no different. There's going to be a place in. Northern Ontario that's going to be different than Saskatchewan. And certainly not every place in Saskatchewan is the same. And so I feel like what a lot of people are talking about is that decentralization of,

of get government out of your hair, I think. Is that, does that make more sense of, because I'm not against what both of you were saying. In my head, I just don't know if a government can enact something that, I mean they can. I just, history hasn't been very kind.

If you look at what Jody Wilson, Ray Bulls had proposed before she was kicked out and Carolyn Bennett brought in white paper 2.0, she had it. She had the start of the framework to create a pathway to self-government. And she knew, along with many other members of the indigenous community, is that you won't get there overnight. You have to walk a path of accountability, transparency, build your infrastructure, build your people power, and then transition to self-government. It is a path that needs to be walked. But the Trudeau government with Carolyn Bennett, they turned the spigot off. They created a new department, but they turned off the spigot of walking towards self-government. So very smart people who do this for a living, they understand.

understand that the framework is there. They can do this. You know, you bring up Jody Wilson Raybold. When you, you got Justin Trudeau who doesn't say all the right things, but I mean, he champions for a lot of people all the right things and then does the complete opposite. And Jody Wilson Raybold is another example. When you were watching her Jocelyn or Melissa, you must have had a lot of hope then. Because what I'm hearing at a Jocelyn is like she had the idea. And then what happened to her, everybody in Canada was like, what is going on? Right? And it was the beginning or maybe it'd always been there, but it just is more of the Justin Trudeau government that says one thing and does the complete opposite. Is that the right thought?

I think that's definitely the right thought. And the thing with her framework is that some communities today are ready to go. They're ready for sovereignty. They're ready for self, you know, they're self-sufficient enough where they're ready to be out of the Indian Act. There are some communities like mine who are still living in poverty will get there in time. You know, if we're given the resources, we will get there. And so will many other communities. Her framework would have fit for our First Nations communities.

It definitely would have worked with us. It wasn't a framework that would just pull the carpet from under us. It would allow us to work our way to sovereignty. What was her framework, Melissa, if you don't mind me asking? Obviously didn't follow it nearly as close as you to. Just to put it really simply, it was getting out of the Indian Act and being your own nation and being your own sovereign nation. So a reserve wouldn't have to fall under federal jurisdiction. They would no longer be taken care of by the federal government.

They would be operating essentially as a municipality would be. and that's what it was. And there are quite a number of communities that are ready to do that today. And why it's not implemented, I don't know. So when you see what happens with Jody Wilson-Rabel, what thought crept into both of your minds about the government, the current government?

Because if it seems like, man, that's actually a pretty good idea. And then what happens, happens. I hate to take us too deep into the weeds, but I am curious, what did the, what crept into your thought? We're broken. Our government, our system government in Ottawa is broken. There's no way to put it other than the fact that it is broken. It is corrupt.

It is no longer working for the best interests of the people. And it doesn't matter if we're talking about the best interests of Quebec, Ontario, or Western provinces, or Atlantic Canada. It's no longer governing for all of us. It really doesn't. and it hasn't for a very, very long time. And that goes back to lobbying and the fact that the federal government has grown to the point where it's able to feed the trough in a huge way.

I mean, our federal government doesn't function. Even like in COVID show, this is that we are no longer even functioning on a departmental level efficiently or even working at all. Passports are a great exam. example. ISE breakdown with projects is another great example. But I mean basic services aren't getting delivered. And that's because our federal government is too top heavy and it has zero interest in divesting any of that control. So this is about control in Ottawa. So we need a couple of things to change. Maybe the first start of that change might be self-government for First Nations because it rests the control out of the federal government. And then maybe provinces will stand up and realize that they have a better part to play and a stronger part to play in Confederation and do things a little bit better. Because I think First Nations working in conjunction with provinces might actually get this down a little bit faster because if a First Nation can operate under a self-government agreement, maybe a province can take back more autonomy and actually do the things it needs to do for its people. So are you both are you both paying attention then to Alberta going if if certain someone gets in this might be

the next opportunity to move things along real fast? I'm definitely following it and the front runner is very interesting to say the least. I don't I we talk about sovereignty but I'm coming from a first nation's community. I need to know what that looks like. You need to to spell this out for me. You need to give me a picture of what sovereignty looks like. If it means taking back our, you know, and not having the RCMP in our province anymore and having a provincial police, okay, is that what sovereignty is? Or is it managing, you know, other things like CPP? What does that look like? I haven't found anything clear online as to what this sovereignty looks like. But the big question here is you can't have sovereignty without First

nations and indigenous people. And we haven't been approached on that. So how are you going to get there if we haven't even been consulted yet? So that's the big question on my mind. You know, I would like to see more solid answers and I would like to see more of a plan out there so that we can see what sovereignty looks like for Alberta. And I feel like that might be, I can't speak to the powers of B. Just sitting here in this seat, I go, when I think sovereignty, it's everything you were talking about there and if you're going to do it, you should enlist probably some of the most powerful little spots in all the provinces that have a lot of ability to push on the government. I mean, and teaming up a bunch of First Nations with the provinces, I mean, you want to have

Ottawa a little nervous. That right there would be terrifying because you go back to Jocelyn with the gesture of bringing provinces and First Nations together under one umbrella, so to speak, is, you know, you get unity like that. Things can move rapidly. And I mean, I just, I have so many talks about the clean water. And I, you know, we're slowly bumping up against time, ladies. So I really do appreciate you coming on and doing this. I hope you have enjoyed it. But some of these problems just seem like we're spending like how many billions of of dollars right now on everything and yet we have poverty at some of the worst levels in certain spots and we can't fix that. It's like, well, I'm not saying I can flick a finger

and have it done, but I'm telling you, it would be on the docket of things. Let's get this, let's get this on the right track so that, you know, where I sit, Alberta or my home province of Saskatchewan growing up is a place where you're like, if you want to go live somewhere that takes care of its people, those are the places. And I certainly, Jocelyn's sitting in Manitoba, that could be another one and I don't mean to single out any of the provinces but you get the point regardless as we grow in on hit the the time stopper here um is there anything else ladies that you know as you get to know me uh I I certainly have some ideas in my head but I like to let it flow and see where it goes because usually that's the best type of conversation Melissa is there

anything else before we we close off today's part two of truth and reconciliation and And any thoughts that stick out? I just want to say that Alberta is actually doing a really good job in engaging indigenous communities and economic development. That's what we need. You know, when they've opened this, you know, this loan guarantee for communities that would not have access to capital. So that's a start.

That's definitely a start to reconciliation. And it's something that I call economic reconciliation. And I think a lot of other provinces can follow soon. on this. It doesn't just have to be the oil and gas sector. It could be mining. It could be infrastructure. It could be anything. You know, we definitely need to get economic, we need to get these communities economically functioning. And that would take us a long way. And that's part of reconciliation. And that's kind of where I always go when it comes to reconciliation. I mean, if we address poverty, we've addressed a huge issue that plagues us today. And that's something I

always fight for. And finally, Jocelyn, yourself, any final closing thoughts before we let you get on with your evening? I just say is that if we go back to the whole idea of truth and reconciliation, it wasn't just about missing children. It was about the legacy of child welfare. It was about justice. It was about education.

It was about training. And it was about being able to pull all of this together under one umbrella, which actually kind of ties into the idea of reconciliation and walking a path to self-government. So if people want to know more about truth and reconciliation, the first thing they should do is go and actually read the recommendations so they know what it's talking about and what it's meant to discuss at least read the first 94 recommendations. You may not agree with them all. I don't agree with them all. And everybody will have their own point of view. But it's the starting point of understanding is that what it's supposed to be. This, the whole idea of the

idea of this particular day when the Trudeau government formed it. Last year I was angry. I was angry about the whole day. This year I still had the mix of where the day itself made me angry, not for the indigenous celebration portion of it, but for the idea that I feel that our federal government made a mockery of it and that our federal government didn't care and our federal government has uh it's it's hypocritical so as much as i take the joy out of the the celebrations and people telling their stories it makes me angry when i see anybody from our federal government talking about the importance of truth and reconciliation and the day when it means nothing because they haven't walked the path to get there so for me like melissa it's two different emotions that that you're

dealing with trying to to deal with that inner portion of it where on one side you're happy that the people are talking about, but on the other side of it, you want to punch somebody in the head. Well, you're going back to the argument, like, you can have truth and reconciliation for a day, but you have to understand there's 164 more days of the year. That goes to, I remember Bell, let's talk, you know, the mental health. People said the same thing about it, and I don't mean to draw direct comparisons, just that when it becomes larger issues, people have to realize that it's, you know, it's still there.

for the entire year. Either way, ladies, I appreciate you coming on and doing this. I say this to the listener and to both you ladies. You know, this is a conversation that I'm very uncomfortable with. But at the same time, I think, you know, when you talk about for anyone wanting to learn about it, one is starting to talk about it. Two is you can certainly read. There's enough books now.

interviews, stories, that thing that have come out where you can start to interview and start to listen, sorry. And that doesn't mean you don't come away with more questions. You certainly can come away with more questions. But I think that's part of it as well. And that's certainly sitting in my chair what I'm trying to do. And I hope I'm doing it justice. Either way, appreciate you ladies coming on and being part two of this. And I hope for the listener, you know, part one, part two, you start to see some different sides of a very comfortable.

complex, ongoing truth and reconciliation as it moves forward here. Either way, thanks ladies for joining me tonight. It was wonderful beyond. Thanks for having me.