Celebrate the successes and accomplishments of First Nations people
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Summary
In this episode, I talk about why we should celebrate First Nations Day in Canada and why we need to focus on the great things happening on First Nations issues and achievements in our communities. I also talk about the great successes and developments and achievements that we re seeing from our First Nations peoples on particular reserves and in particular remote communities.
Transcript
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there's a lot of conversation going on in canada right now about our first peoples
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the history of our first peoples and how well to put it mildly perhaps they weren't treated so well
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and when we have these conversations and we talk about where to go next next steps productive paths
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forward i feel like a lot of the ideas out there a lot of the things that we're really stuck on
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well they're not that productive they're not paths forward in fact they're they're roadblocks they're
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things that we're really getting stuck on divisive things that that aren't really having much
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productive value i'm talking about things like should we cancel canada day maybe we shouldn't
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celebrate canada day this statue must be torn down we cannot possibly move forward and have
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productive change if this statue is not torn down or that street is not renamed and and i think that's
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unfortunate i think there's a whole whole half of the conversation that that we're missing and that
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we got to focus on more here and it makes me think back to this a couple lines in this book
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that one scholar canadian scholar writing on first nations issues uh wrote about and i've never
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forgotten where he wrote that when it comes to how we talk about first nations issues the the failures
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the tragedies are loud but the successes are quiet and what he meant by that was when there are stories
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about say uh horrible things that have recently been happening on on first nations reserves remote
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communities and and you see these stories sometimes and they dominate the headlines for for a couple
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days for a week the politicians talk about them and so forth and and and they deserve the attention
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they get you know horrible conditions that people are living under tragedies that have happened and so
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forth yes by all means we got to talk about them but we do that and then there are other things
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happening that we don't talk about i'm talking about the great successes and developments and
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achievements that we're seeing from our first peoples on particular reserves particular communities i mean
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i can tell you i've gone to a couple different aboriginal business gatherings and consortiums and
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so forth and they're sitting and they're talking about the advancements that they've made on this project
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or that project you can talk to various different chiefs who who really uh are proud of the education
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that they've created in their communities and they're talking about getting those graduation rates up and
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the post-secondary attendance up and you look at these numbers and you go wow there's some truly
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remarkable stuff going on and these stories need to be told and the people the first peoples who are
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actually working on these and rolling up their sleeves and getting to work on business development
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or progress on education i mean these people need to be held up as the everyday heroes they are and
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quite frankly i think on a day like canada day you don't cancel it you you just you you make it even
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bigger and broader you bring everyone into the conversation you talk about these great things
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that these first nations peoples are doing to make canada a better place i i mean we we've got to bring
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that part of the conversation in here talking about the successes and the achievements you you got to talk
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about history you got to talk about the things that weren't working the things right now that aren't
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working i mean the absolute scandal that there's still communities without clean drinking water that's
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definitely a problem but there's a lot of successes going on we got to talk about them
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we got to acknowledge them we got to celebrate them happy canada day to everyone