Learn English with Justin Trudeau. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau delivers a speech on the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation on the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation's Unceded Territory in the Northwest Coast of Canada.
00:00:25.680We're gathered here today on the traditional unceded territory of the Algonquin Anishinaabeg Nation.
00:00:39.380Your Excellency, the Governor General, colleagues, esteemed guests.
00:00:46.340On this day, both solemn and hopeful, allow me to begin by painting a picture that illustrates our journey.
00:00:58.600At the beginning of my mandate as Prime Minister, I had an Indigenous painting installed outside the Cabinet Room behind us in the West Block of Parliament.
00:01:11.800It's called A Brief History of the Northwest Coast Design by Luke Parnell.
00:01:19.020And it depicts a painful part of our shared history through 11 wooden panels with images inspired by the design on the bent wood boxes and feast bowls of the Nishka and the Haida.
00:01:33.760The first few of, the first few of those panels burst with vibrant colors.
00:01:44.140And then, with contact, those colors fade.
00:01:48.360Until the middle ones become smothered in white paint, a culture literally whitewashed.
00:01:55.460I really hate how left-wing politicians do this.
00:01:58.520These left-wing politicians, they use Indigenous people as props, and then they throw them away and forget about them the second they're done with them.
00:02:06.280Mark Carney is just like Justin Trudeau, and just like Justin Trudeau's father.
00:02:10.280These people do not care about Indigenous people.
00:02:12.900The final panels begin to resemble the original glory, with image, though marked by what has been endured, that are renewed and resurgent.
00:02:26.520This painting captures the pain of suppression and assimilation, and the possibility of reconciliation and renewal.
00:03:17.080These residential schools were the architecture of a cancelled culture.
00:03:28.280It's not a distant chapter, but a lasting truth.
00:03:33.080Residential schools are a truth that survivors have carried with them when others would not.
00:03:39.360A truth recounted more than 6,500 times before the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, so we could no longer say that we did not know.
00:03:52.460On this National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, we honor survivors and the children, the children who never returned home.
00:04:04.240We reflect on the devastating legacy of the residential school system.
00:04:11.040And we, as a government, and as a people, we match remembrance with responsibility.
00:04:19.700The responsibility of having, of progressing in reconciliation, the responsibility of creating the conditions for renewal and uplifting.
00:04:36.040We are moving forward on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's calls for action.
00:04:42.760We're advancing the calls for justice from the national inquiry into missing and murdered indigenous women and girls.
00:04:51.400And we are implementing the United Nations Declarations on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act in partnership with indigenous peoples.
00:04:59.780I know we have a long way to go, but we are building together in health, in education, in economic opportunity, in housing.
00:05:17.860Upholding indigenous rights and empowering indigenous communities with security and prosperity.
00:05:24.400Canada's new government will also be a partner by respecting self-determination, recognizing the fact that partnerships start with a shared understanding,
00:05:48.080and by making equity, and by making equity and indigenous participation a priority in the building up of our country.
00:05:58.360Because, well, it's vital that we build, it's more important, it is vital how we build.
00:06:16.820With indigenous leadership, indigenous prosperity, indigenous opportunity, these must be foundational from the start.
00:06:28.360We pledge to build a future where survivors are honoured with remembrance, with justice, and with a stronger, fairer Canada.
00:06:49.200A Canada made stronger by the resilience of its indigenous communities.
00:06:59.880Reconciliation, as the Governor General, Her Excellency, reminded us,
00:07:04.580reconciliation is a generational task that must be lived and practiced every day by every Canadian.
00:07:12.040And it's that point, that's why I began with the painting.
00:07:26.000That's why the pain of the repression and the possibility of renewal are the last images
00:07:32.980that I, as Prime Minister, and my ministers see before we enter the Cabinet Room to take some of the most important decisions in this country.
00:07:44.780It's there so we remember what came before us.
00:07:48.440And so we are seized with the task ahead of us.