Prince Albert Grand Council leadership at a recent event at the Senator Allen Bird Memorial Centre. Photo by Chelsea Laskowski.
Guests at next week’s Sovereignty and Treaty Relations Forum are in store for quite a few history lessons.
The four-day Prince Albert Grand Council event starts on Monday.
Senator James Burns has been organizing the forum, which he says will tackle the rocky past between First Nations and Canada, as well as pre-contact history.
This information is important because “there’s a lot more different activities that we’re gonna be involved in now as Indian people,” Burns said.
“We’re going to go back historically and share with the people, the participants as to what really took place prior to European contact.”
They’ll also be touching on assimilation policies, the White Papers, and other parts of First Nations history. Burns said there are long-term plans to educate PAGC youths on the treaty-related topics, with a focus on teaching the lessons to Grade 9 to 12 students.
“What we’re trying to do is institute (these lessons) into the schools, the history so it’s a positive history of really what’s happened,” he said.
Burns said PAGC is meeting with colleges and universities about what is needed in the provincial curriculum “to really teach in relation to Indian people to co-exist with white people.”
This look into the past includes the 150 years that Canada has been in existence. This year, the provincial and federal governments are holding events all over Canada to celebrate this milestone.
The forum will be discussing the Canada 150 celebrations, but with a twist.
“We’re gonna try and celebrate 150 years into the future,” Burns said.
“We know all the things that happened that are terrible. Now we want to look at a brighter future and how we can begin to develop with our people. Because a lot of our people are in foster care; our children shouldn’t be there. A lot our our young people are in jails; they shouldn’t be there. The system has failed us and we’re going to talk about how we get involved in that,” he said.
Burns says as an elder he’s gotten involved with the child welfare system, and with corrections.
The Prince Albert Grand Council is hosting the event at the Senator Allen Bird Memorial Centre. It starts Monday at 1 pm.