Reconciliation Regina has unveiled its community action plan to facilitate local truth and reconciliation initiatives.
The organization — a collective of 70 community organizations and social service agencies as well Indigenous elders, youth and government — produced a 25-page document released to the wider public at a launch Wednesday at the mâmawêyatitân centre.
“This isn’t us or this isn’t them. This is we and we’re all going to have to do this together,” Reconciliation Regina board chair Gillis Lavalley said, referencing how the plan will need to be carried out if it is to be successful.
The mayor called the plan a map for the future .
“It’s focused so many people on reconciliation, which is seriously healthy,” Mayor Michael Fougere told the small crowd gathered for the event.
The plan notes the steps Regina has already taken toward reconciliation, including the establishment of the mâmawêyatitân centre itself.
Elder Brenda Dubois told the mayor during the event that the plan is a start, but that more should already be done.
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“Right now, you’re still in education mode. You’re still educating people,” she said. “There’s still a whole bunch of action that needs to take place.”
As for future direction, the mayor loosely referenced ongoing discussions around the downtown John A. Macdonald statue. There is a petition to remove it from Victoria Park.
Elder Lorna Standingready agrees the plan is just the beginning.
“It’s not enough,” she said.
“There’s much to learn, so much to tell. We have to tell our children that: how to respect one another, how to live with one another because our forefathers signed those sacred treaties,” Standingready said, noting how the treaties have been broken.
She said reconciliation is difficult and still vividly remembers being taken at five years old from her mother on Peepeekisis Cree Nation by an agent to attend residential school.
“From being five years (old), reconciling to myself to see a different colour, reconciling myself as I go through life,” she said.
“It is a road all of us must take with one another.”
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