WINNIPEG — Portage and Main was closed for a portion of Saturday morning as a Jingle Dress Healing Dance took over the intersection.
Dancers donned the traditional dress and performed for James Anaya, the United Nations special rapporteur on the rights of indigenous peoples.
Following the dance, aboriginal leaders, including Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs Grand Chief Derek Nepinak, gathered at the Radisson Hotel, where there was an opportunity to address Anaya.
Similar dances were held in Peterborough and Thunder Bay, Ont., as well as in Vancouver, B.C.
“Hearing the drums, seeing the beauty and feeling the powerful love of our people will certainly be a welcome gift to Mr. Anaya in light of the very difficult discussions that he is bearing witness to throughout our ancestral lands,” Nepinak said in a news release. “The unity and love demonstrated today by indigenous people will reflect the great power and resilience we have as the original people of these lands. Our people will expose the great injustices of generations, but we will do it with soft hearts, kindness and the great respect that characterizes our people.”
With a mandate from the UN Human Rights Council, Ananya is conducting an investigation on how First Nations people are treated in Canada. Anaya is making stops across Manitoba Saturday.
“There are a number of issues our people and leaders will bring to light during the visit with the UN special rapporteur, including the lack of resource equity sharing, the need for greater protection of our lands and water, the lack of protection of and justice for the hundreds of missing or murdered Indigenous women and girls and the re-establishment of residential school-type policies with the push of prescriptive colonial legal frameworks on education for our children,” stated Nepinak.
“We hope Canada and the world will hear the voices of our people, and begin helping to tear down the walls of colonial policy and law that creates tragic consequences for our people.”
Representatives from the AMC are planning to be in Ottawa on Oct. 15, when Anaya will release the early findings of his investigation.
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