Lakehead series will address 'urgency' of Truth and Reconciliation

Lakehead University is keeping the Truth and Reconciliation conversation going with an upcoming speaker series.

The Orillia campus will host a series of webinars next month called Truth and Reconciliation: Community Dialogues.

The free event will feature webinars every Tuesday between March 1 and 29, from 7 to 8:30 p.m.

“A community conversation is the way to go because it’s regular people who want to know what it’s all about and what they can do,” said Cynthia Wesley-Esquimaux, Lakehead’s chair on Truth and Reconciliation. “I hope they take away a better sense of urgency for the conversation.”

It’s important to keep the issue in the spotlight as other countries face the realities of their own relationships with Indigenous peoples, she added.

“It’s a conversation that is becoming fairly global,” she said, noting New Zealand is launching a Truth and Reconciliation commission and Australia did so last year. “People are finally saying, ‘We better do something as well because we have similar problems.’”

Reconciliation is about more than simply getting along with one another, Wesley-Esquimaux said.

“We have to work together to come up with solutions that are going to include everyone.”

The first webinar, on March 1, will feature Eli Baxter, who will “weave together his experiences growing up in the hunting and gathering society of the Ojibway and surviving the residential school system with traditional legends and teachings.”

A week later, Lenore Keeshig will be the presenter. She will share “stories of the land from residential and Indian Day School to present day.”

Brian Charles, an off-reserve band member of the Chippewas of Georgina Island, will focus on the tradition of wampum diplomacy during his talk March 15. He will “use replica wampum belts to interconnect the nations and histories of First Peoples in local areas and those of settler societies in Canada, highlighting the important truth in the statement, ‘We are all Treaty People.’”

Wesley-Esquimaux will lean on her experience when she presents on March 22. Her topic will be Enacting Reconciliation: Building on Truth to Make a Difference. She will discuss ways to address reconciliation from a “micro-level.”

The series will wrap up March 29 with an “activists and allies panel” featuring Mike DeGagné, Karen Kun, Ry Moran and Tracee Smith.

There will be an opportunity during the series for those watching to ask questions.

Lakehead plans to organize more speaker events in the future, including a conversation among youth and elders.

To register for next month’s series and to learn more about the speakers, click here.