"Retrieve the history:" Elder Duke Redbird on why Canada Day 2021 is a time of reckoning

On National Indigenous Peoples Day, Elder Duke Redbird, a poet, artist and educator, shared his knowledge on the history and the lives of Indigenous Peoples in Canada in a powerful, extended sit-down interview with Global News.

3:38 Redbird spoke about how Canada Day 2021 is an opportunity to reflect on the country's dark history and present failures of Indigenous Peoples, especially now that the country has "woken up" following the discovery of 215 Indigenous children in unmarked graves at a former B.C. residential school.

He spoke about the suicide rates among Indigenous children and the lack of clean drinking water still faced by Northern communities today. "Our people in the north can't get fresh drinking water. And yet they found out that they can make water and uncreated on the moon."

When discussing his opinion on the removal of John A. MacDonald statues across Ontario, he pointed to the Indian Act and all the rights and freedoms that were stripped from Indigenous Peoples.

"When you look at the policy that John A. Macdonald created where he said we our government has to kill the Indian in the child is enough not to have a building named after him or his or a statue erected to him."

0:32 Redbird's main advice to non-Indigenous allies is to "retrieve the history:" As a start, find out for yourself where you live and who originally occupied the land where you live.

6:48 Redbird ended the interview with a powerful poem dedicated to the Indigenous children who lie in unmarked graves, and who are at the vanguard of Canada's reckoning.

The poem called “Stolen Children, Stolen Souls,” was written by Redbird in 2008 after Prime Minister Harper apologized to Indigenous Peoples for the residential school system but failed to mention the missing and murdered children buried on school grounds.

For more info, please go to https://globalnews.ca/news/7968164/ontario-place-indigenous-centre-mysum-toronto/
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