Shaking the Mover 2024 Report: Reconciliation and Places Where We Belong

April 22, 2024

Honouring Landon Pearson

A long-time friend of the First Nations Child & Family Caring Society (Caring Society), the Honourable Landon Pearson (OC) championed children’s rights throughout her long tenure as a senator and public figure. Landon served as a voice for children and youth as a member of the Caring Society Board of Directors, providing invaluable guidance that has left the Caring Society in a better position to continue advocating for children, young people, and families. The Caring Society is committed to continuing to honour Landon’s unwavering dedication to ensuring the voices and perspectives of young people are heard by taking up Shaking the Movers each year.

Introduction

The Caring Society is a national non-profit organization based on unceded Algonquin territory (Ottawa, ON) that, with a focus on child and youth engagement, works on reconciliation-based policy, public education, and research geared at ending the inequities in public services and child welfare to support thriving First Nations children, young people, and families. At the core of the Caring Society’s mission is the fact that First Nations children deserve to grow up safely at home with their families, get a good education, be healthy, celebrate their cultures, and be proud of who they are.

This report is prepared by Jess Raby and Molly Rasmussen of the Caring Society, based on the findings and perspectives provided by high school students from Kitigan Zibi Kikinamadinan.

Shaking the Movers: Reconciliation Is in All of Us

Shaking the Movers 2024 Theme:

Reconciliation and Places Where We Belong

Many people are now aware that during the period from 1879 to 1996, Canada took First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children away from their homes and families and put them in residential schools. While attending these schools, the children were not allowed to speak their languages or celebrate their culture and were not treated with love or kindness by the adults who ran the schools. Because Canada did not fund the schools properly, many children who were forced to attend ended up getting very sick, and in many cases, passing away. Those who survived came home with a deep sadness and hurt that was passed on throughout generations.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) spent many years listening to Survivors tell their stories with the intention of helping Canada to learn from its mistakes. In 2015, they released their final reports and Calls to Action, which are 94 ways that governments, businesses, schools, and all people living in Canada can help create a better future for First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children. The Calls to Action are the Survivors’ gift to all people in Canada – they are a roadmap that we can follow toward reconciliation. You can learn more about the Calls to Action in child-friendly terms by reading Spirit Bear’s Guide to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action.

Every child has the right to be healthy, grow up safely at home with their family, get a good education, honour their cultures and languages, and feel proud of who they are. These rights are enshrined in the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC), and governments have a responsibility to uphold these rights for all children. Unfortunately, from the time of first contact through to this day, Canada has not honoured the rights of First Nations, Métis, and

Inuit children and in many ways, continues to violate these rights

today. You can learn more about these injustices by consulting the 2 additional resources at the end of this document.

We invite you to start thinking about what reconciliation looks like, and how you might play a role in bringing it to life. We recommend consulting the Calls to Action to help guide your work, and thinking about the connections between rights, responsibilities, and reconciliation. Think about the responsibility of the movers, too, and how they have a duty to ensure that all children’s rights are respected! You can also think about your relationship to reconciliation in Canada and how you can stand with First Nations, Métis, and Inuit children and youth. Consider how these relations shape our identities and sense of belonging.

Reconciliation is in all of us, and we all have a responsibility to do our part to help with its advancement. Remember, just because we’re small, doesn’t mean we can’t stand tall!

Read More

NT6