Another federal election cycle is upon us. And to the Indigenous, the issues remain the same. In fact, they are as old as our relationship with Canada itself. Before we were placed on the Shkonjigan (Sh-kohn-jih-gun), meaning leftovers, which is the Ojibwe word for Reserves, we had everything we needed. We had lived off of the bounty that the land had provided us for millennia. Everything we knew we learned from the land itself. Our word for teaching is, Akinoomaagewin (Ah-kih-noh-maw-geh-win) meaning teaching from the land, and that is how we learned to survive and to live in harmony with the natural world. But, contact and encroachment of our ancestral territory changed all of that. The record of those changes are contained in the Ojibwe language itself.
Saving wetlands a resolution Canada needs to keep
Amid all the heartening and hope-filled ways Canadians have resolved to make 2021 a year of positive change, one in particular holds water: the commitment to saving our wetlands. Leading up to 2021, the Government of Canada promised to make significant investments in our environment-and in the wetlands that underpin its health. Today, this commitment must be among our greatest convictions. Our ability to address the colliding crises of biodiversity loss and climate change depend on it. So does our economic recovery.