[Music]
[Applause]
one little two little Three Little
Indians does anyone know the song four
little five little six Little Indians
this is a song about cultural genocide I
actually I have to ask my day care to
stop singing this song to my children
it’s unfortunate that people don’t know
the real indigenous history instead we
are vilified or romanticized or our
images show up on corporate logos or
sports teams you know how indigenous
people get into the media this is called
the four DS when we are drunk drumming
dancing or dead so how did we get here
come and walk in my moccasins originally
when the settlers first arrived here we
embraced them we showed them how to live
off the land showed them how to survive
the harsh winters and we got along but
then the relationship changed and the
government started to create all these
new policies and one of these policies
was the Indian Act and we were forced
onto reservations we became prisoners on
our own land we couldn’t leave the
community unless we had an Indian pass
and then later on they came up with
other policies like residential schools
so these schools were built between 1876
to 1996 and the point was to kill the
Indian in the child parents were forced
to give up their children their children
went to these schools where they were
taken their language was erased their
culture their spirituality and they
endured all kinds of abuse my mother
went to the Prince Albert residential
school and she found her experience
incredibly difficult
so when she was older and she had
children her abuse led her to drugs and
alcohol and she became negligent and all
her seven children were put into care me
and my sister Sonya we were able to stay
with each other and we were bounced
around between foster homes and
eventually into family members and then
back into foster homes and then the
government created a new policy the 60
scoop so the 60 scoop was the
government’s policy where they took
Aboriginal children from their homes and
they place them with non-indigenous
families and they did this on many
different levels one of them was sending
their social workers into the
communities and taking the children or
their ads like this this one is actually
the Montreal Gazette it was called the
aim program adopt an Indian or Metis
program and there was also cataloging so
when I was three I was considered cute
enough to be in a catalog however my
sister who was three years older was not
considered adoptable so when after they
took this picture I ended up here in
Montreal and my sister woke up and she
was like where’d she go how come she
didn’t say goodbye and she spent the
next 20 years looking for me so I
arrived here in Montreal and my Jewish
parents are like what do we do with this
child they had no tools on how to relate
to a child that was intergenerationally
impacted so they brought me up in the
Jewish culture because they felt their
culture would be better for me as
opposed to my Creed culture and that was
difficult for me because I had a lot of
cultural shame until I went to a school
where I met Mohawk children I was 11
years old I remember seeing them and
just thinking how incredibly beautiful
and strong and I just it made me proud
to be Cree by meeting them when I got
back home and I shared my newfound
cultural pride my parents were not
really embracing it and eventually I
decided when I was 18 that I would leave
and then
I was trying to figure out well where do
I go do I belong in the white world do I
belong in the indigenous world and where
is the indigenous world in the city well
I did find an indigenous population and
when I did I was really struck by how
everyone seemed to be affected by either
the residential schools or the 60
scooped I looked around and I found that
our people were living on the streets I
looked around and I found that our
people were suffering from drugs and
alcohol and they were just not
integrating into society so I got my
education and I said maybe I can try to
do something in 1999 I decided that I
was going to start working at the native
women’s shelter of Montreal and when I
started working there I noticed there
was an over representation of indigenous
children in care and as the executive
director I was able to go to Youth
Protection and say what my concerns were
and they were like well I don’t know why
don’t you come back when you have other
people who are on the same page as you I
was like yeah I’ll be back so what we
did was we created come on we created
the Montreal urban Aboriginal community
strategy network so this is a network
for both indigenous and non-indigenous
people come together and we try to
improve the lives of urban aboriginals
and there’s so many gaps in services
that now what we do is we are part of
many different committees social
services our culture health youth
education and so on so I went back to
youth protection and I explained to them
that now we are 800 members strong and I
said we need to do better so we created
a cultural manual for all those children
that are in care right now so that the
parents the non-indigenous parents have
a tool so they can bring up their
children where they embrace their
culture a lot of the work that I do is
part of the network another project that
I ended up working on was the Cabot
square project now kavik square is an
area Minh charelle where indigenous
people hang out because
is no urban reserve so when they start
to revitalize this park and build the
condos people are like I don’t know
about the people in the park we should
probably move them and I was like Oh
displacements again so I brought an
offer to the table and after many months
working with the city of Montreal they
accepted my offer instead of moving the
people from the park let them stay in
the park but give them the services that
they need so now we have an outreach
worker at our Park and he’s there five
days a week so that’s awesome that our
people are getting the services but the
people around the park don’t necessarily
want to come in so how do we change that
perception well if you want to know the
beauty for culture let us show you and
why don’t you all participate at the
same time so we have Aboriginal Fridays
for the last two years every Friday in
the summer we promote the culture we do
this by soap stone carving workshops we
do this by music concerts and you can
see that everyone joins in and they
learn the beauty of the culture and they
have a conversation and it starts to
change their perception of indigenous
people so we also have a lot of issues
with the police you have to remember
that back in the day it was the RCMP
that picked up the children and forced
them to go to residential school so
talking to the police we signed in a
collaboration agreement where we would
have a couple of different objectives
one of the objectives was police
training the police if they want to work
with us they need to know our history so
this is the team that did the first
police training we have trained 120
police officers to date and they’ll be
more training soon another thing that we
needed to do
another thing that we needed to do was
create a policy for missing and murdered
indigenous women now we have known from
the past that when a woman goes missing
that the police don’t always step up and
do something about it
so if we’re going to create a policy how
are we going to get the people to go to
the police so we created the issue a
project a school means woman in Cree
so now we have a liaison we have someone
that the community can trust and the
police will work with and every time a
woman goes missing they can go and see
our coordinator and she will give them
support services and she will make sure
that the police take our complaints
seriously and write reports and do the
work that we need to do this project is
super interesting because it is the
first project where we have federal
funding municipal funding we’re working
with the community and we’re working
with the police and if this project
works out we can have it implemented in
every single province
it’s amazing that indigenous people are
still here today I could have been one
of the missing and murdered I could have
lost my children to youth protection but
my past traumas and difficulties have
made me who I am today and it’s made me
want to push forward and make it better
not just for the next generation but the
next seven generations and how we do
this is we reach out to community and we
try to build bridges
Keitha Tom are here thank you
[Applause]
[Applause]
one little two little Three Little
Indians does anyone know the song four
little five little six Little Indians
this is a song about cultural genocide I
actually I have to ask my day care to
stop singing this song to my children
it’s unfortunate that people don’t know
the real indigenous history instead we
are vilified or romanticized or our
images show up on corporate logos or
sports teams you know how indigenous
people get into the media this is called
the four DS when we are drunk drumming
dancing or dead so how did we get here
come and walk in my moccasins originally
when the settlers first arrived here we
embraced them we showed them how to live
off the land showed them how to survive
the harsh winters and we got along but
then the relationship changed and the
government started to create all these
new policies and one of these policies
was the Indian Act and we were forced
onto reservations we became prisoners on
our own land we couldn’t leave the
community unless we had an Indian pass
and then later on they came up with
other policies like residential schools
so these schools were built between 1876
to 1996 and the point was to kill the
Indian in the child parents were forced
to give up their children their children
went to these schools where they were
taken their language was erased their
culture their spirituality and they
endured all kinds of abuse my mother
went to the Prince Albert residential
school and she found her experience
incredibly difficult
so when she was older and she had
children her abuse led her to drugs and
alcohol and she became negligent and all
her seven children were put into care me
and my sister Sonya we were able to stay
with each other and we were bounced
around between foster homes and
eventually into family members and then
back into foster homes and then the
government created a new policy the 60
scoop so the 60 scoop was the
government’s policy where they took
Aboriginal children from their homes and
they place them with non-indigenous
families and they did this on many
different levels one of them was sending
their social workers into the
communities and taking the children or
their ads like this this one is actually
the Montreal Gazette it was called the
aim program adopt an Indian or Metis
program and there was also cataloging so
when I was three I was considered cute
enough to be in a catalog however my
sister who was three years older was not
considered adoptable so when after they
took this picture I ended up here in
Montreal and my sister woke up and she
was like where’d she go how come she
didn’t say goodbye and she spent the
next 20 years looking for me so I
arrived here in Montreal and my Jewish
parents are like what do we do with this
child they had no tools on how to relate
to a child that was intergenerationally
impacted so they brought me up in the
Jewish culture because they felt their
culture would be better for me as
opposed to my Creed culture and that was
difficult for me because I had a lot of
cultural shame until I went to a school
where I met Mohawk children I was 11
years old I remember seeing them and
just thinking how incredibly beautiful
and strong and I just it made me proud
to be Cree by meeting them when I got
back home and I shared my newfound
cultural pride my parents were not
really embracing it and eventually I
decided when I was 18 that I would leave
and then
I was trying to figure out well where do
I go do I belong in the white world do I
belong in the indigenous world and where
is the indigenous world in the city well
I did find an indigenous population and
when I did I was really struck by how
everyone seemed to be affected by either
the residential schools or the 60
scooped I looked around and I found that
our people were living on the streets I
looked around and I found that our
people were suffering from drugs and
alcohol and they were just not
integrating into society so I got my
education and I said maybe I can try to
do something in 1999 I decided that I
was going to start working at the native
women’s shelter of Montreal and when I
started working there I noticed there
was an over representation of indigenous
children in care and as the executive
director I was able to go to Youth
Protection and say what my concerns were
and they were like well I don’t know why
don’t you come back when you have other
people who are on the same page as you I
was like yeah I’ll be back so what we
did was we created come on we created
the Montreal urban Aboriginal community
strategy network so this is a network
for both indigenous and non-indigenous
people come together and we try to
improve the lives of urban aboriginals
and there’s so many gaps in services
that now what we do is we are part of
many different committees social
services our culture health youth
education and so on so I went back to
youth protection and I explained to them
that now we are 800 members strong and I
said we need to do better so we created
a cultural manual for all those children
that are in care right now so that the
parents the non-indigenous parents have
a tool so they can bring up their
children where they embrace their
culture a lot of the work that I do is
part of the network another project that
I ended up working on was the Cabot
square project now kavik square is an
area Minh charelle where indigenous
people hang out because
is no urban reserve so when they start
to revitalize this park and build the
condos people are like I don’t know
about the people in the park we should
probably move them and I was like Oh
displacements again so I brought an
offer to the table and after many months
working with the city of Montreal they
accepted my offer instead of moving the
people from the park let them stay in
the park but give them the services that
they need so now we have an outreach
worker at our Park and he’s there five
days a week so that’s awesome that our
people are getting the services but the
people around the park don’t necessarily
want to come in so how do we change that
perception well if you want to know the
beauty for culture let us show you and
why don’t you all participate at the
same time so we have Aboriginal Fridays
for the last two years every Friday in
the summer we promote the culture we do
this by soap stone carving workshops we
do this by music concerts and you can
see that everyone joins in and they
learn the beauty of the culture and they
have a conversation and it starts to
change their perception of indigenous
people so we also have a lot of issues
with the police you have to remember
that back in the day it was the RCMP
that picked up the children and forced
them to go to residential school so
talking to the police we signed in a
collaboration agreement where we would
have a couple of different objectives
one of the objectives was police
training the police if they want to work
with us they need to know our history so
this is the team that did the first
police training we have trained 120
police officers to date and they’ll be
more training soon another thing that we
needed to do
another thing that we needed to do was
create a policy for missing and murdered
indigenous women now we have known from
the past that when a woman goes missing
that the police don’t always step up and
do something about it
so if we’re going to create a policy how
are we going to get the people to go to
the police so we created the issue a
project a school means woman in Cree
so now we have a liaison we have someone
that the community can trust and the
police will work with and every time a
woman goes missing they can go and see
our coordinator and she will give them
support services and she will make sure
that the police take our complaints
seriously and write reports and do the
work that we need to do this project is
super interesting because it is the
first project where we have federal
funding municipal funding we’re working
with the community and we’re working
with the police and if this project
works out we can have it implemented in
every single province
it’s amazing that indigenous people are
still here today I could have been one
of the missing and murdered I could have
lost my children to youth protection but
my past traumas and difficulties have
made me who I am today and it’s made me
want to push forward and make it better
not just for the next generation but the
next seven generations and how we do
this is we reach out to community and we
try to build bridges
Keitha Tom are here thank you
[Applause]
Please follow and like us: