Implementing Indigenous Reconciliation Speaker Series

Abstract

Over the past several years, Canada has made ambitious and unprecedented promises to realize reconciliation with Indigenous Peoples after long, ongoing histories of oppression, dispossession, and human rights violations. This series of panels asks leading experts what it will take to transform these promises into substantive results – actual, lived Reconciliation. 

The nationally recognized panelists will survey the broad political, social, and legal landscape, taking up the three most consequential initiatives in which Canada has made explicit commitments to implement Reconciliation. They engage what is and can happen at multiple jurisdictional levels, including Indigenous, municipal and state jurisdiction, recognizing the roles and responsibilities of all from citizen-actors to state-actors. The experts will identify both successes and emerging opportunities on how to fully enact the many commitments, and how to overcome on-going policy, social, political, and Inter-peoples challenges and barriers.

Event Dates

October 14 - Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action

October 20 - United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP)

October 28 - The Calls to Justice of the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls Inquiry

Confirmed speakers:

• Pamela Palmater - Mi'kmaq Lawyer (Eel River Bar First Nation), Chair in Indigenous Governance, and Activist 
• Brenda Gunn - Metis Scholar, Academic & Research Director for the National Centre for Truth and Reconciliation 
• Brent Cotter, Q.C. - Senate of Canada (Independent), Former Deputy Minister of Justice, Deputy Attorney General, and Deputy Minister for Intergovernmental and Aboriginal Affairs for Saskatchewan 
• Kimberly Murray - Member of the Kahnesatake Mohawk Nation, Assistant Deputy Attorney General for the Indigenous Justice Division of the Ontario Government, Former Executive Director of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada 
• Sherry Pictou - Honorary District Chief, Former Chief of L’sɨtkuk, and Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Indigenous Governance 
• Cheryl Simon - Law Professor from Epekwitk, Former Policy and Operations manager for Mi’gmawe’l Tplu’taqnn, a Treaty Rights Implementation Organization
• Chief Bobby Joseph - Reconciliation Canada, Hereditary Chief of the Gwawaenuk First Nation, AFN’s Elders Council
• Naiomi Metallic - Assistant Professor of Law at Dalhousie University and Chancellor's Chair in Aboriginal Law and Policy
• Denise Pictou-Maloney - Sipekne'katik First Nation, Member of the National Family and Survivors Circle (NFSC), Former Community Liaison Officer for the MMIWG Inquiry