Vancouver proclaims a year of healing

One of Canada’s largest cities is the first to proclaim a “Year of Reconciliation” in an effort to mend its “bitter” relationship with the Aboriginal community.

The reconciliation year in Vancouver began on National Aboriginal Day, June 21, and will run until June 20, 2014.

In a summit that took place downtown on June 20, Mayor Gregor Robertson presented Kwagiulth chief, Dr. Robert Joseph, with a framed Year of Reconciliation proclamation.

The proclamation states that the city seeks to find ways to heal “the bitter legacies left by the residential school system.”

At the summit, Robertson told a group, which included representatives from the Squamish, Musqueam and Tsleil-Waututh First Nations, that the city acknowledges the ongoing impact of the residential school system.

For more than 100 years, thousands of children were taken from their families and sent to federally-funded residential schools.

Chief Joseph told the crowd “our future, and the well-being of our children, rests with the kind of relationships we build today.”

The year-long program of reconciliation events will include four major events surrounding the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC)’s national event in Vancouver this September: lighting the torch of reconciliation, a canoe gathering in Olympic Village, a walk for reconciliation and a ceremony following the walk.

The walk for reconciliation will take place on Sept. 22. Register at vancouver.ca or reconciliationcanada.ca.