By the end of this month, Shaunessy McKay is hoping the St. Thomas University community will have a better understanding of native land issues.
November is Native Awareness Days at STU and McKay, the native student council’s president, has designed a series of events centred around land.
Called “Our home on native land,” the events include lectures by STU professors D’Arcy Vermette and Roland Chrisjohn, CBC journalist Maureen Matthews, Passamaquoddy Tribe Chief Hugh Akagi, as well as opening and closing potlucks.
Land issues aren’t often discussed in a classroom setting, but McKay wants to change this.
“I’d like to bring [land issues] out because [they don’t] seem to resonate as well,” she said.
Chrisjohn, who teaches in the native studies department, says understanding First Nations issues are central to understanding how the world works.
He’ll give a lecture on Nov. 15 centred around how native issues fit into a world of unbridled capitalism.
“What does Canada or the U.S. really have to do about settling outstanding issues with native people?” Chrisjohn said.
“We know for a fact that Canada admits that it’s preparing a one-size fits all generic resolution to native disputes from one end of Canada to the other.”
Chrisjohn will argue that the Harper government isn’t prepared to offer compensation to First Nations people.
“The government’s already of the position that the crimes they’re guilty of, they’re not guilty of.
“Can we expect that the era of unbridled capitalism has softened [politicians’] hearts?”
Native Awareness Days begins today with an opening potluck at 4 p.m. in the Holy Cross conference room.
Here, anyone can bring food and discuss what’s ahead during Native Awareness Days.
It continues Wednesday with a lecture by STU professor D’Arcy Vermette on an announced subject at 4 p.m. in the Holy Cross conference room.
In the past, Native Awareness Days has been bunched into one week, but the native student council decided it would be easier to organize and it would be better attended if spread out into a month, McKay said.
“It’s always been really compact and really kind of hectic. It’s a hard time getting peoples’ schedules put together.
“I found it a lot better to spread it out so we don’t have to worry about every single person right away.”
By having speakers from different disciplines, McKay hopes to draw people studying a variety of subjects to the events.
“[Native Awareness Days] brings light to a lot of the issues that don’t necessarily get publicity.
“It brings a lot of different people to campus and it unites people and it gets people talking about these things.”
