NFU Calls for Community Action toward Reconciliation and Land Rematriation
Saskatoon, SK – On this year’s National Day for Truth and Reconciliation (TRC), the NFU calls on our members and allies to take community action toward meaningful reconciliation with Indigenous peoples. Nine years after the TRC, only 13 of the 92 Calls to Action have been completed. While it is possible that progress is being made, we join with many Indigenous organizations recognizing that this tragic report card reflects systemic issues of injustice and colonization that must be challenged at all levels of government and addressed from the bottom up, through grassroots solidarity and relationship building.
Before colonization, Indigenous peoples stewarded robust food economies rooted in understanding humanity’s deep connection with and responsibility for the web of life. The residential school system was part of a state-led program to dispossess Indigenous peoples of their lands and solidify European worldviews and territorial claims. For more than a century, Indigenous children were forcibly taken from their homes and communities and subjected to abuse. Their cultures and languages were devalued, and they were denied the love and care they needed. Residential schools played a key role in the dispossession of Indigenous peoples that continues in the present day to undermine Indigenous land-based languages, cultures, kinship systems and political economies.
Today, Indigenous peoples are restoring and defending Indigenous food economies and relationships through initiatives for more equitable sharing of land, what’s called rematriation. “The Rematriation movement is about going beyond the idea of simple ‘repatriation,’” says Celeste Smith (Oneida), an Indigenous seedkeeper with Region 3 in Ontario and co-chair of the NFU’s International Programs Committee. “To repatriate means to give back something to its rightful owner. But how do we restore something one does not own but only stewards and nurtures? How do we navigate the subtle intricacies inherent in returning something like land — land that we all now live and birth our next generations on? Rematriation encourages us to Indigenous wisdom and pay attention to the needs of the land itself.”
Natasha Anderson (Saulteaux, the Key First Nation), an Indigenous land steward with Region 8 in BC, highlights the ways that rematriation restores peaceful relations with one another and the land: “My farm is called Minwaadizi, which roughly translates to ‘they live the good life.’ Some of the rematriation work we’re doing has included stewarding seeds from my great Auntie’s ancestral seed collection; growing traditional medicines and seeds to share with community; hosting Indigenous youth land based learning sessions; and continually weaving intentionality, ceremony, ritual, and other cultural practices to deepen our relationship with the land, food, and medicines we grow.”
The NFU recognizes that our collective well-being depends on efforts led by Indigenous peoples to defend and nurture relationships of care and cooperation with each other and the land. In the present context, when bold action is needed to fulfill our responsibilities to one another and the earth, rematriation is a guide for community action. We encourage everyone to join a TRC action in your community and learn about and support efforts toward rematriation. Some examples of these efforts include:
