Newmarket is marking the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation and Orange Shirt Day on Friday, Sept. 30 with a community reconciliation event in Fairy Lake Park.
The event begins at 3 p.m. The mayor will offer remarks and then Kim Wheatley, an Anishinaabe cultural consultant, will speak about the national day, perform hand drumming, and offer prayers.
"My role is to actually offer some words, some guidance, perhaps some personal thoughts and feelings on the significance of the day, some of the historical factual updates that have gone on since last year and mainly some encouragement for Canadians at large to continue to activate some sort of allyship and action-oriented alignment to the 94 calls to action," she said. "And the honouring of the families, the children, the communities that continue to reel from the cultural genocide experienced in this country."
She said the day is important because she hasn't seen a lot of activity or understanding of the significance of it.
"I see lots of work in schools, which is where the movement started, but as a population, the Canadian population, I see very little action, I see very little interaction with our people with understanding the facts and the reasons behind the facts," she said.
As adults in this country, she said it is also time for people to step up and do something meaningful of their own accord that "embraces the possibility of change in healing within our community."
Wheatley does public events like this regularly and on Sept. 30 alone she will be speaking in Mississauga and Aurora, as well as in Newmarket. She said it's important for someone like herself to address discrimination, prejudice, misinformation and misogyny.
"We're still struggling with missing murdered Indigenous women. We're still struggling with the healing, our communities are still struggling with a horrible relationship, a colonized relationship with the federal government and the provincial government. We're still struggling with how Canadians perceive us," she said.
"When I'm out there speaking, as a human talking to another human, I'm hoping to connect your compassion and your empathy. I'm also hoping to connect you to your ability to become an ally by choice, not by shame or division," she said. "For somebody like me, hearing authentic voice delivered and having some of the feelings attached to that in the delivery can be helpful and can be inspirational, can be part of the mending, interweaving process between Canadian populations and Indigenous communities."
On a personal level, Wheatley said it also re-empowers her, develops her sense of belonging, and shows her right to have an opinion and not be silenced.
After she is finished speaking in Newmarket, residents are invited to tie orange ribbons on the bridge just south of the amphitheatre in the park.
While this year's event will not include a reconciliation walk like last year, attendees are encouraged to park anywhere along the Nokiidaa Trail, at the town's municipal offices, or at Fairy Lake Park.
