‘This is my challenge to you: you have the tools, you are in a sense armed, how will you make a difference?’ author Tanya Talaga asked attendees of the Broadbent Institute’s 2019 Progress Summit.

In an emotional talk at the Broadbent Institute’s 2019 Progress Summit, Toronto Starcolumnist and author Tanya Talaga challenged attendees to consider how they can make a difference in bringing about Indigenous reconciliation, and had some harsh words for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government.

Friday marked the final day of the Broadbent Institute’s 2019 Progress Summit, held this year at the Westin Hotel in downtown Ottawa from March 27 to 29. More than 200 people were in the Confederation Ballroom to hear from Ms. Talaga, an Anishinaabe woman, Michener award-winner, and author of Seven Fallen Feathers: Racism, Death and Hard Truths in a Northern City and All Our Relations: Finding the Path Forward. 

Introduced by Saskatchewan NDP Leader Ryan Meili, Ms. Talaga took the summit’s main stage for a speech, followed by an emotional “kitchen table” conversation with Manitoba NDP MLA Nahanni Fontaine and Jessica Wood (Si Sityaawks), assistant deputy minister of the B.C. Indigenous Relations and Reconciliation Ministry’s reconciliation transformation and strategies division.

Reconciliation has always been something of a “slow, meandering, broken-down engine, limping down the track, led by politicians who never quite know where this train is going,” said Ms. Talaga in her speech, adding that many Indigenous leaders don’t use the term “reconciliation” because it’s “not plausible” at a time when so many are still fighting for basic human rights.

“Sometimes I think that the reality of 2019 looks a lot like Canada’s colonial past,” she said.

Evidence of this is playing out multiple fronts, said Ms. Talaga, pointing to First Nations Family and Caring Society executive director Cindy Blackstock’s 12-year fight to end the “longstanding and well-documented” discrimination against First Nations children in Canada.

The Liberal government committed $1.2-billion over the next three years on implementing Jordan’s Principle in the most recent, 2019 federal budget, said Ms. Talaga, but noted that the day prior, Ms. Blackstock was before a human rights tribunal in Ottawa fighting for the government to comply with those very same principles.

When he was first elected, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau (Papineau, Que.) began his term by pledging “undying love and commitment” to Indigenous people in Canada, calling reconciliation his No. 1 priority, said Ms. Talaga.

But, she said, “it is not an act of love or reconciliation to send in militarized police,” referring to the RCMP arrests of First Nations people protesting a Coastal GasLink pipeline in the northern British Columbia Wet’suwet’en First Nation on their own lands in January.

On the Indigenous Languages Act currently before Parliament, Ms. Talaga echoed criticisms raised by Inuit groups and other Indigenous observers, saying “the bill lacks teeth,” “does little else other than to create” a commissioner’s office, lacks specific funding commitments, and looks like another example of the “long arm of colonialism trying to decide what’s best for Indigenous peoples.”

“It’s hardly a panacea, or really even a help,” she said.

Mr. Trudeau’s recent gaffe at a Liberal Party Laurier Club event in Toronto on March 27 didn’t escape mention.

During Mr. Trudeau’s speech at the event, which was open to those who had donated at least $1,500 to the party, a protestor unfurled a banner, calling for the government to compensate residents of the Grassy Narrows First Nations suffering from mercury poisoning in its water supply for decades. As the protestor was being hustled out by security, the PM said, “thank you for your donation.” Mr. Trudeau has since apologized for his comments.

Members of the Laurier Club could be heard laughing and applauding in response to Mr. Trudeau’s comment, said Ms. Talaga, but “the people of Grassy Narrows did not laugh, and the same could be said for the people of Whitedog Nation, also poisoned by mercury” between 1962 and 1970 by a company that “didn’t give a damn,” and who for decades have called on provincial and federal governments to act.

“Even with all the recent pledges and apologies … movement to help the people has been so slow,” she said, noting that, in a conversation with Grassy Narrows Chief Rudy Turtle, the chief noted that his community still has no specialist who can treat mercury poisoning in the community, with people instead forced to drive an hour away to see a family doctor. A health centre was promised in 2017, she said the chief told her, but that still has yet to materialize.

“Trudeau’s glib laughter represents an attitude that has no doubt costlier manifestations than the prime minister’s cheap joke,” said Ms. Talaga.

She recalled a conversation with then-chair of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Murray Sinclair, now a Senator, who told her his purpose as commissioner was, in part, to “arm the reasonable” with knowledge about the reality, impacts, and legacy of Canada’s residential school system.

“When it comes to arming the reasonable, that is where you come in at this summit, all of you. You are the reasonable. You guys have just had two days of meetings and seminars about nation-building, about listening, about being inclusive, about being a fairer, stronger country to all of the people that live here, no matter the colour of their skin. So this is my challenge to you: you have the tools, you are in a sense armed, how will you make a difference?”

In their emotional conversation afterwards, Ms. Talaga started off by asking her fellow panellists, both of Indigenous background, whether there was “room for us in contemporary politics.”

Ms. Fontaine noted that over the last 124 years in Manitoba, around 834 men have been elected to sit in the legislature, and just 60 women, only five of whom are not white. The first Indigenous women was elected in the province only as recently as 2015. She said it is “unequivocally” a “toxic, male space,” and while it can be difficult to sit and fight for space, “now is the time to do it, if there was ever a time.”

Ms. Wood noted that she’s a public servant, “yet I am a political body simply by being an Indigenous woman.” She said she’s often the first or only “queer Indigenous woman” in the room, and physically represents the change she is working to usher in, vis a vis implementation of the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. And while she said it is “unbearably uncomfortable so much” of the time, it’s not because she’s taking up space where she doesn’t belong, but because she shouldn’t be alone.

The three panellists spoke about being “exhausted,” but committed, to the important work of carrying the “baton,” that’s been “carried for so long we don’t even know who picked it up in the first place,” as Ms. Wood put it.

Ms. Fontaine urged the audience to educate themselves and call out racism or a lack of representation when they see it.

“If you want to practice reconciliation, that is one way to start: stand up, educate yourself, and take away some of the emotional labour we do 24/7,” said Ms. Fontaine.

When Ms. Talaga asked her fellow panellists for their advice on why people should vote in the next election and who was the best option, a couple of calls of “Jody” rang out from the audience—referring to now-former justice minister Jody Wilson-Raybould—and were met with wider applause.

In her response, Ms. Fontaine said she appreciated those who had yelled out “Jody,” said there’s no more “quintessential an example of the strength and dignity and courage of Indigenous women than what we saw last month in Jody Wilson-Raybould.” She noted that the 2019 federal election is an opportunity for Canada to make history by “electing the first person of colour prime minister in Jagmeet Singh.”