Wai kashkaw halti, peace ni ksiyil. Good day my friends and relatives. As mentioned, my name is Harvey McLeod, the El Mekum Chief for Upper Nickel Band Okanagan Nation.
I too will acknowledge the traditional territories that we're on. Tonight the energy has been Overwhelming. There's just so much happening. There's a lot of listening. There's a lot of understanding from the time I walked in the door here earlier this evening.
And I'm here tonight to talk a little bit about reconciliation in the circles that I go around. It comes out of a lot of lips. Reconciliation from the Prime Minister of Canada, from the Premier of British Columbia, from the federal ministers and the provincial ministers. Reconciliation.
And we ourselves even talk about that. And a lot of the times when they talk about it, I kind of wonder, where are you coming from? What are you talking about? Is it the same understanding that I have?
of what that means. And when the dialogue gets a little deeper, I come to the conclusion, no, we are not on the same level. Reconciliation, there is so much, and you heard it here tonight already. It starts here.
But it took me a long time to understand that. A long time. You see, back in 1966, in Kamloops, at the res school, it was in December, I made a contract with God.
I told God, you stay over there and I'll stay over here. You leave me alone and I'll leave you alone and we'll have a really happy life for the rest of my days. And it worked. God did stay over there and I did stay over here.
I never interacted with God. But my life changed. I lived in this.
A little world about this big. I had no relationship with my siblings, with my mom and my dad, and I lived just to look after this guy. And the other contract that this guy made in his early life is that I'm going to work hard and play hard, and I'm going to be dead by 40. What a contract to have. And it wasn't until a few, no, about a month ago, I remembered that contract. I got a mail, I got some mail from Canada Pension.
Oh, a couple, I think it was three envelopes. And I was, I opened up the envelope and it says you can apply for your Canada Pension. And I cried. I said, this is not supposed to happen.
I phoned up Helen, my partner, and I told her the mail that I got, and she says, congratulations! You made it! Be happy!
I told her, what's the matter with you? I told her, I'm crying. And she says, why are you crying? You should be congratulating yourself. And it went back into a reflection of a lot of things that occurred in my lifetime.
And it was the understanding of what true reconciliation is and where it has to start. There's a fella sitting up here in the crowd here tonight that I leaned on a lot to be here today, Tim Manuel. You see, you've got to find... People and places that you can have some trust to do your work. And you've got to find and be at a place in your life that will show you that there's more to life than the way you...
Set yourself up in, like me. And that didn't happen until August 19, 2001. It takes pointing a gun right here to say, and thank you, Kulanchuk, and thank you, Creator, for saying this is not going to happen today. I still have more work for you. and to put that away. So reconciliation started.
And reconciliation isn't easy. It's difficult, difficult, difficult, difficult. Two marriages, two divorces. Took my two children through that.
So we had to reconcile with my children. I don't know if you remember, there's a movie called We Are Children, and it was about the residential school experience. I watched that show with my two daughters, and we cried.
And when we finished, we talked about it. My daughter said to me, I finally understand what you mean now when you talk about residential school. I didn't know what it was about.
So I took them small circles of moving forward and the courage to have real deep discussions with my daughters and go apologize to Carol, my first wife, and to Helen, my second wife. for having to deal with this guy and all his hurt and pain and anger and shame. So when we talk reconciliation, it has to happen here.
And like I said, it wasn't easy. And now this is happening and occurring slowly in my family. In the community, I wanted to read to you the plan that we developed for our community a few years ago.
The core of this plan is simple. It's empowering our people. While we accept there is still healing to do, we have let our experiences post-contact and our dependence on colonial policies define us for too long. And we made two promises in that plan. For those in our community who have the strength, this is your time.
A time to help build our people for the strong and flourishing future that our vision demands. You are the future of our community. And are those we will work with to create a different focus and direction that our people, especially our children and our youth, demand and deserve. The second promise.
For our members, we need to reconnect with our culture and relearn our stories and teachings. We need to collectively understand how stories like the four food chiefs define us and what the lessons are for our past and where we're going into the future. You see, that's where our people are right now. So when we talk to Prime Minister Trudeau, Minister Bennett, Premier Clark, and we ask, what are you talking about when you talk about reconciliation? Is it more funding for us?
No. It has nothing to do with that. It has nothing really to do with you. But other than to give us the supports that we need right now to do our work.
That's why I mentioned... My brother that's sitting up there, he's carried our community a long ways. And his values and his teachings that he shares so willingly with the rest of us. So as we go forward, I know that my two grandchildren, Jack has four, Leah has two. They are going to have so much.
They're going to have so many opportunities. And I'm sharing this because that's the dream that my mom and dad had for me. You're going to have a better life than me.
And that's the dream that I had for my children. You're going to have a better life than me. And now that legacy has carried on. You see, when my first grandson was born, when Jack was born four years ago, my daughter...
Received her new baby in her arms and holding her baby for the first time. And the first words that came out of her mouth was, another generation away from residential school. The first words. I was... Trying to find some answers myself on what reconciliation means, and I found this.
I can't remember if it was on Twitter or it might have been even Facebook, but there was a definition and there was a message there that really resounded to me, and I'll end with that. Reconciliation takes all of us. When a closed door of knowledge gives way to a beam of new light, It takes a while to adjust, while some sound the alarm. Let the majority stand in a new light.
The carnage of the closed mind eclipses the discomfort of an opening one. We're opening our minds. And not only our minds, we're opening our hearts.
And we're opening our minds to that this is. better, there is more to us being here than what we've experienced in the past. So if we can start with reconciliation there, then everything else will fall into place. So with that, I thank you, thank you, thank you for listening to me. And White Limit.