 I'd love to warmly welcome all of you to embracing indigenous rights, bringing life to the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, hosted by Cairo's Prairie's North Region. We've been encouraging folks and would continue to encourage you to introduce yourselves in the chat. In the chat function, the button is at the bottom of your screen and allows you to type into the text box and share with the group. We'd love to hear from you about your name, what territory you're from, and what church or organization you may be affiliated with. I'm Amanda Dodge and I'm the program director with MCC Saskatchewan. I get to support MCC's work in reconciliation for restorative justice, refugee resettlement and more. And my background is in legal aid law and systemic justice advocacy. This is one technical housekeeping. This is a virtual event. We would ask everyone to please keep yourselves on mute throughout the presentations, although there will be a small group and large group discussions later on in the event where we're going to be able to share with one another. Now this event is being recorded. So if you would prefer not to be seen in the recording, you can turn off your video. And if you'd prefer your name not to appear, you can also change your name by pressing the three dots that if you have your mouse hovered over your face, the three dots will appear and you can change your name if you like. So let's move forward. I'd like to introduce Kathy Cameron, a fellow member of our planning committee, who's a retired registered nurse with longtime involvement in social justice in her parish and nursing union to share a treaty land acknowledgement with us. Kathy. Thanks, Amanda. We acknowledge that we are situated on Treaty for Territory, the original lands of the Cree, Soto, Dakota, Lakota and Nakota, and the homeland of the Métis Nation. Today, these lands continue to be the shared territory of many diverse peoples. So we'll do a brief overview of our session this evening and what you can expect. So this event has been planned by Saskatchewan based committee, and we are just delighted to be learning from Saskatchewan voices during these two sessions. Kairos's Prairies North Region has been active since Kairos was formed in 2001, and its activities have included events, newsletters, and there's been a recent focus on issues related to Indigenous justice. In Saskatchewan, the coordinating committee has waned in recent years and we are working towards rebuilding that committee. So if you're interested in joining us, we encourage you to be in touch with Shannon Neufeld at Kairos. This is the second of two sessions, our first one was on Sunday afternoon, at which point we heard from lawyer Sonia Eggerman on the legal status of UNDRIP in Canada, and BC's UNDRIP legislation. And we also heard from community activist Michelle Brass about the role of UNDRIP in Indigenous justice advocacy. So for today's session, Mark will start by giving us a recap of Sunday session. And then we'll be hearing from, and that's Mark Biglin Prichard, who I'll be introducing shortly, then we'll be hearing from our speaker, Mary Ann Morrison, who Myron will introduce. And she will be guiding us through highlighted sections of UNDRIP, reflecting on how the document can be brought alive to address both the current cultural deficits, based by Indigenous peoples, and the, to the effects of colonization and the lagging of human rights in our Canadian context. Mary Ann will speak for 15 minutes, after which we will have 10 minutes for question and answer. Then for the last 40 minutes of our time together, we'll be having discussion amongst us, all of us, about how to support the efforts we've heard about. We'll be exploring how we can take concrete action as individuals, and ideally collectively, to bring UNDRIP alive in our own communities. So we'll mention some possible action items, we'll break into small groups to discuss them for about 20 minutes, and then we'll return to the large group for discussion and planning, and we'll be closing our time together by 830. That's central standard time. So now I'll introduce Mark to give a recap of Sunday's session. Mark is my colleague at MCC Saskatchewan, he's our migration and resettlement coordinator, and he has a background in sustainable energy and is an active member of climate justice basket. Welcome, Mark. Thanks, Amanda. And welcome everybody. And I see people are still coming in. So welcome everybody. Yeah, Sunday we heard, as Amanda said from two speakers. So Sonja Eggerman, who's a lawyer, started us off. And to give us some sort of background on what's what's the legal status of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Some people don't like it being called UNDRIP. So I'm just going to call it the Declaration for short. It's a legal document. It's as a declaration, it is what is known as an annex to a general resolution, which means it's not binding on the signature states, but it can be used in Canadian courts in a couple of ways. It can be used to as an aid in interpreting the law, including constitutional law, including section 35 of the Constitution, which deals with Aboriginal and treaty rights. And it's also evidence of customary international law. So the expectation in Canadian law is that it should stand unless it is expressly overruled by domestic law. Now, of course, in these areas, there's lots of laws that have to be interpreted and how they get interpreted to some extent will depend on the judge. It's not binding in Canada, but there are times when it can be brought into play through litigation, but its greater power is political. And we've seen that in the responses of provincial governments, both those that want to reject it, but also in BC, the government brought in legislation to attempt to align BC law with the declaration. They worked with a number of organisations to produce legislation that provides a human rights framework consistent with provincial laws and accountability processes. But having said that, they're finding implementation more challenging. And one of the questions that we had on Sunday was about, well, you know, BC has got this thing in law, but they're still supporting the coastal gas link pipeline against the wishes of various First Nations along its path. They're still supporting site C against the wishes of the local First Nations. So how does it work? And those are things which I think are still to be resolved. And it's part of our work, I guess, to try to get them resolved in the right way. So moving on from what Sonya had to say, we have Michelle Brass, who's a, she's a SOTO, I guess First Nations advocate, First Nations activist leader, based actually at her husband's reserve, Pippa Caesis. And she talked about sort of, well, getting behind this legal stuff, what's it about? And she made really one essential point that, you know, there exists in First Nations practice what amounts to law, a recognition of natural law, of how do we actually live in a way that enables us to survive in this particular place. And so those laws are going to be different from place to place, depending on the climate and the soil and the ecosystem and all the things that you have to interact with in order to live naturally and to thrive. And I mean that does actually feed a bit into UNDRIP, Article 25 says, Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinctive spiritual relationship with a traditionally owned or otherwise occupied in used lands, territories, waters and coastal seas and other resources, although she doesn't like the word resources, because resources is something that you use. It's more of a source than a resource, I guess, and to uphold their responsibilities to future generations in this regard. And that's the other piece, the future generations is, it's not a matter of just thriving today, it's a matter of enabling thriving in the future. And of course there's a lesson for us in that, in, you know, how is the way that we live affecting the potential for other people to live in the future, or indeed in the present in other places. I think that's enough of a summary. Let's move on. And I think who's next. We'll come in Mark here and introduce our speaker for this evening, who is Mary Ann Morrison is a proud Métis woman with boots in the Red River. So her family was dispersed after the 1869 resistance and then moved to the Batash area, where her great grandfather was recognized as a Métis elder and military leader in the 1885 resistance. The post 1885 dispersal forced her Métis family to move further west again to Aldina area where both of her great grandfathers received script allowances side by side on the edge of Muskeg Lake. Mary Ann was born in Big River, Saskatchewan. She attended the University of Saskatchewan, where she received a bachelor's in education in 1979, as well as a bachelor's of arts with a major in history and an honors and indigenous studies. She is a mother of two children and has been blessed with two grandchildren. Mary Ann retired from teaching in 2014 from the Greater Saskatchewan Catholic School Board after 34 years. She has always been interested in history and often focused her studies on the oral tradition. Mary Ann followed the events of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, attending the storytelling event in Saskatoon, where she listened to the stories and witnessed apologies. While volunteering at the Saskatoon event, it was her job to help residential school survivors find pictures of themselves and their families in the photo archives of the residential schools held by the various denominations. It was there that she found a picture of her grandmother, who attended St. Michael's residential school, her brother-in-law, who attended the residential school in Beauval, and her sister-in-law, who attended Gordon's Reserve residential school. Mary Ann has been a member of the Roma Catholic Diocese of the Truth and Reconciliation for almost 10 years, serving as chair for several years during that time. Welcome, Mary Ann. Thank you for inviting me to share my thoughts and feelings and about bringing life to the United Nations Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous People. I acknowledge that the ideas I share with you today are not mine alone. What I will share comes from many sources, readings, committee work, sharing circles, elders, and experiences. I would want to acknowledge that we are meeting on Indigenous lands that have been inhabited by Indigenous people who have taken care of this land for thousands of years. And also to pay respect to First Nations and Métis ancestors of this place, their contributions in shaping and strengthening our country and to reaffirm our relationship with one another. I also want to thank the previous speakers, Mark, who gave a succinct background to the development of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous People. Sonia, who spoke informatively about the legal status of the Declaration, and Michelle, who eloquently shared Indigenous knowledge for understanding the natural world. I hope I will be able to follow in their footsteps and add my bird's eye view. And because I love stories, both the hearing and the telling, I'm going to start with a story. Then I'm going to summarize the articles of the Declaration that speak to cultural rights. And next I will show some example what has been accomplished. And lastly, I'll provide some possible ways where the Declaration can be used to forward reconciliation. So now I'm going to attempt to share my screen. Before I start the story. So here we are in the middle of the prairies. Imagine that you are by this solitary rock. I often wonder where it came from. You see the prairie all around it. And it weighs about 400 tons. This is the rock at Mestassini. And Mestassini is a Cree word for big rock. But it's also called Buffalo Child Rock. And it was a gathering place. A gathering place where seven distinct plains Cree groups came each spring. Each group having about 300 tepees. So when you think of that, them all together, 2,100 tepees spread around this rock. Every spring reconnecting as a nation. And because they came from seven different major groups, there was often seven sundances going on at the same time. One of the elders, Barry and Henneke, described the gathering. He said they all gathered there, all Crees in the spring. That was the gathering spot. There was six to seven miles of tepee when they all gathered at that valley. And on top of that valley on each side. They also included, at this gathering place, buffalo pounds, where they herded buffalo into the pound. Because to have a large gathering like that, you would need a food source for people to be able to get together and survive. It's a sacred rock. And Cree it was called Mestassini. Buffalo child stone. And the story of this rock or this sacred rock is that a long time ago, a child was lost on the prairies rescued, brought up by Buffalo. Spent his youth with the buffalo and he thought he was a buffalo. He didn't realize until he got bigger and saw his reflection in the camera, some quiet, still water, that he didn't look like the other buffalo. So he asked his father, Buffalo, why he was different and his father told him that he was actually a human being and that he had another family. And he would be free to go and look for them. His buffalo child went and looked for his family, found his family, reconnected with his family, but was very lonely for the buffalo. So he decided to leave his family and go rejoin the buffalo. His buffalo father told him that if he rolled four times, that he would become permanently, he would be a buffalo. But he should not roll four times again because he would not, he would turn into stone. Well, buffalo child rolled four times. And because he didn't want to leave the prairie in his buffalo home, he rolled four times again and became the stone. And this is a stone that sits, sat on the prairies for thousands of years, a place where the Cree all came together to celebrate, to perform ceremonies, to reconnect with relatives, to arrange marriages. Now the next slide is a picture of the stone in the wintertime in 1958. The Cree were still coming because this was a, this is a sacred place. It's still a sacred place. Unfortunately in 1966, this is a group of men trying to figure out first, they will try to move the stone. And of course it could 400 tons is a little hard to move. And then they decided to break it into six parts. So they put dynamite in six places in the stone. And they expected it just to break apart, but instead it blew up completely. And there's a picture of the blast. They thought if they broke it apart, they could put it back together. But the stone blew up. And it was blown up because they wanted to build the Diefenbaker dam. So the dam was built and the water flooded the area. And in 2014, a diver put together a team. And he decided he was going to go look for the stone, for what was left of the stone. And they dove down and in the slide you see a picture from that dive of one piece of the stone. The stone was Tyrone, the late Tyrone Titusus. His father had been part of the group that had come. And to save the rock from being destroyed. Which of course they were unsuccessful. So Stephen Thayer in 2014 in the summer, went down along with Tyrone Titusus. And he decided to find the remnants of the sacred stone. And Tyrone wrote, it was highly, highly revered by our people back then and still is. And what they found at the bottom was eight feet high of rubble 30 feet across. Now the stone is still there. And that creed people still regard this area as a sacred place. And they are making efforts to reconnect, reconnect with this place. And to set up like, like you want to skate one outside of Saskatoon, a place where indigenous people can gather. People can pray and indigenous people can reconnect with their culture, their nation and their land. Okay, so in the declaration on the rights of indigenous peoples, United Nations declaration on the rights of indigenous people, there are five themes or five groups of articles. They speak to self-determination, autonomy, the right to make decisions for yourself, for your family, for your community, for your nation. Second, they speak about the rights to life, integrity and security. Third, the right to culture, religious and linguistic integrity. Fourth, the right to education, public information and employment. And fifth, the right to participate in decision making. Free prior informed consent consent. And lastly, indigenous women's rights. Because one of the effects of colonization is that the role of indigenous people, the role of indigenous women in indigenous communities was destroyed. And when we look at this declaration, it is a way to support the rights of, again, asserting the importance of the role of indigenous people in their families and in the communities. And in the decision making process. So I want to, we could talk about all of the different declarations, but I want to specifically look at declarations 11, 12, 13, 14, 15 and 16. So the articles 11 and 12, the right to practice and revitalize cultural traditions and culture. That's number 11. 12, the right to practice or the right to manifest practice, develop and teach their spiritual and religious traditions, customs and ceremonies and the right to maintain, protect and have access and privacy to the religious and cultural sites. The right to use and control their ceremonial objects and the right to repatriation of their human rights. So the Buffalo stone, Buffalo child stone is a spiritual and a religious area where practices helped create people to reconnect, reconnect with each other, reconnect with the land, reconnect with their creator. In our calls of action, one of the things we looked at in the DCTR is call of action number 48. And we call upon the church parties to the settlement agreement and all other faith groups and interfaith social justice groups in Canada who have not already done so to formally adopt and comply with the principal's norms, standards of the United Nations declaration on the rights of the religious people as a framework for reconciliation. And I commend this group. I commend carers because they are out there, they're committed to action. This webinar or this conference, I'm not sure what to call it. It is proof. It's that the looking at and adopting and complying. Sorry, I was timing myself and I think I'm running over time. So that's a call of action. So article 1314, it deals with curriculum and education and the indigenous people's right to develop their curriculum and to teach their children about their, the culture, the ceremonies, the relationships with the land. And article 15, looks at public education systems and the teaching of all Canadians, an appropriate and knowledgeable account of Canadian history. And Michelle said it really clearly, the truth, not the colonial history from the colonizers point of view, but the Canadian history with the indigenous perspective and other people's perspective as well. So article 16 is the right to be, to have representation in the media and Aboriginal people's television network is an example of that. So part three examples of what has been accomplished. Well, again, I say this webinar. And the MCC letter writing campaign, the BC legislation, the private members bills, 262 in greater Catholic, Saskatoon Catholic schools. There is a St. Francis, which is a Cree immersion, St. Michael's, which is the Machiff school, Oskayak, which is an indigenous high school. In the diocese of Saskatoon has a group has developed a indigenous pastoral lay leader ministry education, which is an undergraduate level curriculum addressing ministry with indigenous peoples by Roman Catholic clergy and lay ministers in the Canadian context. It's eight courses that goes over two years and it just started this September. And I taught the first course, which was introduction to First Nations. The next course is the indigenous settler relationship and third effects of colonization for introduction to reconciliation. Now, how does it, these are all things that are related to those articles that I talked about in, when I spoke about the declaration. So what can we do to, to promote the implementation? Well, Aboriginal organizations can adopt the UN declaration and share all their policies and procedure uphold the standards. Non-Aboriginal and non-governmental organizations work with the Aboriginal organizations to lobby government and industry to use the UN declaration. And this, this direct, or this bullet speaks to, to working together, to moving forward with indigenous people and non-indigenous people working together. Lawyers litigating and negotiating on behalf of the Aboriginal people can argue for Canadian law to be interpreted in line with the UN declaration. And that's something that Sonya spoke about when she spoke on Sunday. And the courts, tribunals, human rights commissions can cite the UN declaration when making decisions relating to Aboriginal people and ensure Canadian law upholds the rights set out in the UN declaration. And teachers and professors can, and others can educate. And educators can include information about the UN declaration in their classes and help educate all Canadians on the UN declaration and its significance. So here we are at the end. And one of the things that I was asked to speak about is the lagging of human rights. And one of the, in all of the declarations, we have the three words, free from discrimination. And this is a really important thing because Canadians somehow have this image of themselves as being generous and giving people. And yet throughout history, they have learned this in racism that's embedded in all of the institutions. And it's a term that I've read about is disconscious racism. Is everyone will say, I am not a racist. Yet in their actions and their words, there is underlying racism that comes through. And as an Indigenous person, a Native person, I have experienced that. And I have also experienced people, a person who didn't realize that they were being racist and asked me, well, why are they telling me I'm racist? And then telling me what they had said. And I had to explain why it was racist. So this disconscious racism there. And until we acknowledge that disconscious racism that is embedded in all of us, because it's also embedded in me as an Indigenous person, because I have learned this through my schooling. When I went to school, the only thing in Canadian history that was written about Indigenous people was this one line. And it said, the greasy haired Indians sculpt across the plains. And that was 1972. And that has echoed all through my life. And even as Indigenous people, we have to fight that image and that racism that has been taught to us, that has made us feel like we were not good enough. So where do we go from here? Well, I have a medicine wheel. And in the east is a beginning. And the beginning of everything is identifying areas where advocacy and action are needed. And in the south is learning, seeking the knowledge about the issue. Finding out everything you can about what has been done in the past so that you have the background to go forward. Then you move to the west in your planning action. And you move again to the north and you're implementing action. And I can see the MCC's letter writing campaign as fitting into this medicine wheel. Identifying the need for the United Nations Declaration of Independence to become part of Canadian law. To be in there. Be a law that we can address. And finding out why. All the background. And then planning the action. The letter writing campaign is the plan for action. And of course the implementing the action is everything that we do with that letter writing campaign campaign. So I'm sorry that I ran over. And thank you for listening. Thank you very much again, Mary Ann, for reminding us of our story, and for giving us that we can be powerful agents of change within that story and coming out of our colonial reality and giving us a methodology of how to do that through the medicine wheel, which is quite beautiful. So we do have time for a question or two at this time. I'll ask you to put that in the chat function, which is on the bottom of your screen. So first come first serve, whoever would like to ask Mary Ann a question here. Just are there any examples, Mary Ann, of lobbying efforts in the prairies that we could be, be part of? I know that the native. NWAC, Native Women's Association of Canada. Has a number of. Of. Actions that are going on. At this moment, and you can address their. Their website. NWAC.ca. I don't know of a specific action. Of a group of people besides the MCC or the, who are doing a letter writing campaign to the federal government. I don't know of a parallel one that is happening within the province. But that would be a, another area where we could certainly. Pursue. I am. Pleased to. To. Share that. We do have a matey. Counselor on the city of Saskatoon. And I think that. That there have been partnerships that have been made. And there have been acknowledgments. I don't know of a specific. Governmental agency that has. Said that we are going to adopt the rights of indigenous people. I have been asked. By. Justice to do. A presentation on reconciliation. And within that to also bring forward the. The rights. The UN declaration. So at this point, we're going to, to move on with some small group discussions. So I will. Hand it over to Amanda or back to Amanda and Mark, but I do invite you to take a look at the chat. There's some very worthwhile comments in there and links and resources that people have. Put up as, as well as some. Thank you to Marianne for her wonderful presentation. I echo Myron's thanks for all of your ideas. You're doing Mark and my job for us, which we thank you because before we move into the small group discussions, we wanted to talk about some possible action items. That we could all be involved in as individuals and possibly as small groups of us. And ways to help. And do this good work together. So I'll start with. Reiteration of. What I shared on Sunday afternoon. About MCC Canada's campaign. Building on the excellent public engagement work. MCC and others have done urging the government to pass bill C 262. This was revived after the government liberals were released. And promised to put under in Canadian law. I've just put in the link to the campaign page with information about it. And you can see as part of an ecumenical coalition on putting under in to legislation. Advocating to do that. And there's a rep from the minister of justice who is part of the coalition who's provided some insider info. That consultations with relevant sectors and implementations conversations with relevant ministries have an R happening to prepare for under legislation to be put in place, which is very exciting. And then it's expected that the under legislation will be tabled by the government the second week of December. And hoped that royal ascent could be attained by early 2021. The idea being to have it finalized in advance of a possible spring election. So letter writing campaigns like this one that MCC is facilitating. And one of the, one of our participants noted in the chat that amnesty international also has a letter writing campaign, which is exciting. Could these letter writing campaigns could not be more relevant or timely. Because MPs need to know that this is a priority for Canadians. And so now is the time to make our voices heard. So we would encourage you to visit the site if you haven't already. There's to access the letter writing function. You just press send a message at the bottom and input your name and postal code. There's a draft letter there, but of course you can make any changes that you'd like. And then it can be automatically sent to the, or it is automatically sent to the minister of justice, a range of relevant ministers and your MP. And Marcus got some other ideas. Yeah. So I mean, the more letters that they received, obviously the more seriously they're going to take it. So let's shift it up. They're a priority list. So that's, that's one sort of general thing that we can do. There will, I'm sure in everybody's locality or close to everybody's locality, the specific things that you could be doing. Obviously building relationships with your local First Nations, whoever they are. So that's one sort of general thing that we can do. There will, I'm sure in everybody's locality or close to everybody's First Nations, whoever they are. And, you know, we represent quite a large geographic area. I mean, I saw somebody in the chat has moved from BC to, to PEI. So I think we cover the whole country, but even within the prairies, there's a lot of difference from one place to another. So look out to find out, you know, what the issues are with the local band or with the local urban community of First Nations people, or with the people who like Michelle and like others are, are pursuing more of an advocacy role in a, in a larger way. I'm going to say one thing in connection with that, that comes in part from my experience a few years ago, working with some folks in the north of Saskatchewan, who were resisting attempts by the nuclear waste management organization to, to consider their, their locality as a place for a nuclear dump, for a nuclear repository. And I mean, there were three locations in Saskatchewan that were sort of on the shortlist that the NWMO had. It was Pine House, English River and Creighton. Pine House is a largely Métis community. It's probably about 90% Métis. And that was the one I sort of saw most of. It started with a group from NWMO coming in and talking and under false pretenses to an elders meeting. A lot of the elders left when they heard that this was what, what they were really there for. They subsequently worked with a few people in the community who were in positions of power in order to progress their agenda while ignoring everybody else. They attempted to, to push, you know, a particular agenda on the whole community. And it was only through the group, the work of a group of local people backed up by some of us from further south, from Saskatoon in my case, that made it really impossible for them to, to proceed with that particular site. The same sort of thing happened with English River. In Creighton it was a little bit different, but even there, they NWMO say in their document that they will consult fully with local First Nations and involve them in the process of thinking about it. One of the First Nations whose territory that is had said, no way, not at all. Not, you know, they'd come up with council resolutions against it. But NWMO continued to discuss with other First Nations people to try to get it in there. So watch out for that is what I'm saying, but watch out for it in our own practice. You know, are we just dealing with a few people that we get on with or are we trying to reach a whole community? And that to me fits with the reality that this is the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, not of Indigenous individuals, not of Indigenous leaders, but of Indigenous peoples. Think of it as whole community that we're working with in progressing this agenda because this is a document that's very much about going back to the traditional ways of organising themselves that First Nations had before the Indian Act and the other legislation that we enforced on them. So that's a couple of thoughts. I think with that we probably need to progress to... We'll move now into the small groups. You will all be placed into small groups automatically. A prompt will come up on the screen asking you to join, and so you just press the button join. You'll be in small groups of about four people, and you'll be answering two questions. I'm going to say them verbally now, but Shannon's going to put them in the chat, and the questions will stay in your chat box even once you're in the small groups. So the first question, we'd like everyone in your small group to say their name and at the same time answer the question, what keeps us slash me as everyday citizens from acting like we live under the declaration? What keeps us from that? And then the second question is, after everyone's had an opportunity to speak, to discuss as a group, how could we as individuals or a network work toward bringing the declaration alive in our provinces, in our churches, and in our communities? We've got about 17 minutes for this conversation. We will all come back together at about 8.15. We're back. All right. So Mark and I are going to facilitate our larger group discussion now. Mark, where are you? I'm here. Oh, good. Do you want to start? I can see me. I can see. Do you want to start? Sure. Yeah. I mean, we asked you two questions and the answers that you will have come to for some of those will, not all of them will have been action items, but could you just put the action items in the chat and then we can proceed from there and see sort of, you know, if somebody has an action item that somebody else can link on with, then let's get together. I see Adrienne from my group has already put hers in. Maybe we should give people a little while to add their actions. In terms of first question, we basically said it was lack of information, ignorance, not necessarily willful ignorance, inertia, apathy. And lots of priorities. Many of us in our churches are, have other priorities too or have many priorities. So that's it briefly. We talked a little bit about how to get better educated and more information. So that was number one. And then a number two, we simply said, affirm the letter writing and get it to our networks and work on relationships, build relationships with the indigenous. Great. Okay. So in the chat, which carries similar themes, education and relationships, I think both of those are absolutely foundational. Is that something where it's useful to network more broadly or is that something you're happy to do in your own groups? Anybody? Yeah. I mean, there's a lot in the chat and that mirrors what James was saying about the need to educate ourselves and the need to build relationships across the settler indigenous barrier. Yes, probably. So those two things that are they things that people feel a need to network more broadly with or are you happy to sort those things out within your own local groups or church groups or whatever they are. Can I rephrase it? Certainly. Who would look for a new partner of people that you don't already know to get better educated or to work together on building relationships if there are people who would be interested in kind of working together. Can you put a star, an asterisk in the chat? Diane Gilchrist. Judy Corkery. Okay. Well, there's an enormous amount in the chat there and some great suggestions for books as well. So I think there's a lot of potential for connecting up with each other and learning from each other there. Let's move on to a different theme. There's just so much here it's difficult to follow it. So Amanda, please. I can highlight one mark, yeah. Around political advocacy, Lois from Northwest Territory shared with Group 7 that that territorial government has promised to put UNDRIP into legislation. And there's an opportunity for this group to be supporting those efforts. Lois, I don't want to put you on the spot, but maybe if you wanted to expound on that and how we could be supporting those efforts. Yeah. So the legislative assembly of the Northwest Territories was elected, this group was elected last fall. They have committed, they've got 22 priorities. And one of those priorities is to put the UN declaration into territorial law. So as I was saying in the group that I was in, I'm involved with Amnesty International and with the Council of Canadians. And we spent a couple of years advocating. And we got 1,000 of those great little booklets that Amnesty produced. And we've been flooding the politicians and trying to educate people about what this declaration is all about. But I think it's really important that there are voices from outside the territory advocating to this territory to be the second jurisdiction in this country to implement the declaration. This is a territory where we have slightly more than half of the population are Indigenous people. It is the ideal territory for this declaration to come into law. And as I was saying, we don't want it to mimic the BC legislation because you know what a farce that is. If you look at the Soetun example, just look at everything that's going on. It's made a mockery of the UN declaration. So all your voices encouraging the adoption of the declaration in this jurisdiction in a way that honors the Indigenous rights of people in this jurisdiction would be so greatly appreciated. And who should we write to, Lois? Was that the Premier? Yes. The Premier of the government of the Northwest Territories is Carolyn Cochran, a very strong Métis woman who is deeply committed to making sure that the declaration comes into law. Wonderful. Thank you. We've got a couple of minutes left before we need to move to closing. Other action items or another theme like Mark was saying, we could be exploring. One of the things that I see is sort of moving on from just writing a letter to actually lobbying your MP, actually going and seeing your MP. Best done in groups, I think. Best done at least two of you, because there'll usually be two of them. They usually have somebody to take notes and make sure they're staying online with the party line. So I saw one message to that effect. I don't remember who it was now, but maybe if you put your hand up, if that's something that you're interested in connecting with people on. And of course, not just MPs, but MLAs as well. Oh, I saw another hand. I see Teagan. Teagan. Okay. Who else have we missed? Valerie, did you have your hand up? Yeah, Valerie had her hand up. Okay. And Sandra. Sandra Blenkin-Somp. Okay, so we'll figure out how to... Well, Shannon's got all your contact details, so she'll put you in touch with each other. And maybe you'll come up with something that you can tell the rest of us on how to do it. Mark, I do have everyone's email, but I didn't have that latest list of people. So maybe... I think Amanda was taking it down, right? Yes, yes. Great. Well, we're at 828, which means we're right on schedule. It's been such an impactful evening, an inspiring one. And now we'd like to invite a fellow member of our planning committee, Dan Beverage, to close our evening together. Dan is a convener of... The convener of the Kairos Regina group and has a long time association with Kairos. He's a retired university educator. Over to you, Dan. Hi, everyone. On behalf of the Kairos and Prairies North Planning Committee for this event, I'm pleased to give thanks today. First of all, thank you to Elder Diane Anderson for her prayers. And our speaker today, Mary Ann Morrison, for sharing her wisdom, perspective and knowledge to help us gain a better understanding of this topic and to lead us more fully into action. And secondly, thanks to all of you who are participating in this event via Zoom and making it worthwhile. And of course, we're grateful for the electronic technology which makes your participation from across Canada possible. I must say I've been involved in Kairos or its predecessors from the beginning. In 1974, there are boats and I never did meet anybody from Bay Como, Quebec or parts east until now, although I did meet people from Alberta. I also express gratitude at a time when in some places public discussion of human rights might be uncomfortable, maybe forbidden and dangerous, and yet we were able to discuss these things and share them freely. And for those of you who are Joanna Macy fans, you will recall that she places thanksgiving or gratitude as the foundation for her first step in the spiral leading to action. Finally, I acknowledge all those who have worked over the decades to bring this declaration to its present state as Mark has referred to, human rights gained through struggle. So, we wish you all the best as we say goodbye. Stay well and good night.