 Now, I would like to begin by turning it over to Barbara Lloyd who is on the phone and she is going to help us start in a good way with an opening prayer. Barbara. Okay, thank you. Let us find a time of quiet and stillness and open ourselves to prayer. Gracious Creator, gather us in from our busy lives. Calm our hearts and open our minds to new perspectives and new challenges. Help us to gather strength for climbing in this gathering today. Thank you for living out the journey of reconciliation as we seek to co-create a new kingdom of peace and justice in our day. In the name of Christ, amen. Amen. Thank you, Barbara. And now we wanted to give you a chance to hear a bit of a story from the field. And so I have invited Pamela Thompson to tell us a little bit about the campaign work that she has been doing that comes out of a long history of Indigenous solidarity that she has been engaged with. To note for anyone who wasn't on the last update in December or who hasn't had a chance to read through all of the materials, most of you will know that we are working at this point, education for reconciliation to work towards the fulfillment of TRC Call to Action number 62.1 that calls for the story of residential schools, treaties, and the historical and contemporary contributions of Aboriginal peoples to be a mandatory component of kindergarten to grade 12 education. With that campaign, we have developed a number of different tools that we are asking for people to engage in. The tools will include visits to your provincial members of parliament, a mass blanket exercise in the spring, the statement that we will talk about later, an online petition, but the very first part of our advocacy work is with a paper petition that will go to each of the provincial and territorial governments. And so that is our starting point and that is one of the pieces that I have asked Pamela to talk about. Pamela comes to us as a connection through Church of the Redeemer Anglican in Toronto. Church of the Redeemer has been part of a group of Anglican and United Churches, mostly on the Bloor Street corridor in the core of the city, who have been working together on Indigenous solidarity for a couple of years now and I'll let her fill us in a little bit more about some of those involvements, particularly where she has seen to take the campaign. And so at this point, I want you to join me in welcoming Pamela Thompson and let's give our attention to her. Thank you, Pamela. Good afternoon. Thank you, Sharon, Shannon. Just as a little background, we've been working on the issue of indigenizing education in the pre-college levels for some time, and we have met with the Minister of Aboriginal Affairs and we did meet recently with some policy people in Premier Wynn's office. Through her, we are setting up a meeting with two people in the Ministry of Education. So we're not meeting with our MPs at this point, but we're trying to get right into the Minister's offices. With respect to the petition, the first thing I did was being someone who likes things speedy and efficient was I made the print a little smaller in the petition and moved the lines a little closer so I got 10 more lines on the page and I put the address that they have to be sent to on the back. I don't have the link for Kairos, but I realized recently that if I don't have a backgrounder with me, we need to have the link there as well so that people can go in and print out the backgrounder once they have the petition. And then I put in great big letters, leave this side blank also on the reverse. The first printing I did, I did both sides, of course, and then we learned that that wasn't the way to go. I have that petition at the back of the church along with a pile of backgrounders. I finished one side of one petition. That's it at the moment and I'm not sure how many backgrounders or blank petitions have gone. There's a big sign that says that we're aiming for a thousand signatures in our church. And we now have, as of this week, an announcement in our weekly bulletin with the appropriate links and encouraging people to pick them up on their way out. Further to that, in February, I hope to have people from our group stand at the back and offer them to folks as they leave. In February, we'll put some petitions and backgrounders into dedicated envelopes and put them in the Sunday bulletins for all our four services. How it's going to get taken up is hard to say because I'm not really counting how many petitions get taken or how many backgrounders get taken. And if people, if I see a lot in the blue bin on the way out of the church on the Sunday that we put them in, then that will give me pause to think about it. For those of you who don't know, our group puts out a weekly Indigenous news digest called WIND. At the end of the week with links and headlines from across the country as well as posters and notices of events. If anyone wants that, maybe at some point I can type in the link to our website, although it's not on the website because it's too much for the website. But I'm happy to add anyone who wants to have the digest come. I wrote a brief article about the petition and the campaign for our quarterly newsletter. And I've sent a copy of that to Katie and Shannon and anyone who wants to use it and put their name on it. I don't care. Played your eyes and feel free. I played your eyes from Kairos material, so please feel free to use it to put in anywhere that you feel it's appropriate. Lastly, Redeemer has a website with a page dedicated to Aboriginal issues. And on that we have the Kairos video and the link to the petition and the backgrounder. And I can put that up. I guess I can type that in as well. So we're trying to get some conversation going. We just lost our priest and said goodbye to him last Sunday, so we're all in a bit of a grieving period. And I'm hoping that this kind of, that we might generate some energy in the parish and get their minds off the sad state of being priestless for a while by getting people involved in this. One of the other things that I thought about recently was taking, the way we do when we have an event, we take posters and put them many places along from the lake shore to Lawrence. And I think maybe we'll do that in some of the churches where we know there are not Kairos members. So that's what we're doing. And I'd love to, if anyone else has ideas of how to turn this on, I'm sure we'll have time to mention that. I have to leave in about a half an hour. And that's what I have to say. Thank you, Shannon. Thank you, Pamela. It's great to hear from someone who's here in a congregation doing the work, showing the way a thousand signatures from one congregation would be great. We would love to have that from every congregation. We did hear again this week how the paper signatures really carry a lot of weight, more weight than an electronic signature. And we are so glad for your help in collecting those and your inspiration to everyone else who's collecting those. It's Dawn here. Pamela, I thank you very much for the leadership you've shown. Some of us in the hinterland just have not yet really engaged the way we should have. And what you've told us about is both an inspiration to see what can be done, but also points out some really good ways that we can get directly involved instead of sitting around listening to what others are doing. Thank you. Welcome. I'm trying to make people put it in their purse and carry it wherever they go, and every time they pull out their wallet, they pull out the petition. That sounds good. Delightfully subversive. Hey, thanks, Shannon. For those of you that I haven't met, my name's Katie Quinn. I work with Cairo's on the Indigenous Rights Program. I'm here in Ottawa on Unceded All Gone from Territory. And I have the great honor and privilege of introducing our special guest, just even Cathy. So, he's somebody who comes with a lifetime of experience and knowledge and wisdom around this issue. He's the President and CEO of Canadian Zippers Partnership, which is an exciting new organization building bridges between Indigenous and non-Indigenous peoples in Canada. He's the 9th Premier of the Northern Territory. He's former President of the Denio Nation. And he's also a residential school survivor and a longtime advocate for reconciliation through education. So, thank you so much for joining us, Mr. Hackley, and I'll turn it over to you. Okay. Well, thank you. Pamela, it's good to hear of all the good work and thinking you're putting into this issue. And I thank those of you that are out there doing the work we need to get done so that we see some substance to the call for changes that are being made all across this country. And the single priority that we have now that there's so many movements and initiatives and groups, individuals working across this country is coordination. Coordination because there are many of us trying to do many things and we need to conserve our resources and be focused. Coordination because there are people who should take the initiative, who should oversee the initiatives, who need feedback and involvement with the various initiatives we have. And we need coordination so that the coordination itself becomes our reconciliation. We get to know one another. And I'm not sure that we all do. I know, for instance, I know a great many more people in the last four years than I have previously. I know organizations never knew existed. And that's all part of reconciliation. We're engaging in a process to get beyond names and titles and stereotypes and deal with each other in a way that humanizes us. We have names. We have families. We have histories. And it's the relationship we start to develop that helps us become stronger communities, a stronger country. So Canadians for New Partnership was founded by myself in partnership with the likes of Ovid-Mercury, Phil Fontaine, Mary Simon from Gainuit, Tony Bulkhardt from M.A.T., a group of young leaders from the Northwest Territories, as well as people like Wabkinu from Manitoba, Paul Martin, former Prime Minister, Joe Clark, former Prime Minister, and Mikhail Jean. There are many of us who have served this country and our people for many years. And we came together because it was a challenge. We were so diverse. We were very busy people. But we also said we have to create hope. And this was in the time of the last government when chief tree suspense was fastening on a protest for the absolute lack of respect and attention the government was giving to the really chronic housing conditions on the reserve. When we were watching our national indigenous leaders fighting on national TV, it created a real concern amongst many of our people, including my children. They were losing hope in the leaders and the institutions in the country. And my children asked me to do something. And so I called Paul Martin, Joe Clark, and Phil Fontaine over at Mercury. And we said, you know, we should come together. Let's see what we could do together. We are diverse people, but so is this country. And we're calling on the country to come together. We can call on each other to come together and overcome our diversity and differences to do a few good things for this country. And we offered ourselves as leaders, as the ones with the high profile and credentials to try to take a lead to try to call for coordination of efforts to draw attention to the call for reconciliation, for call for attention to the work of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. So that's where I come from. I'm a residential school survivor. I was in residential school for seven and a half years. And I've overcome many of the incredible negative impacts and traumas through my lifetime. And so at every opportunity now I speak about it because I challenge everybody else to do the same. So whenever I'm called and asked to do that, whether it's talking to teachers for in-service orientation programs, I do that. It's a challenge that I think many of us who are residential school survivors have to do because there's nobody else. And we are the survivors. We're the ones that can share that nobody else can, but that impact actually was like. And what we want this country to know, what we want people to know and how to give scope to that part of our history that very few people ever knew about, and where do we go from here? That we are working on forgiveness, but it also has to change. The country has an obligation to change. And one of the things that we've been absolutely focused on as well from very early on is that recognition that we have to change the curriculum in all the schools across this country. So that every child, every Canadian gets to know who the original people of this country were. Who are the Cree? Who are the Lakota? Who are the Nakota? Who are the Nishka and the Dene and the Inyo? And where do we live and what is our history? And that we have names. We no longer have numbers. We have names. And that we think that is the single most important recommendation to be made that has been made by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Because what that will do is Canadians can no longer say we didn't know. Canadians will no longer be able to say we don't know you. Canadians will no longer be able to say I have no idea what a Cree is or an Ojibwe or a Dene. Every child that goes through this curriculum, these schools that graduate in the generations to come, every one of them will know more than the total sum of what their mothers and fathers, aunts and uncles, grandmothers and fathers, and all of them combined, ever knew about the first people of this country. So it is going to be an incredible game changer. And so I think Hirose is right to focus on that as well. Canadians for New Partnership got a letter from the three commissioners from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, asking us to take the lead in ensuring that work is done, which means to meet with every government across this country, every premier, every minister, and to coordinate the work so that we know the curriculum is brought forward, it is developed, it's done right, that is, under the direct involvement of the first peoples of this country, so that teachers get proper in-service training and orientation, and the curriculum material is developed jointly with the first people of this country. We've already done that work in the Northwest Territories, it is now completed in the Yukon, and we've partnered with the Northwest Territories, we developed that, we implement that already, and the government of Alberta, as you know, announced that commitment two and a half years ago when the Truth and Reconciliation Commission had its national event in Alberta. We met with the Premier of Ontario, a year and a half ago, who was very interested in doing the work, as she said at that time, to make sure that it happened, that screen just went blank. Okay, so I can see myself. We met with the Premier of Manitoba as well, and we will be this coming year, in the next few months, now that the federal election is over, and we can all get back to some work. There is an incredible promise of hope, stated by the new Prime Minister, by the Minister of Indigenous Affairs. The amount of change that is happening across this country is happening fast, it's huge, and it's substantial. Universities are on the move, they are making it mandatory for their graduates, like the University of Manitoba, University of Winnipeg, that their graduates all have to take a course in Native Studies. So there's real momentum, and we have to make sure we get beyond the words, and we've got the words now from the Prime Minister, from this government, and we're getting the words from like Alberta and other provinces across this country. But we have to make sure it turns into substance, and that's the work. And as I said, we need to share our resources and make sure that we're all sharing the work, doing what each of us are best at. There's groups like the Legacy of Hope, the National Research Council that was set up by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, that are all interested and already engaged in this work as well. So, Hieros, ourselves, Reconciliation Canada, Legacy of Hope, the National Research Council, amongst others, with the Survivors Committee that set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, with the Assembly of First Nations Leadership, the Inuit Organization, ITK, and Métis National Organizations of Research too, all have to be part of this coordinating unit. So we all bless and share the work, coordinate so that it gets done and we're not tripping over each other, multiple letters being sent to the same people asking them to meet about the same thing. So those are the comments I have. I know how little hope there was in this country. It was a mere three years ago, and how much hope has been created just in the last six months. And we have an obligation to make sure that something of substance happens. It is there, the promise, the doors are open, and we just need to make sure we do our work, we do it together, and we share, and we network. That's our obligation. We're asking Canadians to get to know each other. We have to put some effort into getting to know one another as well. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's so great to have you with us because there's been so much work that's been done in your own territory and is a model for other places across the country. It's Dawn here, and I do have a comment, perhaps, rather than a question. My son is a teacher in a small town in Alberta, and much of the surroundings where the students come from are agricultural. And it turns out that there is a very negative sense of what the Indigenous community has always been about within the parents. And I'm wondering how effective it is if we work only with the students and give them education, but find it countered by the adults with whom they have regular relationships. Well, thank you. That is a really good question. We heard a couple of years ago that the estimate was that 60% of Canadians have never met or had a conversation with an Indigenous person. And that the vast majority of Canadians have no familiarity, no knowledge of the impact of residential schools on Indigenous people. The likes of Paul Martin, Joe Clark, I was asked, we did not know. Why did we not know? And I also know that even in places like Yellenife where we have workshops and in-service training for government employees and teachers, that some of them take the view, well, why do I have to know about it? What's that got to do with me? And there will be also people who have very, very negative images of Indigenous people. And probably because they have very little interaction and also because what they see is when they drive downtown is all the street people, the Indigenous people who are the victims of intergenerational impact of residential schools. They don't see the John Kimbells and the Steve Kaepferies and the Phil Fontaines and all the thousands of professionals that are of Indigenous ancestry. They have a very negative image. And so we have to find some way to focus whether it's through our churches or through our community organizations to call everybody to deal with the issue of improving relations with Indigenous people. We have the mayors of Vancouver, I think Calgary, with Tuscany of all places, just outside of Edmonton, including the city of Edmonton, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, all committed to reconciliation, to improving the relations between Indigenous people and the rest of Canada and to find a way in those cities and municipalities to work to make things better. And I know in Edmonton the mayor has started orientation sessions of some manner for all the employees of the city of Edmonton. And we started where we can, we started where we're called. There are organizations like Reconciliation Canada, Canadians for a new partnership that need to go in, and there are church members who I know are indifferent. You know, we have an amazing six and a half years of hearings across this country about something very spiritual, something very grievous, dark, ugly chapter in our history. And I know, I think even as good Christians sometimes we're not, we don't recognize where we are called. You know, it's not a threat to us, it's not of relevance to us, and we become indifferent. And I think it's unfortunate, but we started with one person where we can. We started with two, we started with three, and I really recognize, I mean, that's where the need is. And it's amazing, you know, what a sharing circle can do. It's amazing what bringing keynote speakers to the churches can do. I don't know about the rest of you, but I've been to church more times in my life than I like to think. It was mandatory in all the years I was in residential school, and I've heard all the sermons. I've come to memorize many, many chapters in the Bible. And, but, you know, we need to invite each other in. And, you know, the Lutherans and the United Church people and the Pentecostals have to bring other people in. And if it means inviting indigenous people into your churches to give you a talk, as they say, give us back our talk, then that's a way to do it. You know, petitions are great. I hope you pull it off. But we need more than signatures. We need people to open their minds and to say, you know what, actually, I don't know anybody. That's indigenous. I'd like to. Maybe people are free to ask, so their ministers need to do that. Go ahead. I do feel that the answers that you've given are appropriate, and many of us do know that. If we are to try and to make an impact fairly quickly across the country, I think we probably need to find ways to deal with some of the adult organizations, as you've suggested, at the same time as we're pressing for education formally to happen within the school systems. So maybe some of us that are part of Kairos and of church organizations or whatever might look at some of the business organizations that we may also be affiliated with and talk to the adults there, whether it's a union or a professional society or whether it's an agricultural community and some of their organizations. We probably need to have some emphasis on the parallel work with adults, as we do, try to modify the opinions of those who will be the adults of our near future, so that we don't take quite so many generations to get everybody on board. But thank you for your comments. Just to add, if you have a specific community in Alberta where you think somebody like myself could, if I had the time, would be able to address such a community, I would be interested because it doesn't matter whether it's 20 people or 300, if there's a call and I can do it, somebody else can do it, then we will try to honor that. I should tell you, we want to focus on the lawyers, the doctors, the medical workers, the nurses. We've already talked to the Aboriginal Nurses Association of Canada. We've talked to the Indigenous Bar Association. We want to focus on the professions all across this country. So, yes, we need to sort of bring focus to, as you call it, the adult institutions across this country in, again, coordination is going to be key, as well as the thousands of Syrians and other immigrants that we're welcoming and inviting into this country annually. That's a worthwhile challenge. We will try to set up some stuff that will respond to those kind of opportunities. And, of course, Joe Clark lives about not more than 100 kilometres south of Calgary, for instance. And certainly seems to be showing a real commitment to this work. And he's a good speaker when you want to listen. But I'm sure that the coordination is the other aspect that's important, and so we don't want to go off doing something on our own. As our plans may develop, we'll stay in touch and see what sort of advice you may be able to contribute to the attempts that we're making to reach some of these groups. Thank you. Thank you. So another question that came in on the chat was Esther, you said that the CQ was the most important, and she was wondering if you could elaborate on why the call to action for the CQ is the most important. The call to action that is most important, I think, is because ignorance is the base of racism, is the base of indifference and apathy. Ignorance of the people, of individuals, dehumanizes. You dehumanize the person that you do not recognize, you never speak to, you have no idea what their names are. And we've been the subject of that for a long time. And we know, for instance, in the Northwest Territories, that we had elected people in the past. I know of one MLA, for instance, who was elected, who had never been outside the city boundaries of Yellowknife. There's over 30 communities. There's Inuit, Inuvialuit, Métis, Satu, Gwichen, Akecho, Plesho, people, all different people living in a very diverse community in the Northwest Territories. And this MLA was actually elected, having never been outside the city of Yellowknife to vote on laws and money for all communities of which he had absolutely no idea. And it is to avoid that that we started this work many years ago to change the curriculum. And the outcry was from actually the city of Yellowknife, the parents saying, we don't want our kids to know about you people. We don't need them to know about who lives in the Arctic Coast. We don't care who lives along the Richardson Mountains. Our kids are going to school in the South and they're going to be lawyers and engineers and teachers. But we said that's fine, but they're not going to graduate. They're not going to have a certificate, unless they take a course, that they can go to school in the South and say, yes, I know who the Inuvialuit are. I know who the Akecho and the Decho people are. And in spite of the outcry, we held our ground, and so it was mandatory. And who would come back two years later and be proud of the fact that they came from the Northwest Territories were those very same kids that came out of Yellowknife. Going to school in Dalhousie, going to school in Calgary, going to school in Vancouver, and Victoria who said, we were really proud and able to say, we know who the Inuvialuit are, we know who the Gwichin and the Decho are, and we know where the Great Bear Lake is. And they were proud to say, we know. This is from the Northwest Territories, and we know our peoples. The pride and the ability to say we know was incredible. And now it's a non-issue. Everybody takes pride in that the parents, there might be still as ignorant as there were 10 years ago when we implemented it, but definitely their kids are not. Even as we speak, I mean, every day the children that are going to school in Yellowknife and in Fort Good Hope and all the communities across the Northwest Territories, they know more than even some of us indigenous people know about each other. And so it is proven to make a stronger place, a stronger community. And what's happened in the North is happening in the Yukon, it's happening in Unibut, and it will happen across Canada. Getting to know each other, getting to know our strengths, our differences, the cultural values we carry, our attitude towards each other as neighbors, towards our resources, the development of those resources, the economy, education institutions are all things that are fundamental importance to us. And we think we will convince people that getting to know one another, we will see less controversy, roadblocks, fights, protests than we have in the past. There will be less incarceration, there will be less taxing of governments for all the havoc that has been creating in the last 150 years through residential schools. If I could add one more thing, the thing that we've got to focus on and we've been meeting with some of the national leaders already is the call to action to set up a national council that would oversee the implementation of the 94 calls to action. The prime minister is already committed to implement all 94 recommendations, which means to me that he's saying he will look at the setting up of a national council to implement the 94 recommendations to oversee the implementation of those. And we met with the National Inuit Leadership yesterday. We've talked to the Assembly of First Nations leaders for the last few months about it. We've met with the Métis, one of the Métis leaderships about it. So we are calling for people to coordinate an effort to get the prime minister to commit specifically to setting up the national council as soon as possible and to make sure that everything we do, whether it's in BC or Manitoba or Halifax, that we coordinate, we make sure that the national organizations are aware on-site that the survivors' committee which set up the Truth and Reconciliation Commission are on-site, partners like Kairos, Reconciliation Canada, Canadians for a new partnership amongst others, our university partners, everyone is part of a network in that we do things respectfully. So people are not left out and given the respect they deserve for the offices they hold. And right now it's the National Survivors Committee that I think will fulfill that role on a spiritual level as well as the national organizations. It's Barbara Lloyd here. Not so much a question, but thanks, Steven, for all of your work and for your conversation today. But just thinking, you know, reading an article today in the CBC about a quarter of the population of federal prisoners are Aboriginal. And our own people who are, you know, not in the school system, I mean their children and grandchildren, as Dawn says, will benefit. But there's something about learning and knowing Aboriginal people, Indigenous people that will help us to bring you relationships. But there's some, I think, lingering feelings sometimes out of our lack of being able or willing to look at how we as white Canadians have been part of colonialism and that colonialism continues to exist within the structures and systems, which will be, you know, slowly through living out the recommendations of the TRC, we're hoping to change all that. But I think it's, you know, some of the old stereotypes are still in people's minds. And so as well as learning about who Aboriginal people and Indigenous people are, I think it's also learning to understand what residential schools have actually done. And this is like post-traumatic stress syndrome and it's not something that goes away quickly. And therefore it has had, you know, generational effects. And, you know, we've been a part of creating the institutions that created. So there's a place of laments that we need to be part of as white Canadians, I think, in all this, especially as our churches. So just a comment that along with a very good and practical petition, we need to do some spiritual reflection and our own work, perhaps, even before we bring Aboriginal speakers in too. So there's a question here in the chat. Robert is asking, is anyone working on overhauling the answers for the welfare system in particular as a demoralized and young adult? And you should have, like, real economic development. I don't know that there's any hard and fast answers. I mean, some of the communities we have back up in the Northwest Territories and Nunavut, as well as many reserves in the South. I mean, the reason that governments set up the reserves in those places was not because they were loaded with oil and diamonds and gold. It was because for the most part they knew damn well there was nothing there. And now those communities have been isolated for generations and we're expecting them to come out of there and become economically viable. And we charge them for being a big drain on the federal coffers. It is a changing dynamic, though, because if you go to Edmonton and Calgary, you go to Saskatoon and Winnipeg, you will see a new dynamic there as I've been watching in the city of Yelma where young people, like my children, are connecting with the children from all the different regions. So what you see in the city of Yelma, for instance, is a group called Denenaho. And they are not from one tribe, they're inter-tribal. They are Cree, they are Gwichan, Akecho, Satu, Meti, and they're saying, by circumstance, we are our community. We are not of the same tribe, we are inter-tribal, but this is our community. And together, we're pledging to work together to regain our pride, regain our culture, get to know one another's history, and work together. And we're starting to see that in Winnipeg, we're starting to see that in Saskatoon, where 20 years ago, even as far back as 20 years ago, you couldn't get Meti talking to Ojibwe. And Ojibwe weren't talking to Lakota, or Cree, or Denen. They're setting those things aside, that's not relevant for them anymore. The movement is not what's going on in reserves only, it is also off-reserve in the cities. And the overwhelming majority of our people are now in those places. And I don't think anybody has a quick answer as to what to do on the reserves. Most of us in the Northwest Territories don't have reserves, but we have communities like reserves that are isolated that have limited economic viability. And there, we always try to focus on supporting traditional economy of hunting and trapping. And we've tried to focus some of our work there, reconnecting to the land, is the single biggest spiritual connection that we can help the Indigenous people make. It's a unique perspective that Indigenous people inherently have about their place in the universe. That they are just part of the universe, not separate from it, not dominant over it, and not a separate species, but just part of the whole incredible wonder of the creation. Short question, long answer, sorry. I think it's a nice uplifting note to end on. I just want to say once again, I'm not honored to have you with us. I have one of the leaders in the country on the nation where we're working on and to really respond to that call that you put out that we were in a coordinated way so that we understand or know what's happening so that our impact can be more and so that it's also an opportunity to build those relationships that are key for any of this going ahead in a good way. So having you with us is definitely a good step towards that. And I would like to thank you for accepting your invitation. And thank you. And those of you that are out there, you know, don't ever feel alone. It's always possible to connect with somebody and we can make a commitment to try. Or we can go to your community, to go to your houses if you need to make that connection because it's not a good thing to be alone, to have hope diminish. We can do it and we'll do it together. Thank you. So what we want to do is we want to show you the statement and encourage you to reach out to organizations that you work with, organizations where there are people there that you know who you think would want to put their name behind this Education for Reconciliation Action and show their support by putting their name to a public statement that will post on the website. And we'll keep adding names of organizations so that we hope to have a really good list that really represents how much momentum there is for seeing this happen. So I'm going to pull up the statement now. This is Shannon here. So just to reiterate as Katie is pulling it up, this piece we're thinking of as an opportunity for organizations. So we will be sending this to significant organizations, unions, various federations and organizations, and NGOs that are like-minded and can lend their name and logo and will stand with us on this particular quest for fulfillment of the Call to Action 62.1. Yes, Barbara here. Are you then, as Kairos, does it automatically go with all of the member denominations and organizations of Kairos? Is that listed there or do you have to ask them separately as well? That's something I'll need to turn back to Katie and I'm not sure that we have worked out that particular piece yet, but we will get back to you on that one. So this is what it says, in June of 2015, the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, TRC, released 94 calls to action to guide us towards a repaired relationship between indigenous and non-indigenous people and a more just and equitable future. The TRC concluded that education is key to reconciliation. It has the potential to end in one generation of profound ignorance about our history that continues to perpetuate intolerance and racism. We support the Kairos and Legacy of Folk Foundation campaign for urgent implementation of TRC 62.1, which calls for the federal, provincial, and territorial government in consultation with indigenous peoples to make age-appropriate curricula on residential schools, treaties, and Aboriginal peoples historical and contemporary contributions to Canada, mandatory education requirement for kindergarten to grade 12 students. The proposed curriculum change, where indigenous wisdom is the foundation, will transform both the education system and Canadian society. Knowing and understanding the truth about our collective past is an important step towards a brighter, more positive, more respectful future. We believe that with the truth, we can touch both the hearts and minds of Canada's children so that they can become leaders in building the reconciliation our country so desperately needs. So that's how the statement reads. Once we have some sign-ons, we'll post it on the website and then we'll continue adding new names of organizations as they come in. We don't have a hard deadline at this point, but for the next few months at least. So is there any feedback or questions or comments? I wanted to comment again that we have our direct lines of communication to our member churches. What we're hoping that those of you on this call might begin to help us with is other connections to large organizations such as unions or boards of education, or universities or what have you who would be interested in this topic and who would be able to stand with us on this endeavor. So when we send around this statement to different organizations, we'll be giving them a whole series of ways that they can spread the word to their own network and their members. So we're hoping to really increase the impact of the campaign in that way so people can share the link to the online petition. They can print off and share the hard copies of the petition, use the hashtags on Twitter, engage people in the mass blanket exercises that will be happening in there if they happen to live near one of the provincial capitals or in a provincial capitol. So we hope that the statement is a way, is a first step to get lots of other organizations involved in all aspects of the campaign. It's Barbara here. I mean I hope you're approaching people like the teachers unions and things like that directly, not waiting for somebody to volunteer to do that. But I mean that would be a logical connection seems to me. Various teachers unions. Yeah, yeah certainly we're reaching out to, I think especially we'll be reaching out at the national level and be working through some of our provincial point people for some of those provincial organizations. But it always helps when there are personal connections so if people do happen to have personal connections to some of these organizations, definitely that's a, that's a blessing. Will we reach out to the theological schools and presbyteries and that and such. From here we will start, as Katie said, at the national level in each of the sectors and then to the provincial level. So in terms of individual presbyteries and such, we would, we will welcome that but that's beyond our capacity to do individually although we are sending a mailing to those who are, have been in contact with us and we have their addresses. So there will be a paper mailing to all of our Cairo's communities and volunteers that we're connected with. That will be a starting point but in terms of this statement we will be reaching out at the national level but we will welcome your assistance. When it comes to a campaign of this size, we are actually a fairly small staff and so we welcome your suggestions or your direct contacts where you can. Particularly you mentioned the theological schools and we do not have contacts with all of those. We have in a few places but not with all of them and so if you have connections, we would, you know, an email to the right person that we get CC'd on would be very helpful. But Shannon, it's Barbara here again. I'm sorry. This should be something to go through the denominations. And, you know, by sending a note to Kristy Neufeld or I and I, we can find the ways to get to the schools and give you all that information or send it to them directly. Okay. It's, of course in every situation with each of our members we have, you know, we're finding the right moments and the right people and so I appreciate that commitment Barbara and we will pass this on to you so that you can pass it to those schools. Yeah. Right. I mean, I just think staff are a first place to start even if they're not the end place. Absolutely. Yeah. Thank you, Katie and Shannon and let's close our time together with prayer. Dear God, we thank you for this opportunity to gather, to listen, to learn, to be inspired for this work of reconciliation. We thank you for the winds of change that are blowing across our land, reconciling winds, winds of the Holy Spirit. We thank you for signs of hope and change even as we know there is much, much further to go. We thank you for signs of authentic friendship and reconciliation and relationship. We thank you for people like Stephen Coquille and the Canadians for a new partnership. We thank you for the Cairo staff and community and we thank you for all other people across this land who are working for change. Bless our efforts. May the wind continue to blow strong and fresh and filled with hope. In Jesus' name, amen. Thank you Esther for helping us close in a good way and thanks everyone for joining us.