Everyday reconciliation
The National Day for Truth and Reconciliation is only one day a year, but it's not the only day we should remember to think about the injustice and inequity that impacts the Indigenous nations and their people who were here long before us.
Yesterday, on National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, I shared the following post in the Magnificent Marketers Club and I wanted to share it with you as well:
With today being “Orange Shirt Day,” I wanted to share a couple of resources that I encourage for any business owner who wants to incorporate reconciliation in their business. Both are written by Alison Tedford Seaweed, an Indigenous woman in BC.
I have known Alison mostly through online interactions, and I hired her to help me with renaming my business, a process I really enjoyed and liked the outcome but have yet to do because it hasn’t felt quite right for some reason I can’t articulate (I loved what we came up with).
Anyway, Alison is a prolific writer, has a fantastic sense of humour and she’s doing great work as an advocate for Indigenous people. Both of these books you could read in a couple of hours. She’s set them up to be both informative and actionable.
While you can buy her books on Amazon, I’m partial to purchasing from local stores, even when it takes longer. My store of choice in Ottawa is Octopus Books, but Bookmanager can help you find other local stores.
Beyond business
As individuals, we can take action and help pressure our leaders to move forward on the 94 items that were laid out in the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report. Released in 2015, we have quite a long way to go, as you can see from Indigenous Watchdog.
I can get overwhelmed when it comes to taking meaningful action on issues like reconciliation. But I've recently been adjusting my mindset with the reminder that these problems weren't created in a day, and they won't be reconciled in a day. Additionally, no one expects any single person to make a huge impact.
As a settler in Canada, I'm committed to making it a priority to learning and taking action where I'm empowered to do so, which includes reaching out to my representatives to let them know it's important to me to see better progress on the Truth and Reconciliation Commission's Calls to Action.
Our leaders need to know that we want to see progress on reconciliation so they make it a priority. And they need to hear it from people who care about reconciliation whether we're Indigenous or not.
