<
https://reasonstobecheerful.world/do-your-citys-parks-need-a-colonial-audit/>
"The City of Vancouver’s iconic urban forest known as Stanley Park is widely
celebrated for its 500 year old Cedar and Douglas firs, enveloped by the Salish
Sea. But few tourists utter the names of the The xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam),
Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səl̓ilwətaɁɬ / sel̓íl̓witulh (Tsleil-Waututh)
Peoples who still hold rights and title to the land. Instead, they speak the
name of a white governor general of Canada from 1888.
Walking through Vancouver parks, you’d have no idea these First Nations were
forcibly evicted without compensation to make way for tennis courts and
concessions and confined to a fraction of their traditional territories on
reserves. As xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam) Chief Wayne Sparrow told CBC News:
“There’s more park around our existing reserve than we have reserve land.”
It’s a complicated issue for something like a parks department to wrap its head
around. In a move to reconcile these kinds of injustices, leaders declared
Vancouver the world’s first “City of Reconciliation” in 2014, which involves a
series of commitments to respect and uphold the rights of local Nations and
urban Indigenous Peoples. The city commissions Indigenous art and cultural
performances. They open events with territorial acknowledgements — statements
that honour the specific First Nations on whose land the city operates and
benefits from. And the park board recently took steps to explore co-managament
of Vancouver parks with local First Nations.
But few of these changes get to the heart of the problem: how do you go about
confronting the fact that your institution is responsible for making publically
accessible for recreation land that was stolen in the first place? That
institutions like parks were not designed by or for the Indigenous people to
whom the land they sit on technically belongs?"
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
