Truth and Reconciliation with the Park Board’s Colonial Roots

I will be presenting the following motion at Monday's meeting of the Vancouver Board of Parks and Recreation:

MOTION ON NOTICE

Truth and Reconciliation with the Park Board’s Colonial Roots

MOVER: Commissioner Mackinnon

WHEREAS:

1. The City of Vancouver is designated a City of Reconciliation;

2. In January 2016, the Vancouver Park Board approved eleven (11) strategies in response to the TRC’s Calls to Action, including the recommendation to adopt the “United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples” as a framework for Park Board’s Reconciliation initiatives;
3. One of the concerns identified in the UN’s Declaration is:

… that indigenous peoples have suffered from historic injustices as a result of, inter alia, their colonization and dispossession of their lands, territories and resources, thus preventing them from exercising, in particular, their right to development in accordance with their own needs and interests;

4. From June through November of 2016, Park Board staff conducted a series of consultations with Indigenous cultural leaders, artists, and Musqueam, Squamish, and Tsleil-Waututh Nation members; input received in those sessions indicated that we are at the “truth-telling” phase of Truth and Reconciliation, and that true Reconciliation can only follow a truth-telling phase;

5. The Park Board’s own history is part of the truth of the devastating colonial impact on local First Nations.

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED THAT in support of the Vancouver Park Board’s Truth and Reconciliation initiatives, staff undertake an analysis of the Park Board’s colonial roots, as well as current practices, and report back with their findings and recommendations to acknowledge any and all injustices uncovered as part of the “truth-telling” phase.