Saturday, June 21, will mark National Indigenous Peoples Day this year, and from 3 p.m. to 11 p.m. you can join Yellowknives Dene First Nation (YKDFN) at the Wiiliideh Site, or Yellowknife River, where there will be canoe races, demos, cooking bannock on a stick, duck plucking, a sewing tent, and a kids area, plus vendors, food, and a drum dance to end the night.
This is a day to honour, and celebrate, as well as a day to bring reflection — a day to bring our awareness too.
Elsewhere in the Northwest Territories, it’s a statutory holiday, jam-packed with special festivities and community events. On the Spectacular NWT website it says “Back in 1982, what we now refer to as the Assembly of First Nations called for a National Aboriginal Solidarity Day; in 2001, the NWT became the first jurisdiction in Canada to make it a formal holiday.”
When I first started working at NNSL Media, this time three years ago, I wanted to pay homage to my great grandfather and columnist, George Blondin. He wrote a column in 1992 about what was then National Aboriginal Peoples Day. At the time, my great grandfather was acknowledging the difficulties for Indigenous peoples (Dene, in particular) to come together for celebrations like this in one, in harmonized fashion.
As my great grandfather wrote, National Indigenous Peoples Day, or National Aboriginal Day, is recognized in the Canadian Constitution. In this article, my great grandpa asked what we could do to make National Aboriginal Day better? It is 33 years later and I think we’re still asking ourselves how we can make this holiday better.
Now, I look at the occupation of Palestine, and riots in Los Angeles last week, and see legacies of colonial violence all over the world, still. Can we celebrate Indigenous peoples right now, without also calling attention to myriad examples of continued global colonial occupation?
As riots erupt in L.A., and Palestine continues to be under Israeli occupation, maybe this day must also be a celebration of Indigenous resilience, culture, joy, strength, beauty and endurance — the positive journeys we have walked through intergenerational healing, and the many generations yet to come here in Denendeh, across Turtle Island and around the world.
But we cannot look at those positives without recognizing the continued need to decry colonial exploits here by the Canadian and provincial governments (bills 5, and 15, I’m looking at you) and the continued displacement of Indigenous peoples from stolen Indigenous land (L.A. riots) — as well as the encampments around Yellowknife, and lack of resources available to remote communities here in Denendeh, still.
Join YKDFN in celebrating Dene joy and cultural continuation, and may this day be one of reflection, hope and consideration — examining the vast challenges and violence that Indigenous peoples have, and continue to, endure, as well as our brilliance, our joy, love and healing.
—Cassandra Blondin Burt writes a column called Medicine Stories for Northern News Services.
