8th Symposium on Reconciliation and Redress in the Arts, 2022
Channel: NUICCIndigenous
Date: 2023-08-18

The 8th Symposium "Stories Have Always Been Our Governance" was coproduced by Vancouver Moving Theatre, Heart of the City Festival, National Urban Indigenous Coalitions Council (NUICC) and Voor Urban Labs.

In October 2022, the symposium presented the panel "Building an Indigenous City: Decolonizing Cultural Policy" as part of NUICC's monthly Speaker Series. One million urban Indigenous People live in Canadian cities and the future of Canada is Indigenous. This year we presented a national dialogue on Culture in Indigenous Cities, considering the needs of Indigenous cultural and urban practitioners. 

The symposium's tradition continues with a deep-dive for settler cultural and land-based organisations to learn from successful strategies of showing up to do redress in policies and systems as accomplices in building Indigenous cities.

These series is for people who understand that reconciliation is broken in Canada, and want to be inspired with knowledge and tools to go past reconciliation to act on redress. The symposium is a safe place to discuss how to take the next steps into policy action to create conditions for urban governance and justice. Designed as a training day for settlers and migrants, we invite deeper understanding on making change by practicing place-based redress in their own lives, cultural or conservation groups, and urban neighbourhoods.

From the Downtown Eastside of Vancouver to Whitehorse Yukon, to Santa Fe New Mexico to Winnipeg Manitoba to Ottawa Ontario, urban Indigenous cultural leaders are building Indigenous cities of our shared future. Theatre, media arts, architecture, storytelling and music are animating urban population centres where 80% of Indigenous People are living. It's time for settler land-based and cultural organisations and governments to learn to be in the way and out of the way to support the ongoing resurgence.

Despite baby steps at reconciliation, settler culture continues to overwhelming dominate the region financially and structurally. Today is an inspiring day about place-based commitments settlers and migrants can make personally, organizationally, and collectively as a sector. These sessions are structured for deeper learning through a mix of inspiring panel discussions reflecting on models from Turtle Island, leading us into small group discussions. We believe in decolonizing Vancouver’s arts and land-based organisations and public policies through an unlearning process by inventorying and making change.

Just a note of context, this training is of course welcoming (and most importantly) accountable to Coast Salish People, and is framed towards unpacking the settler privilege, not for general dialogue on reconciliation. With a variety of reconciliation dialogues widely available, today's work instead emphasizes redress for settlers and migrants navigating being in the way with resources and then getting out of the way for Indigenous governance and outcomes.