A Visit with Friends - and the Slavin Site

Peterborough ON - Last evening I was invited to a social at the Gathering Place (Enweying) in the Native Peoples House of Learning, Gzowski College, Trent University, to meet with a group of ten young people and their four adult leaders from N'Amerind Friendship Centre in London, Ontario. They were visiting historic Aboriginal sites in the area and listening to area Ojibwe teachers. There were close to 50 people present, and it was a pleasure to be with the visitors, and our Thursday evening Ojibwe teacher, Liz Osawamick, and some members of the class including Raven, and Josh, one of the drummers.

Some of the London young people attend the Sweetgrass School in London, and some of them come from Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Temagami, and northern Ontario. I met Rachel Hearns, niece of Sam and Patricia Hearns, of London; and Eldon French, who knows the dear people of Chippewa of the Thames First Nation with whom I worked for so many years: Elder Mary Sturgeon, who taught me Ojibwe; Marcie French; Maxine Hendrick; Leona Hendrick; and their families; briinging back for me so many memories of so many years of my life in London, Thedford, and Oldcaste (near Windsor).

Another of the adults in the group was Robin Miller, and her mother, Elizabeth Jacks, and I worked together with Mary Rose Bearfoot Jones and so many others 30 years ago with WCISNIC (Windsor Committee in Support of Native Indian Concerns) during the time of the E.C.Row Expressway burial site issue. After two years, we did not find a burial site, but the effort to lobby the Ontario government on that issue resulted in a change to the Cemeteries Act during the Bill Davis Conservative government era so that when bones are discovered, it is now mandatory for the excavating to halt, and the nearest First Nations Chief and Council must be consulted, before work can continue.

In that regard, imagine my horror to read recently in the Peterborough Examiner, copied from the Orillia Packet & Times, that the city of Orillia is built on an ancient Aboriginal burial site, replete with photos of skulls and leg bones piled up along a fence. Gloria Taylor, curator of the Orillia Museum of Art and History, told Sun Media reporter Colin McKim "the old photograph of 20 aboriginal skulls lined up on a board fence is a grim reminder of a less enlightened time. It was a freak show. It hurts your heart to think that people's remains were treated with such disrespect. How would you feel if that was your grandmother's grave and you saw her head sitting on a board?" The nearby Rama First Nation has been notified, and is currently considering how to proceed with this issue, known to archaeologists as the "Slavin site".

Of special interest to me is the fact that local residents in and around that Slavin site have known of this situation for generations but no one seems to have understood its significance to Aboriginal people. To me, it explains why we have so much educational work to do to help Canadian citizens understand the facts concerning our relationship with the First Peoples.

It tells me that we must begin to build new bridges of respect for the treaties we signed with sovereign nations.

And it convinces me that with Prime Minister Harper's apology for the residential schools and the injustices faced by thousands of children who spent time in them, or who never returned, our responsibility for saying "sorry" has only just begun.

To read the Orillia Packet & Times story, see
scan0001- Orillia Burial Site - p. 1
scan0002 - Orillia Burial Site p. 2
scan0003 - Orillia Burial Site - P. 3
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