Guest: Louise Mandell, Indigenous Rights Lawyer
For the past four decades, Louise Mandell has been at the heart of aboriginal and treaty litigation.
This is work that has lead to a shift in the colonial paradigm.
She says the old arguments of distinguisher rights have been dropped. "We've reached the point where Crown governments and indigenous governments are now able to build trust, collaborate, cooperate, and actually build systems that talk to one another in a good way."
According to her, we may have come a long way but we're not there. We're not living in a country that has reconciled.
She is hopeful. "Think if we intend to listen to each other, to help indigenous people with capacity to heal from colonization – in their own way, if we intend to be making decisions about the land, if we intend that indigenous people are going to be self-determining in ways that we are self-determining as a culture and we intend this for our children, we are so gonna get there."
We invited Michelle Vanderzon of The Kettle Society to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the role that not-for-profit organizations are playing in meeting the needs of people facing mental health, substance abuse, and poverty issues.
We invited Dallas Smith of the Nanwakolas Council to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the future of reconciliation in British Columbia.
We invited Cathy Peters, the author of “Child Sex Trafficking in the USA and How to Stop It,” to join us for a Conversation That Matters about the need to be hyper-vigilant when dealing with anyone you don’t know online, especially if you are a teen.
We invited Wellington Holbrook, the CEO at Vancity Credit Union, to join us for a Conversation That Matters about innovative and entrepreneurial thinking that delivers for the marginalized and anyone else who chooses to be a part of the power of collective financing.