Like most of you, I am a proud Canadian. There are few things not to be proud of, but surely one of them has to be the treatment of our Indigenous people.

I have just returned from a four-day visit to the Kitchenuhmaykoosib Inninuwug (KI) and Bearskin Lake First Nations communities. They are located about 1,800 km northwest of Toronto, about as far away as Bermuda. These communities are only accessible by air.

I went, at my own expense, in part because of my natural curiosity but more significantly because I felt that as mayor of Canada’s largest city I had an obligation both substantively and symbolically to show our support for the reconciliation process now being embraced across Canada. While my principal responsibilities lie here at home, I do have a role to play in addressing some of our pan-Canadian problems as well.

People also overlook the fact that Toronto is home to some 35,000 indigenous people — in fact 30 per cent of the clients of our homeless shelter system are urban indigenous people though they represent only 1 per cent of the population.

I will soon be sitting down with the leaders of our Aboriginal Affairs Committee to see how the lessons of my visit to KI and Bearskin can be applied here in Toronto and how we might also help those living in faraway places.

What are those lessons?

1. Contrary to what most school kids are told, Jacques Cartier did not discover Canada and Christopher Columbus did not discover America. On the shores of Big Trout Lake near KI, skeletal remains dating back 5,000 years have been unearthed. History is very clear on who was here first, it’s what happened since which gets debated.

2. Treaties were signed during those 5,000 years. Many of them. And while there are still dozens of proceedings involving those treaties, let’s just say it is far from clear whether Indigenous people knew what they were signing let alone whether those treaties have been honoured. Naturally this has contributed to a great sense of unfinished business and injustice.

3. Even respected elders alive today, let alone those who are gone, cherish the traditional way of life of our Indigenous people. I sat with those elders and heard them say, “Yes, it was difficult, we had to struggle to follow the resources, but we survived.” It was our ancestors who pushed Indigenous people away from their traditional way of life because it suited our conveniences and prejudices.

4. Our history, yes Canada’s, is replete with examples of overt, legislated discrimination against our first people. I will return to residential schools but beyond that shameful chapter, Canadian law denied Indigenous people the universal right to vote until 1960. In the 20th century, performing an Indian dance in costume could lead to imprisonment. Just two of many examples. Is there a chance all of those measures and what lay behind them left scars which are still very real today? Indeed.

5. Residential schools. I sat with Dora McKay, a grandmotherly elder, as she told me about being taken away from her family at age 4. Taken to a faraway school where she was forbidden to speak her Indigenous language. Where the work these kids were ordered to do made her feel like a slave. Schools where thousands of these children died from disease and neglect and were just buried. They never came home.

6. All of these past acts have a lasting negative impact. The broken relationships, broken families and broken hearts have continued to reflect themselves down through the generations. I believe it because I have seen it. And it helps me to better understand the lasting negative impact on groups like our African Canadian and Jewish communities, scarred by historic discrimination and still facing it in too many places today.

7. Even in the 21st century we seem prepared to accept living conditions for Indigenous people in remote communities that we would never accept for ourselves. These places are, after all, in Ontario.

Schools like the one in KI just end at Grade 10. If you want to graduate, you have to leave the community. Is it any wonder more than half just don’t finish high school? What would we think if the Grade 8 teacher just left the school weeks before the end of the term? That happened this spring in Bearskin Lake.

Clean water is often supplied by truck. As in one truck. When it is broken, families often go without water for three or four days.

Food prices are astronomically high. A wilted head of lettuce for $8.79. Peanut butter for more than eight dollars. Is it any wonder poor eating habits lead to a diabetes rate of more than 50 per cent?

I could go on to discuss housing, health care and a myriad of other issues that make our first people decidedly second-class citizens in a country that profoundly rejects the idea of multi-tier citizenship.

I stayed in KI and Bearskin Lake for four days because I wanted to listen, to learn and by living with families in their homes, I wanted to get a first-hand sense of their living conditions.

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In that time I got to know a warm, generous, respectful people. Not as much angry about past and present injustices as they are sad.

People who when they go hunting don’t keep all of the moose meat for themselves but announce their bounty and share it that day.

People who respect the land, water and resources in a way we might just now be beginning to understand.

Kids who are as bright as any kids who live in Toronto. Who are confronted by what seems like a bad choice: stay home where kids are committing suicide due to a lack of hope or leave to pursue a dream and lose all contact with their traditional way of life.

So what to do? The process known as reconciliation is a good start. We can learn the history, warts and all. We can reach out and embrace these wonderful accepting Canadians. We can learn from them and about them and that includes teaching in schools where I was exposed to less indigenous history than I have just learned in four days.

We can work together to address the basics. Education, housing, food, water, health care. The people in these communities actually see a glimmer of hope that our multiple governments might actually be starting to work together. Leave jurisdiction at the door and actually get things done. Help them address their own challenges, don’t assume “our way” is better.

I believe this trip made me a better leader. A better informed Canadian. A more complete citizen.

Sitting on a couch in a home as impoverished as any you would see in this hemisphere, praying with a mother and grandparents of a young mom lost to suicide was a profoundly moving experience.

As was coming together with those same families who work all day and share, in order to offer you a meal of pickerel and moose together with their fascinating company.

I understand the fact that not every Canadian has the opportunity to take the trip I just took. But if we decided one person, one family, one neighbourhood at a time that we were going to do something to tangibly demonstrate that we have turned the page, we would all be the better for it, including our Indigenous people. That is what reconciliation is all about. I’m very glad I went.

John Tory is the mayor of Toronto.

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