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One of Canada’s top First Nations leaders and a global expert on Indigenous issues is calling on the UCP to reverse its decision to make Indigenous land acknowledgements optional at government events, deeming it a “serious mistake.”

Dr. Wilton Littlechild, Grand Chief of Treaty No. 6 and a former Conservative MP, is “disheartened” that acknowledging Indigenous land and treaty is now a matter of “personal preference” according to UCP Minister of Indigenous Relations Rick Wilson.

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“I think it’s a very serious mistake and sets back all the good-faith efforts by many across Alberta who have advanced reconciliation by this simple gesture of acknowledging the historical fact that treaty territories existed before Alberta became a province,” said Littlechild, who is a member of the Ermineskin Cree Nation and a former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada, in a statement from the Confederacy of Treaty Six First Nations on Tuesday.