Sioux Lookout, Ont., to hold reconciliation talk

A group of people in Sioux Lookout, Ont., have invited the community to talk about reconciliation, and how best to go about it.

Garnet Angeconeb is one of the organizers of a public forum taking place Thursday night at the Sioux Lookout Meno Ya Win Health Centre.

• Truth and Reconciliation: 5 unreconciled issues in northern Ontario
• Sioux Lookout council encouraged to be more 'culturally aware'
• Rheumatic fever rates in some Ontario First Nations 75 times higher than rest of Canada

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission put in a lot of work to come up with its recommendations, Angeconeb said, and now it's up to people everywhere to make changes.

"The mandate of the Truth and Reconciliation [Commission] is over now, and so now as community people, as ordinary citizens of the land, we need to respond in our own way to the work of the TRC," he said.

Reconciliation means different things to different people, Angeconeb said, and he hopes to hear ideas on what can be done locally to promote it.

Some initiatives have already begun, like the Sioux Lookout anti-racism committee, but now, he said it's a matter of "taking it a step further," and coming up with ides based on the TRC recommendations.

"[The meeting's goal is] to start talking about how is it that we can move forward on the recommendations, and how can we move forward on reconciliation in general. So it's an initial meeting, it's to engage the citizens of the community to embark upon good dialogue," he said.

One idea he suggested is to partner with the local museum to capture the history of the community's former residential school.

Local politicians, residential school survivors, and social workers will present at Thursday night's event. There will also be an open forum discussion, and attendees can fill out a questionnaire.