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The Current Transcript for October 12, 2022

Host: Matt Galloway

STORIES FROM THIS EPISODE

Prologue

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SOUNDCLIP

Well, if your police approves a motor vehicle from the RCMP side and the communities tell you there's drug trafficking issues, I think we're not hearing one another.

MATT GALLOWAY: The role of police forces in indigenous communities in Canada has long been a contentious issue in the wake of the deadly stabbings on the James Smith Cree nation in Saskatchewan. That discussion has only become more urgent. In an hour, a conversation with an indigenous policing expert who thinks she has an answer and has the evidence from communities to prove it. Also this morning.

SOUNDCLIP

I like the word purpose better than function, because most people, when they think of function, they think utility. They probably thinking is the plumbing working? And so there's a higher purpose. The purpose of the school is to be a wonderful place for learning.

MG: Canada's Moshe Safdie is a giant in the world of architecture. The man behind the National Gallery in Ottawa, the iconic Habitat 67 development in Montreal, and the Holocaust Memorial in Israel. In an hour, he reflects on his career. What's wrong with the cities we're creating now and why at its heart? Architecture is as much about the people who inhabit the buildings he designs as the buildings themselves. After months of turmoil, though, we start with a Shake-Up in Hockey's Corner office. Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway and this is The Current.

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Hockey Canada’s new leadership should come from outside world of hockey, says expert

Guests: Mary-Kay Messier, Laura Misener

MG: First came the resignation of Andrea Skinner, interim chair of Hockey, Canada's board of directors, following an appearance in front of a parliamentary committee that some MPs criticised as tone deaf. Then yesterday, after months of leadership resisting calls for change over its handling of sexual assault allegations, the chief executive officer, Scott Smith and the entire board of directors resigned. The move came after Bauer Hockey announced that it was pausing its commitment as the official equipment provider to Hockey Canada's men's teams. This was the latest in a growing group of high level sponsors pulling away from the organisation. Mary-Kay Messier is the Vice President of marketing for Bauer Hockey. Good morning.

MARY-KAY MESSIER: Good morning.

MG: You said that you lost faith in Hockey Canada's leadership. That leadership is now out. What's your reaction to that?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: Well, let's just start by saying yesterday was a really tough day. We've been working with Hockey Canada for decades and we had been working behind the scenes to try to align on changes needed when it was clear that that change was going to come. We went public with our statement. I think, you know, this is a step in the right direction, but the hard work really starts now.

MG: Why did you wait until just recently to make that public statement? As you say, you'd been working behind the scenes. You'd met with executives from Hockey Canada in August. A number of other sponsors had pulled out. Why did you wait this long?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: We really feel that Bauer is different. We're a partner to Hockey Canada and we really exist to serve players and their families. So we're endemic to the sport and as far as the sport goes, Bauer goes. And so we really worked hard behind the scenes to work with Hockey Canada on the changes that were needed. We were hoping to get it done that way. It's only the result of going public is our inability to reach alignment. And we thought it was really important to lay out a plan before going public that outlined the changes that we thought were needed. Leadership is is the first step because Hockey Canada leadership had lost faith of the Canadian people. They lost trust and confidence in the sport itself. And so this was really critical. And then there's other things that need to change. This creates an opportunity for other changes as well. We outlined some some meaningful changes in the structure and the philosophy, which we can talk a little bit about. But it was really about, you know, stepping forward and driving that change that's needed to meet the needs of families in Canada in the sport of hockey.

MG: You spoke with the Globe and Mail this week and said that after that meeting in August with the board of directors, it seemed more like self-preservation versus serving the Canadian people. Why did you use that word? That's very self preservation.

MARY-KAY MESSIER: You know, at some point you have to decide as your role in leadership if you are really serving the people. And it became clear that that wasn't happening. And so sometimes the best thing you can do is to step down and make way for others. It had been really clear that the people that Hockey Canada leadership serve had lost confidence in the leadership and the sport of hockey and the damage. What we want to move away from is all this negativity. We really believe in the power of hockey to do good things, to build good citizens, to teach life lessons, the values. And that's being lost in all the negativity in order to move forward, to start to talk about progress. The first step had to be for the leadership to step down. And so for that reason, if you're not serving the people, you're really serving yourself. And it's an unfortunate development that needed to happen.

MG: You also said that it had come to the point where I think people were feeling so unheard. They were coming to power. Who was coming to power with their concerns?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: In addition to after obviously this crisis to us working behind the scenes with with Hockey Canada to talk about changes, we had been talking to Hockey Canada on separate issues regarding equity or lack thereof in hockey for the last 18 months, specifically around girls and women situations that were coming forward where people really felt that the hockey experience was not equitable and not being provided the opportunity to experience everything the game offers. We'd had several conversations. We felt we weren't being heard and the people weren't being heard, which is why we draughted a girls hockey Bill of Rights, and launched a petition to really outline the changes needed to create equity in hockey for girls and women across the sport.

MG: And so Bauer has said that it will pause its support for men's hockey, but not for women's hockey, and that it will redirect money from the men's purchases. So the men's teams will have to buy Bauer equipment to women's and girls programmes. How will that help create a sense of equity in a game that you say lacks equity right now?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: Well, I think just to be clear, so we we are pausing our role as official equipment provider to the men's team. So it's it's the equipment. It's also tournament sponsorship and activation. And by redeploying those funds and that exposure to the women's game, it does help to elevate and advance the women's game through this support, not only in equipment, but also through programmes at the grassroots level to bring more girls into the game and to elevate exposure at the highest end. So, you know, in August, we pulled our support from World Juniors and we redeployed all of that investment into women's worlds. We did a complete take over. We produced content, we had a media buy. We engage the women and launched a whole new campaign. And I think it's that type of support that's needed to continue to elevate the underrepresented communities in hockey. So it's not just girls and women, it's also bipoc communities and para teams. So at the grassroots levels and at the elite levels, we need to do more to make the game inclusive and welcoming. And this is a step in that direction.

MG: You come from a hockey family yourself. I mean, your brother, Mark Massier, who played obviously for for many, many years, you've been deeply involved in promoting women's hockey and trying to create a sense of equity. What's wrong with the culture of hockey as it exists right now?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: It's just not inclusive enough. There's not enough equity in, to be clear. I again, I really believe in hockey. I've been involved in hockey my entire life. I've seen how it's changed people's lives. We stepped out last year around World Juniors and we launched a campaign to acknowledge that a shift in the hockey culture needed to happen. We need to be more open, more inclusive from the leadership all the way down to the grassroots. It means how we think about offering the sport in many different forms that meets the needs of different families all across Canada. We need to be in line with the changes in the demographics, the real changes in Canada, and we don't offer the same opportunity to all Canadians in hockey. If you have the total hockey experience, we know kids will fall in love with the game. We've seen that success at the grassroots level with our first shift programme. We've seen what can happen if you create a welcoming environment for girls, for instance, and we're a numbers have grown to 40% registration, which is double the national average. We've seen supporting groups like Black Girl Hockey Club that are doing great work in the community. When we get behind them, we empower them. We help support the initiatives that we're doing. We see growth in Bipoc families joining hockey. We need to do more of that across the country to really grow the sport in a meaningful way and ensure the future.

MG: You said Bauer was endemic to the sport. What is Bauer's role been in helping to create that culture? The culture that so many people now are paying attention to and are calling for a deep change in?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: Our role is to continue to lead and be part collaborate with people across the country doing great work.

MG: But is there any sense that Bauer could have done more? I mean, we're now seeing a scandal that has led to those deep gut check conversations around hockey. Bauer's been involved in hockey for decades. Is there any sense that perhaps this company could have done more to help create the change that you're talking about now?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: I would have to say yes. I mean, if if you're a leader in sport and it's not exactly the experience that's provided for all, could you have done more of that? The answer has to be yes in my mind. I will say that we have been working. I've been with Bauer for ten years and we've been working in a steadfast way to make these changes. It isn't at all in reaction to this crisis. We've been at this for years, and the campaign last year was just this was just the next step. We've been involved with grassroots programmes. We've been involved in women's hockey, elevating that game and advancing equity in the sport for many years. You know, it really started with increasing our elite athlete roster, including women in our global campaigns, producing content to raise awareness and elevate and all the other initiatives that I've talked about, the Bill of Rights and so forth. But if the question really comes down to looking at where we are today, then all of us have to say, could we have done more? And I guess now the real question is how do we move forward? How do we make the biggest impact we possibly can?

MG: Well, in the other question, just we're just out of time. But before I let you go, do you believe and this is a I mean, not from an executive at power, but personally as somebody who has deep roots in this sport, do you do you honestly believe that the culture can change?

MARY-KAY MESSIER: I do. I have great hope, and it stems from what I believe hockey offers as a platform, as I said, in all the good things that can come out of it and and the fact that there are a lot of great people doing great work, we just have to hear those voices, include them in the conversations and work collaboratively. It might mean a complete shake up of the current structure, but let's take it one step at a time and start to build the future that we want to see for hockey.

MG: Mary-Kay Messier, good to speak with you. Thank you very much.

MARY-KAY MESSIER: Thank you very much for having me. I really appreciate the opportunity.

MG: Mary-Kay Messier is Bauer Hockey's vice president of marketing. Laura Misener is director of the School of Kinesiology at Western University in London, Ontario, and a sports scholar who focuses on safe sport and good governance. She's worked as a research and policy advisor to several sports organisations, including the Canadian Paralympic Committee, the Commonwealth Games Federation and the Greater Toronto Hockey League. Laura, good morning to you.

LAURA MISENER: Good morning.

MG: What do you make of the message you're hearing from sponsors like Bauer?

LAURA MISENER: Well, I think it's a we're hearing it loud and clear from them that they want change and they expect change. I mean, you asked the question this is, did it take too long? Should they have stepped forward sooner? I'm sure many of us probably agree that they they could have stepped forward sooner and and say that change was needed. It took quite a while for for Bauer to really be the one to make some significant change. But at the same time, I think what we're hearing from them is the rhetoric. We should be hearing some some conversations about not just men's hockey, but about the other forms of hockey that are really a part of our system that we haven't been having the conversation about, about elevating women's hockey, about elevating bipoc communities in hockey, about elevating men's and women's para ice hockey. And those are the things that haven't really been part of the conversation. So it's nice to hear that at least the sponsors are interested in and really pursuing that and thinking about the broader context of what hockey is about.

MG: And so people have been calling for leadership change. That change is underway. The CEO is out, the board of directors gone now. What should happen next? Who should fill those roles if meaningful change is going to be achieved?

LAURA MISENER: Right. I feel like that's the million dollar question that everyone's asking right now is who's next? Who's going to step into those roles then? I've already heard a lot of my colleagues talking about specific individuals, throwing around names from within the hockey community, about potential leaders that can come on board. But my perspective on this is actually perhaps we need someone from outside the hockey community. I mean, the challenge becomes it's difficult to change a culture when you've become acculturated. You're grown up within that culture because that's really what you know, you love it, you're passionate about it. But I think we need to have a different voice at the table. I think we need to have people from potentially outside of hockey, maybe from other sports who've gone through similar types of things. I think we need people from the business sector who understand change management and maybe have gone through some of these difficult situations and can really manage the change as we move forward. It doesn't mean we're not going to bring the hockey people back into the mix and into the fold and have that representation and have that voice. But I think we need to hear a different voices at the table to really achieve that culture shift.

MG: We spoke with Theresa Bailey, who is a founder of a group called Canadian Hockey Moms. Have a listen to what she had to say about the resignations at Hockey Canada and what she's looking forward to.

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I have both boys and girls playing hockey, and I think for my daughter, I would like to see her have the same chances that my boys did. I don't. Just the new board. I'm hopeful that through this confusion and conflict, it opens up space to have dialogue. We're going to have to take some of these things on. Have some uncomfortable conversations and be okay with a little bit of figuring things out. But I do believe with the right people in there, that is going to mean good things for hockey in our country.

MG: She talks about having uncomfortable conversations. What do you think those uncomfortable conversations need to include?

LAURA MISENER: Yes, well, I think we we heard it a little bit already about the fact that we've had the pervasive conversations have been about the men's sport and what's been happening in the men's sport in most of the resources and and the sponsorship dollars and the system perspective is focussed on elevating boys and men through the sport to eventually get into the high performance realm. We haven't really talked about the fact that, you know, we need to be thinking about that. Those are very privileged individuals who come into that system and move through the system. How are we supporting and elevating those who don't have the equity of access, who don't have the opportunity and the funds and the resources to access the sport? How do we elevate other parts of the sport? We really haven't as much as we like to say that we're leaders in women's hockey. Reality is, it's a very inequitable situation for women in the sport. And so we need to change the culture of that. And that's going to take a lot for us to think about. We haven't even scratched the surface of talking about the fact that para ice hockey is under the purview of Hockey Canada and gets very little. That women's para ice hockey doesn't get anything from a hockey Canada, gets hands down jerseys to get to play at a world championship match. And so we haven't even started to have the conversation about some of those issues that are prevalent within the system really need to change. And so some of those conversations are going to have to happen. The structures and the systems throughout need change, and that's going to take time. And a lot of these conversations need to start now, but we have to be patient because it is going to take a lot of time.

MG: I guess the question is, and it's the same that I asked Mary Kay Mercier, can you actually change the culture, the people in past who have tried to raise those uncomfortable issues? I spoke with Laura Robinson on this programme, who's written about this for decades. You think of others like Jessica Allen who have talked about this, have all been attacked in some ways for trying to talk about those difficult issues. So is your sense that people can actually raise those issues in an open way that would lead to a change in the culture?

LAURA MISENER: I think we are at a real point where the conversations are opening up and I applaud the sponsors for stepping forward because we've seen it in other high profile cases like the International Olympic Committee, where when the sponsors step forward and say change is necessary, you need to do something about this. Then we start to see something.

MG: That can lead to change because, because it's about money?

LAURA MISENER: Right. I mean, it's unfortunate that that we get to that point, but I mean, without the resources and the dollars behind them, they have little to do to be able to elevate that system to continue to perpetuate the men's game. And I and I want to reinforce that because that's really a lot of what this is about, is a creation of a toxic culture around that masculine ideology of what it means to possibly to be a man in hockey. And that's where we've got the acceptance of these poor behaviours. We've got the covering up of the, you know, conduct that should never have happened. And so we need to be saying, well, what's happened within that culture to allow that? And maybe we need a different voice. Maybe we need to start thinking about new ways of it happening. You know, and I do think it's the right time on many of the national sport organisations already are starting to have conversations about things like trauma informed policy, understanding, what past trauma does to individuals and how that informs the way we move forward. So I think the time is now that we can start having those difficult conversations. Do I think it's going to change the culture right away? No, I think that takes a very long time. And it is pervasive throughout the culture of our society that we need to be thinking about it. But I think we're ready to have the conversations and start making a move in the right direction.

MG: In the last minute or so that we have, we're talking a lot about what's happening in the corner office. But people have been saying that this needs to happen right at the grassroots, right at the very elemental, you know, the base level of the sport. Is that where it needs to begin, do you think?

LAURA MISENER: It has to happen at all levels?. I mean, I don't know if you've been to a hockey arena lately and and seen what happens on the ice and then in the stands and watching parents and the way parents react to situations going on in the ice. And we've done a lot within that system to try and change the culture of parent involvement and over involvement in pressuring of their kids and those conversations. But that really hasn't made a drastic shift either. So we need that to happen as well. Parents need to understand with the nature of the sport really is about about the heart of fun and the really the pieces we can get that are positive from it. And that's why that shift needs to happen, right from the grassroots level all the way through the system to those boardrooms. So it's not just simply the leadership that needs to change. It is the entire system that really needs to take a step back, look at what's been happening, what's going on, and maybe start to think about. How do we do things differently? How can we all be better about sport? Because there are wonderful things about this game.

MG: Laura, thank you very much for this.

LAURA MISENER: You're very welcome. Happy to be.

MG: Here. Laura Misener, director of the School of kinesiology at Western University in London, Ontario, and a sports scholar who focuses on safe sport and good governance. Your thoughts? Welcome on this. How do you go about changing a culture in sport? Email us thecurrent@cbc.ca. Your CBC News is next. And then.

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If we build suburbia after suburbia. Do you have to have cars? And therefore we have all the pollution that that generates. So our responsibility is to design uplifting, wholesome buildings, which is tougher to do than your ordinary cookie cutter building, which are sustainable and minimise the carbon footprint.

MG: The Canadian architect, Moshe Safdie, wants to design a better and healthier world building for a better future. That's coming up in 6 minutes. My name is Matt Galloway and this is The Current on CBC Radio One.

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Moshe Safdie on the role of architects in building a better world

Guest: Moshe Safdie

MG: Good morning. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current.

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MG: Still to come, an indigenous community in the Yukon takes a stand to protect its citizens. But first, an architect with purpose.

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MG: In the world of architecture, Canada's Moshe Safdie is a giant. His career has spanned nearly 60 years, and he's designed buildings and spaces around the world. Several Canadian landmarks are his Habitat 67 in Montreal, the National Gallery of Canada. In Ottawa, the Vancouver Public Library. Moshe Safdie reflects on his career and looks to the future in his memoir, If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture. Moshe Safdie. Good morning.

MOSHE SAFDIE: Morning.

MG: When you think of a new project, what do you think of first and foremost, when you when you're trying to conceive of the design of that project, what's the first thing that goes through your mind?

MOSHE SAFDIE: I mean, usually I want to be on the spot where it's going to be built and wonder and it depends. Is it in the city? Is it in the country? It depends, of course, on the location. But I find that the site has a lot of secrets hidden in it and they need to be deciphered. And on top of that is the programme, is it? What is it? So you mentioned the Vancouver Public Library. This site was in the centre of Vancouver at the edge of the business district. It was a whole city block. It varied in levels from one side to the other. You start thinking of the flow of the programme of what a library is all about. While again the site always inspires how to organise the spaces where the light comes from, what's the orientation. So it's kind of a spatial exercise of trying to imagine the programme of space is needed on the land that it's going to be placed on. And it's kind of kind of a puzzle that starts flowing in your head. If I can't describe in words what I can't quite understand how it happens.

MG: You can't quite understand how it happens.

MOSHE SAFDIE: Well, it's a mystery.

MG: You say in the book that architecture does not exist on some sort of abstract aethereal plane. It's grounded in actual places, filled with actual people. Why is it important to say that and how often does that get forgotten?

MOSHE SAFDIE: Because most architects forget this building as it is a living organism. In a sense. It accommodates living organisms to us as humans, and its success and failure is about what we experience and how we experience over and over time in a building, be it a school, a museum, a library, a shopping street, a place in the city. And and I think too often we get into theories and isms and postmodernism and de constructivism and the poor little people who live to who need to live in all these isms are somewhat eclipsed and in the excitement of the intellectual debate of the architecture profession. So I think to students, to young architects, it's important to emphasise every time you hold the pencil and you start drawing or these days you sit on the computer and start designing. Not as good as pencils, I think. But anyhow, it's works that that they remember and identify with the people who will who will be living or working or experiencing the the buildings they're creating.

MG: What did you learn about architecture from beekeeping?

MOSHE SAFDIE: You know, the bees need to shape their honeycombs in order to store honey and to raise their the young bees. And the octagonal geometry is, by definition, the most efficient way to create that with wax. I mean, it is like mathematically that you can demonstrate mathematically that that is the most efficient way to do it. And so this has evolved in the same way that, you know, our ability to see and to distinguish colours and the way it serves us has also evolved because it's it's moving towards a sort of level of perfection. And from that I've learnt that architectural form should evolve with the same kind of striving for fulfilling fundamental purpose of a building. I like the word purpose better than function, because most people, when they think of function, they think circulation and they think utility. They probably thinking, is the plumbing working? And so there's a higher purpose. The purpose of a school is to be a wonderful place for learning, you know, a great place for students and teachers to interact. That's the purpose of a school well beyond any individual functional requirement that that every space obviously has.

MG: Let's talk about that in the context of Habitat, of Habitat 67.

MOSHE SAFDIE: That's an easy one I visited in the in the in 1959 in a study trip, dozens of apartment buildings, luxury and mostly public housing. And they looked at me like cellblocks. And the corridors were grim and there were no outdoor spaces, no balconies. And the light was limited. And it didn't seem like a place that you would want to really live with if you had any choice. And the choice was being done day by day by those who went to the suburbs and the levee towns that spread all over the continent, which because you had a house and a garden and it was a better way to live. Most people voted by their actions. And so I came back thinking we must rethink the apartment building to reconceive it as a sort of compilation of houses, piled them up for high density, high rise, but try and give the quality of a house, a garden and openness and different direction, you know, contact with nature. And that's how Habitat evolved in response to this assumption that that's what people really want and that's what a wholesome life demands.

MG: What did Lego have to do with Habitat 67?

MOSHE SAFDIE: Well, Lego had to do with the idea that it was with a sub sub idea in the concept of habitat that the best way to achieve this is through prefabrication of factory produced elements. Because that way all the work could be done in a factory and the units could be assembled efficiently into place. And so I thought with different kinds of modules, and the module that made the most sense was a rectangle which was in proportion about that of a brick. Proportions of 1 to 2. And lo and behold, Lego just came out with the toy that was just invented about that time. And the early Legos weren't like a million pieces where you could do anything under the sun. But they just came out with that standard brick shaped module that clipped into place. And it was very convenient to study the different permutations and possibilities that you could make with modules using Legos. So it was like readily made toy for our exploration of the design.

MG: Why haven't and I mean, and it's interesting because there are nations around the world that have asked you to come and build a habitat in their community or what have you. But why hasn't that approach to apartment living taken off? Because most of the buildings that we see around us now, now they're glass blocks. Before they were concrete blocks. They're not what habitat looks like and doesn't they don't embody that spirit that you're talking about.

MOSHE SAFDIE: Answering your question today is quite different because after many years of not being able to realise various habitats, we are today building several projects which embody many of its ideas and more significantly, the next the following generation of architects, the ones that followed us who are now in their fifties. Several of the avant garde have totally embraced these ideas and are successfully building projects that look very much like Habitat and you see them getting built. Even in Canada, there's one in Toronto by the firm big called Habitat two, in deference to its I suppose I'd call it grandparents and there's others in Europe and Asia so that I think the ideas of, of terraces and gardens and fractal ising and the extruded apartment structure into something much more faceted and filled with open spaces. I think that's now emerging in the area for even middle income housing. We're doing several projects for middle income housing in Singapore and China with these, and I think that eventually North America will catch up. It seems to be slow these days in North America, but in catching up with the avant garde. But it will and I think particularly post-COVID, that we are having a resurgent and almost obsession with how to provide open spaces for living and working spaces and bring nature into our lives.

MG: I want to ask you about another one of your incredibly celebrated works, and that is the Yad Vashem Holocaust History Museum in Israel. Elie Wiesel, the Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor, spoke at the museum's dedication in 2005. Take a listen to what he said then.

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Speaker 3: As you walk through the museum so magnificently conceived by Moshe Safdie, you wonder, where is the place of rage in all of that? How come to the Jewish people. When we discovered the magnitude of cruelty and the consequences of hatred, how come that we were not possessed by an extraordinary implacable rage.

MG: What did you put in the design of that museum to make it as poignant as what it was representing, but also to to his point, to capture some of that rage that people felt?

MOSHE SAFDIE: Well, you brought me to tears. I haven't heard his voice since he uttered them at the opening of Yad Vashem, which is 17 years ago, I think. And it brought me to tears then. And. You did it again. Hmm. To me it was not about rage, although I kept thinking as I came to work on Yad Vashem. To think about it is how do you create a space where the narrative is one of the most horrific stories in in human history? And I thought, it cannot be a building business as usual. In fact, I felt it should be a building, and hence the idea of cutting through the mountain and creating what is almost a cave like or a quarry like space that's that's carved into the mountain where the earth is, the container of the chambers in which the story is told. And you get deeper into the earth as you come through the narrative with a sense of of the weight of being underground. But then I felt that with all the anguish, I would use the word anguish and rage. In the final analysis, we prevailed. And so the ramp that cuts through the mountain begins rising slowly, and you then burst out of the mountain on the opposite side to light and to life, to the Jerusalem forest, to the greenery. And my sense was we have rage, but we have prevailed here. We are alive. And the Jerusalem forest is the evidence of it.

MG: After your work on the Yad Vashem Museum, you told an anecdote in the book about how you were once asked whether you would build a museum to commemorate the plight of the Palestinians following the establishment of the state of Israel. What did you say in response to that question?

MOSHE SAFDIE: This was in a London, the BBC, a programme with a large audience, and Palestinians came, I suppose, with the intent to demonstrate. Against against the presence of of an Israeli architect. And a dialogue ensued in which I think some of the words of what I said about my principles and my beliefs changed the mood. And at one point, I was asked, would you design the museum of the Nakba? The Nakba is the the the disaster that befell the Palestinians in 1948. And I said that I thought that such a museum should be designed by Palestinian group of architects appropriately, and then they responded, Would you agree to work with them if you were invited? And I said, it would be my honour.

MG: Why did you say that?

MOSHE SAFDIE: Because I felt that a museum for the Palestinians to remember and experience The Nakba is a noble task to do. I think the Nakba should be acknowledged. I think one of the mistakes of Israelis general and officialdom in Israel particularly is not to acknowledge the Nakba. It did occur. It brought about a lot of suffering and loss, and I would feel very comfortable as an architect contributing to its conception.

MG: It speaks in some ways to a little bit of what we were talking about earlier, which is the role of the architect in society. What do you see as your role?

MOSHE SAFDIE: I think I have to remind myself that I'm only an architect because in our role as architects, we think we can change things dramatically. We can reshape cities, we can bring about new transportation modes. Of course, we can't do any of those things on our own, but we can point the way. I think as an architect, my role is to conceive of the best possible environmental solutions to the problems at hand. And the problems at hand today are how to deal with megacities and high density all over the world. It used to be just in the mega cities, but you know, you look at downtown Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal today saw the same problem. It's enormous densities, it's congestion. And that's the problem of the day. And we need to come up with humane and uplifting design solutions. And that means not it means conceiving them. It means partaking of the education process to convince people outside architecture why they're needed and to try and even influence the body politic that to move towards their realisation. So it's more than just providing a service. I mean, an architect is just, you know, doing his thing simply can say I provide a service. The client comes to me and asked me to design a house or it could be a school or could be an office building and I provide a service and do my best. That doesn't change things. But if you want to change things for the better and you look at our cities today and I feel we have to change them for the better because they're not getting any better just by letting the marketplace act unimpeded. Then you've got to try and do it by going beyond just providing a service, but by becoming a force of influence in the culture. And that is the higher calling of architecture, just like any profession has a higher calling.

MG: Is that about suggesting ideas that, you know, politicians, administrators would have you may not be willing to suggest? One of the things that you raise in the book is the idea of a city without private cars and some sort of in-car dispensing service. You compare it to almost like a Coke machine where the bottle comes out, the car comes out of the ground for those who need a hired car. Is it are those types of things that an architect can suggest just to get the conversation going?

MOSHE SAFDIE: Absolutely. In fact, I wrote the book The City After the Automobile, and it was not- it's a somewhat misleading title because I wasn't suggested we give up the mobility that cars provide us. But I was saying if we didn't own cars personally and we had them on demand as we needed them, just like the bicycles, then the city would transform. They'd be half as many or third many vehicles. There'd be less parking. I mean, everything would transform for the better. Since then, we've got Zipcar and a lot of companies are now looking at cars on demand that are left there, like bicycles and picked up at will. So I think it's even beginning, beginning already to evolve. But this is precisely the kind of ideas that architects and urbanists need to come up with, which provide a framework for the possibility of industry and the private sector working with the public sector to start bringing it towards realisation. In fact, my own experience is that the best things ever happen when there's a creative cooperation between the private and public sector.

MG: What about the one of the big burning issues, obviously, that the world is facing? And that's the issue of climate change. We've seen the devastation of a hurricane in Atlantic, Canada. There are more frequent and more extreme weather events that are happening. What's the role of an architect in building spaces that work with with the environment that we're living in right now?

MOSHE SAFDIE: There are, I mean, in that sense, I think the role of the architect is very much integrated with the role of the urban designer and the city planner, because the impact on the environment that is created by building, which is enormous, is not only by the buildings we build, but the infrastructure that it requires by definition to service. So if we build- if, for example, we build suburbia after suburbia, the impact of it is that you have to have cars to communicate and therefore we have all the pollution that that generates. So our responsibility is to design uplifting, wholesome buildings, which is tougher to do than your ordinary cookie cutter building, which are sustainable and energy efficient and and minimise the carbon footprint. But at the same time to choose urban forms and typologies, which also imply we all require an infrastructure which is in itself efficient. Hence the idea of automobile by demand is more efficient than owning cars by the millions, and that electric vehicles on demand is more efficient than fossil fuel and and so on and so forth, ad infinitum, so that we must always look at the urban implication of the architecture as well as the architecture itself.

MG: Before I let you go, let me ask you two quick final questions. One is. You're in your mid-eighties right now. You're still very active and busy in the work that you do. Do you ever think about about retiring but slowing that down?

MOSHE SAFDIE: I currently I can't even imagine thinking this way. I think I think the opportunities that offered us to design are amazing and I'm enjoying every moment of it. So as long as my health and my and the clarity of my mind prevail, I expect to keep going. I don't can't see myself retiring.

MG: The last question is, do you ever. Watch people in your buildings and watch people enjoy your buildings. I don't know if you ever go if you in Vancouver at the Vancouver Public Library or I think of the National Gallery where there are thousands and thousands of people walking through that space. Do you ever watch how they interact with that space?

MOSHE SAFDIE: You're talking about my favourite pastime. I mean, first of all, the greatest moment of joy as an architect is when your building opens and it's just open and the public pauses and it becomes theirs, you know, it becomes part of the public realm. And whether it was when the National Gallery opened first or the Jewel Project at Changi Airport or Marina Bay Sands or or even Habitat, if you go back 55 years when the public came in and the sort of expressions of awe and the cameras. Today it's today it's Instagram and TikTok. You know that you've succeeded in doing something that moves them and coming back to buildings years after and just watching people silently incognito is one of my great pleasures.

MG: It's a real pleasure to talk to you. This is a great career and one that, as you say, shows no sign of slowing down. Moshe Safdie, thank you very much.

MOSHE SAFDIE: Thank you.

MG: Moshe Safdie's new book is If Walls Could Speak: My Life in Architecture. Well, coming up after your regional update.

SOUNDCLIP

I always say this, you know, the communities has the answers it needs to its own problems. And we're always quick to go in and tell them what they need to do. And I do the opposite. And I go in and I ask the communities, what do they need? Speaking with the elders first, you know, asking the elders, teach me, teach me about your history. Teach me about what happened in your commune. Teach me about how did your community get into this trauma in this crisis and the impacts of being involved every day with the criminal justice system.

MG: How a Yukon Group is working to change, how policing interacts with indigenous communities, and what happened when a repeat violent sex offender was set to return to the remote community of Old Crow Yukon. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. We're back in 90 seconds.

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How to fix police relations with Indigenous communities

Guest: Chief Dana Tizya Tramm,, Gina Nagano

MG: Hello again. I'm Matt Galloway. You're listening to The Current. It is fair to say that the community of Old Crow Yukon is remote. It sits north of the Arctic Circle, at the edge of the territory, at the edge of the country in many ways. About 250 people live there. The only way in and out is by air. And so late last week, community leaders were shocked to learn that a man convicted of violent assaults and sexual assaults was to be released on bail and sent there. The very next day, the Vuntut Gwichin government passed a resolution issuing a community emergency declaration and order. That order makes it illegal for Christopher Russell Schafer to enter the community of Old Crow. Vuntut Gwitchin chief Dana Tizza Tramm is in Whitehorse today. Chief, good morning.

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: [Indigenous speech], good morning.

MG: How did you learn that Christopher Schafer would be returning to Old Crow?

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: But we were in the middle of a governmental function or General Assembly where our community members gather, which triggers a General Assembly, whereupon they can pass resolutions to our government. We were on the fifth and final day going into about 6:00 in the evening, working overtime as a community when the local RCMP came by and they had come back to their detachments at the end of the day on a Friday, just before the Thanksgiving weekend, and there was a piece of paper sitting on their fax machine, which in fact was a release order from the Yukon Territorial Court, releasing Mr. Schafer on newer charges. And one of the only conditions under that court order was for Mr. Schafer to fly directly to the community of Oak Grove the next day.

MG: What was your initial reaction to all of it? There's a lot in what you just said, including the piece of paper sitting on the fax machine. What was your reaction to that?

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: Well, first I was I think the the air was sucked out of my lungs because we had been going over, you know, day by day. I was doing 12, 13 hour shifts. And we were in this really big function in the government. And for this to come about, especially when over the course of the week the community did some really difficult work, um, you know, the layers of historical and compound traumas with the years of death and so much of what the community has been through during the pandemic for this to come at that point, I felt I couldn't believe it that this was done. And, you know, shortly after the shock really came in that this was happening without consultation, without notification, especially when we have court documents going back to 2019 all the way to today, which has the same theme, which is not having any infrastructure in the community, no clinical mental health staff, two RCMP officers, a community that does not have the resources to facilitate reintegration on this level in a remote village. And to be done so in such a way was, I think, truly an affront and ultimately an insult to everybody involved, as this really feels like we were set up to fail, and so was Mr. Schafer.

MG: And so the event that Gretchen government passed, as I mentioned, this emergency declaration and order, which makes it illegal for him to come to the community. Why did you feel that that was the only option that you had?

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: We happen to have in the room our General Assembly, our people, which is a branch of our government. We also had our legal resources in the same room. So when we brought this discussion up, the community very quickly, the conversation went very quickly and it became clear very quickly that the community wanted to declare a state of emergency. And our community emergency act under Vuntut Gwich'in self-governing First Nation law, was utilised during the pandemic to control who was coming in and out of the community through our local airline, which is the only way in and out of the most Northwestern community in Canada. So this was the only option provided to the Vuntut Gwitchin to stop this process, to slow it down, and to add some some sanity, add their voice to the matter. So a state of emergency was declared at 10 p.m. that evening. We got to work right away sending this document out even nationwide to individuals such as Minister Alemany.

MG: You said in some ways that this the whole process of this was, you know, set up to fail, set up to fail for the community, but also for this individual. What does this tell you? What does the whole process tell you about the relationship between your community and the justice system?

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: Well, quite honestly, what it feels like right now is the justice system is a really simple and lame maze. And, you know, people who are in it can learn the inside of it and just go through the motions, because this goes all the way back to Mr. Schaefer's release from British Columbia, where he was thrown into the Yukon without any conditions. And back then we had to utilise this quasi applicable 810 order to get him into custody in the Yukon and to pass orders on on his freedom for a modicum of of safety of whereabouts, but also rehabilitation. And now here we are. Once we know about this issue, then the Yukon Territorial Court decided to do the same thing to Old Crow, to push this individual out of the system and into an intricate matrix of intertwined lives and experiences that are small communities out on the land and provided no resources on top of this, not even notification or consultation.

MG: So we're about to hear from Gina Nagano. I spoke with her when I was up in Whitehorse a few weeks back about a better relationship between the criminal justice system, between policing and communities in the north, indigenous communities in particular. When you take a look at this situation just in the last couple of minutes that we have. What would work better? What would you want to see in future so that this doesn't repeat itself?

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: We have a pathway forward with national enquiries into missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls with the local plans here in the Yukon Territory. Some of these things were taking place and even Yukon was making its submissions to the national enquiry in 2018. These are parallel and they're going side by side and this now is showing us where there are major gaps in our system. This is about support and we need the Federal Government and even Mr. Lametti to come to the Yukon Territory to hear from our people out on the land, what their experiences are and what their expectations are, which line up with these national and regional documents that are asking for resources to be applied. This requires support for our RCMP officers who are already in our communities acting as nurses and mental health staff as well on top of their duties. This is talking to us about how and what goes before justice and their support through this process as well. And from the women and the girls in my community who spoke very loudly before mine, departed the community to come to Whitehorse to be a part of these proceedings. They have called that it is time that we move from speaking into action. And when we have been discussing this with courts, with caseworkers, with everyone for since 2019. For this to happen, it illuminates this and these gaps to us and where we need our attention, like science in Las Vegas, it couldn't be more clear.

MG: We will speak more about this certainly as this unfolds in the meantime. It's always good to talk to you, Chief. Thank you very much.

CHIEF DANA TIZYA TRAMM: I appreciate it.

MG: Chief Dana Tizya Tramm is the chief of the Vuntut Gwitchin. He was in Whitehorse. The Yukon government sent us a statement about this which reads in part, The courts are independent from government, and as this matter is currently before the courts, we will not be providing further comment. In the wake of this news from Old Crow and in the wake of last month's stabbings on the James Smith Cree nation in Saskatchewan, there has been, as I mentioned, a renewed discussion around how indigenous communities can be better served by law enforcement and the criminal justice system. When I was in Yukon a few weeks ago, I spoke with Gina Nagano. She's president and community safety specialist for House of Wolf and Associates, and she's working in five Yukon communities on a range of different programmes, including in some cases introducing safety officers who live full time in that community. Gina and I sat down for a conversation at her very busy office in Whitehorse.

SOUNDCLIP

MG: Tell us what House of Wolf is.

GINA NAGANO: House of Wolf is actually a business that I created. It's a business around community safety. I wanted something different. I wanted something different in the direction of around justice and particular policing. I know from my past career and well, today, just about 37 years in the overall justice system, I know our communities are still hurting. I know we're still dealing with a lot of trauma, a lot of crisis. And police are where we were more reactionary, unfortunately, than we were preventive. So that's the journey the with House of Wolf. I just wanted to do something much more different for our communities that worked.

MG: Why did you want to be in the RCMP?

GINA NAGANO: Actually, believe it or not, since I was in grade two, I always wanted to be a police officer. I started early in my career. I was 15 years old when I started doing matron duty in the guard sales in Dawson City, and then my older brother became a police officer. It continued to inspire me more, and at that time I had a great group of police officers that were more involved with the community, and that's what I wanted to do. And I persisted. When I was 16, I applied. They told me you had to wait for your 18, and I reapplied when I was 18 and I got in what is 19?

MG: What did you see? I want to talk about what's wrong, but what did you see that was right in terms of the work that those police officers that you saw growing up, that work that they were doing, what was going right there?

GINA NAGANO: The presence, the the community presence. And I remember they participated with us in baseball. You know, they coached the Dawson, my brothers, actually, in in baseball. Their interaction with the communities, their interactions with the youth. I saw that as a very positive role model.

MG: And what was what's gone wrong then? I mean, how has that broken down across the country?

GINA NAGANO: Well, I think it's in many ways, if you want to talk about history. You know, one of the things that we I didn't know at the time when I was a police officer was that the RCMP in the Yukon and around the rest of the country, they were a part of the gathering of the children, especially when they're young, you know, being five years old and to residential schools. And, you know, the threat that was there was that if if they didn't give up your child, that your parents would go to jail. And I didn't know that until I was about 36, 37, when I did my own personal training on Aboriginalperceptions to understand the history of Canada. And I think that really shifted and brought a lot of light into me of, of what we're actually doing and what I was doing as a police officer at the time. You know, I was got into policing and we went into law enforcement. You know, how many individuals are you picking up? How many people you're charging, how many people are, you know, incarcerated and the overall justice system? And to me, it was total black and white thinking when I got to the policing world.

MG: What was it like for you to learn that?

GINA NAGANO: It was it was very humbling to learn in the sense that my family, my mother, her mother, her parents were impacted as a result of residential school. They went to residential school. I didn't know that. You know, my mother and her siblings all went to residential school. And being indigenous myself, that was never talked about growing up, you know, and it was a healing journey for myself, but it was also a shift for me in terms of how I wanted to do policing within our communities, in particular indigenous communities that have been impacted. You know, and I'm not talking about years, I'm talking about two generations, you know, at least two or three generations.

MG: What does that look like now? I mean, there's a historical piece to that. But if you take a look at your community now, what's wrong? When it comes to the relationship between the community and the police.

GINA NAGANO: I think what's wrong is that as we identify more and more in the communities about the enforcement component of policing and we look at the mainstream Western justice system, it's about incarceration. You know, it's looking about how do we get somebody into the court systems. It's about charging somebody, you know, it's not about repairing the harm that was done. And when you see this Western justice system that doesn't meet the traditional justice system, and I talk about traditional I talk about the traditional values or traditional ways within our community. And when you've got mainstream justice system is about punishment. And those are two systems and I always call it diametrically opposed. It's like those two end of the batteries that will never come together. But somehow we have to find a way to work together. Will it ever happen? I think so. I believe I want to believe so because we have different generations now that are in the system that are learning more about our history. So I really think there is an opportunity. What I do see, though, when I work in our communities is that we are still dealing with the aftermath, with the trauma, with the crisis, with the impacts of the colonisation and not just residential schools, but you're talking about the 60 scoops. You're talking about the Indian Act. You know, you're talking about all these things have impacted our people. And sometimes I think people think that's happened a long, long, long hundred years ago. But it's not when you go back about 45 years ago, this still happened. Right. And we're still dealing with the aftermath of that.

MG: So let me ask you about the specifics. I mean, what does that look like in the community if people don't trust the police?

GINA NAGANO: Oh, boy. That's a really good question. And what happens is, like we when we go into the communities and do the work we do around community safety is that we look at the number of sort of calls that the police services have dealt with. And we look at a trend of over three years to say, okay, how many calls of police services, for example, have call and done the urban first nation received year in one year. And when the statistics tell us there's 1045 calls in one year, you know, a community of 250 homes, 500 people. What it indicates to me is that every person made two phone calls to the police throughout the year. I used to live 5 minutes away from the community, which is urban, and I didn't see the police in three years that I was there. So when you look at those staggering stats and the number of calls of services that this community gets, that's police 365 days a year, 24/7, and have two satellite police officers you want you wonder what's going on in the community and about the number of calls and why they're getting these calls.

MG: So you saw an opportunity there. Tell me how you you approached policing and community safety differently through the work that you're doing now.

GINA NAGANO: I always say this, you know, the communities has the answers it needs to its own problems. And we're always quick to go in and tell them what they need to do. And I do the opposite. And I go in and I ask the communities, what do they need? What are your priorities? You know, looking at doing a community engagement session, for example, looking at speaking with the elders first, you know, asking the elders, teach me, teach me about your history. Teach me about what happened in your commune. Teach me about what happened over time. How did your community get into this trauma in this crisis and the impacts of being involved every day with the criminal justice system? They're looking for the help, you know, and I see that in terms of the reaching out, saying, you know, we're in such trauma. I'm going to take you to a community like I was called to call in [unintelligible] first nation. And Selkirk First Nation and their community was such crisis, you know, because they said they're dealing with drugs, they're dealing with the alcohol, they're doing domestic violence. They're dealing with so much high crime rates. And they're they're asking for for me to come in and out of awful socials, to come in and say, okay, we need something done differently. What's happened in the past with the having the police in the communities, they've been here for 100 years. Nothing has changed. You know what's changed the over incarceration rates of our indigenous people. That's what's changed. It grew. It grew and grew and grew. You know, so we're still overpopulated in that system, so we need something done differently. So there's a murder that happened in the community of Coleman Dunn of a young woman. And I was called up there to to help out the community to say, let's do something different, cause what they're doing is not working. You know, we in the community, let's identify your prayers of the in your community with your voice. You tell me what you need from once we listen, we put together the emergent themes that are coming out of it. You know, what is the priorities that community well. For example, drug trafficking of drug trafficking is that prior to the community? We will look at that. We will say, okay, how do we work with that and how do we make it a priority? So we're going to implement with part of the work plan. They go to the police and I say, okay, for example, what are your policing priorities for your community? Well, we they may say, well, it's the Motor Vehicle Act. I go, okay, well, if you're policing praise the motor vehicle Act from the RCMP side and the community is telling you there's drug trafficking issues, I think we're not hearing one another. You know, so the idea is to bridge those two together to say, okay, let's look at partnering here. Once we got in and we've done the community assessment, we look at other things, we researched the policies within the community, we look at the number, we look at the housing needs, we look at the social needs. We look at how many individuals maybe perhaps of social assistance, what are the educational needs. So we do what they call we look at research documents. Most of our indigenous communities in Canada have been researched out. There's been research everywhere and every comes in and leaves a piece of paper on the table, but nobody supports the implementation component of it. So once we identify the priorities and some committees can have three priorities, some come up with five prairies, could be bootlegging, drug trafficking, need better communications in the community, there's dogs running at large, etc. Or, we need a community safety officer programme and we develop a work plan with them. We provide two reports. I provide a community assessment report, but I also do a what they call crime prevention through environmental design, and that's looking at the physical infrastructure of the community to make it safer so it can be put in stop signs up in the community, putting numbers on houses. So the justice professionals, the police can respond to emergency situations. We could be looking at reducing the traffic or slowing down the speeding in the community. So beautification is also part of it in the community because you bring that pride back into the community. And we want we develop the work plan with their priorities and we help implement. And that's where funding would come in from other sources.

MG: Are you working with police once you learn what those communities need? Are you working with the established police forces? Are you putting in community safety officers on the ground? What would change in those communities once they have said, this is what we need, this is what's going on and this is what our priorities are?

GINA NAGANO: Oh, I'll take you back to Coleman Dunn. When I said this community had 1076 calls and we started working in the community, developing the community safety plan, we did a community cleanup. We had three levels of a community cleanup. We did the beautification. We produced, you know, implemented some of the reduced speed limit in the community, the housing numbers. People did a garbage cleanup in one community. We took out over £200,000 of garbage and debris and 130 abandoned vehicles. And the pride started coming back in the community and working with the justice to reduce the number of people that were in the community that didn't belong in the community. And I see that more of the sense of not belong, but individuals that had we're invited up there because one person would go out and do a. Bail out everybody from the court systems and bring them up to the community. So once we implemented all those measures and start rolling out the priorities, I contacted the local RCMP detachment commander who's working with and I said, you know, Inspector, can you just tell me what are the number of calls that the RCMP has received in the community that we're working at compared to last year? And he emails me back and he says, 666 and I go, No, no, no, no. I need the chief wants to know the number of police service calls for the whole year. He goes, No, Gina. 666 We reduced the number of police calls by 40% and I went, I've never heard of that anywhere in one year, 40%, you know, and if you look at that, the cost to the overall justice system, the cost to the individuals, you you don't find that anywhere. So what I look at and I analyse and I say, okay, well, these aren't police issues, these are social issues, issues in the community where I go back to the chief and counsel to the leadership and say, okay, we need to have a we need to relook at this. Even though I've identified with you in the past three or four trends that you've had, you know, 60 calls of domestic violence, etc.. Well, those calls are issues with individuals and families that we really need to have a look at and provide those case management systems to allow them to start learning on their healing power.

MG: So it changes in some ways the idea of community safety. What have you heard specifically from members of communities about the change in their community after the work that you've done?

GINA NAGANO: They're amazed. They're amazed like, you know, when the women say we don't need to sleep with baseball bats behind their doors anymore, that's a shift. Yes. When you have elders that say we can safely walk about in our communities, when we can have our children come out and play in our communities. You know, and one of the things that I also look at is I'm doing my master's in community economic development. And I was tied together, for example, I call it the community economic gap. And over on one side here is that we have our communities in crisis, in need of healing, because you're in this cycle of colonisation and this whole whole unhealthiness. And how do you shift them to be a part of- over here, many of our self-governing first nations are thriving. You know, resource industries don't compensation dollars. You know, they have their own development corporations, etc., and they're thriving over here. But our communities are still battling, you know, they're still dealing with the trauma of that crisis, the aftermath. And and our people are, you know, in, you know, substance users, right. In the alcoholism or drugs and drugs. And and what I'm trying to do is shift the entire community and the citizens over to the other side where they're contributing to the economics and sustainability. Once we shift the they're sustainable in their own way. And that's where you talk about self-governance and true self governance, and that's where the shift really is. And calling on, I refer to them is a great example when you can, you know, after a year of doing the good work we do, they hosted the Toronto Blue Jays Foundation. Their community and I had people come up and go. It was, you know, I feel embarrassed. I've never I've never been into the community of Cleveland down it's a subdivision just up the hill. And he says, you know, this is amazing. It's amazing what we're doing up here. You know, they've got a brand new administration building going on. You know, they're they're in land leasing right now. They're they're employed. And when you see those shifts from a community that's in disparity over to prosperity through empowering themselves and shifting and healing their citizens, that community will continue to thrive and be part of the overall economy. Instead of being dependent.

MG: You're seeing real impacts in the community. Where would you want to see this approach kind of go in the future?

GINA NAGANO: First of all, I'd love to see the rest of our communities in Yukon to go through the community safety plan. I want to thank, you know, Yukon government who supports us. I'd really love to see it go all across Canada. And, you know, and it's not just a programme that's suited for just indigenous communities, it's it's a programme that works in all communities. I can see it in the downtown core as I can see it happening here in the city of Whitehorse. I can see it happening in other cities throughout Canada, but I'm willing to take this throughout the world, you know, and in particular our indigenous communities around the world that also have been impacted by these atrocities, of these policies that have been imposed.

MG: Gina, thank you very much.

GINA NAGANO: Thank you very much.

MG: Gina Nagano is president and community safety specialist for House of Wolf and Associates. We spoke in Whitehorse. That is the current for this Wednesday. q's up next on CBC Radio One. Today, the musician Margo Price speaks with Tom Power. That is coming your way in just a moment. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening and we'll see you tomorrow.

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