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February 2 and February 4, 2021 - Ontario Tech University students, staff and faculty, IECS’s Community Partners are please to present a presentation with Visiting Elder, Maurice Switzer
We are thrilled that Maurice Switzer has accepted our invitation to be the next Visiting Elder, although, he prefers to be referred to as “Helper-in-residence”.
Maurice Switzer, Bnesi, is a citizen of the Mississaugas of Alderville First Nation, where his grandfather Moses Muskrat Marsden was Chief in the early 1900s.
At various times, he has served as publisher of the Winnipeg Free Press (and managing editor of the Oshawa Times), communications director for the Assembly of First Nations and Union of Ontario Indians, adjunct professor of Indigenous studies on the Laurentian University campus, and a member of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. Maurice is currently on the board of the North Bay Indigenous Friendship Centre and the Nipissing University Indigenous Council on Education, and serves on advisory committees for the First Nation, Metis, and Inuit Education Association of Ontario, the Indigenous Human Rights Project, and on the Indigenous Reconciliation Advisory Group of the Ontario Human Rights Commission. His son and grandson are both Captains in the Canadian Armed Forces.
Maurice’s presentation will focus on:
We are all Treaty People
The country called Canada exists because First Nations who had enjoyed exclusive domain over these lands agreed to share the use of them with European settlers. In exchange, Indigenous peoples accepted promises of social and economic benefits that were to last in perpetuity, promises that have all been broken. Each and every day, Canadians enjoy the benefits of their treaty rights, while Indigenous peoples from coast to coast -- Wet'suet'en pipeline protesters in British Columbia and Mi'kmaq lobster fishers in Nova Scotia -- are still fighting to have their treaty rights "recognized and affirmed", as promised in Canada's Constitution.
Date: Tuesday, February 2, 2021 from 10:30 – 12:00 noon and Thursday, February 4, 2021 from 2:00 – 3:30 p.m.
Where: https://studentlife.ontariotechu.ca/services/community/indigenous/events/index.php - fill out the form and submit. You will receive an email at a later date with the link to the session.