‘Tangible commitment’

Dear Editor:

Land acknowledgements, which recognize Indigenous peoples as the first human inhabitants of the land we call Canada, are becoming more common. Such acknowledgements affirm the continuing significance and validity of the treaties.

Those who live in the Haldimand Tract, that is the land six miles either side of the Grand River from its headwaters to where it empties into Lake Erie, live on treaty land.

Sept. 30 is the National Day for Healing and Reconciliation, a day to reflect on how settlers have failed to keep the treaties and have broken the relationship with Indigenous peoples.

I humbly offer a suggestion regarding what part of living towards reconciliation might mean for those of us living in the Haldimand Tract. I make this suggestion recognizing that I am a settler, I make no claim for it other than to hope it might be received into the conversation of what living together in a good way could mean.

Might settlers acknowledge that we live on treaty land by paying a 1% levy on every land sale, every land transfer, within the Haldimand Tract to the Six Nations elected council and the Haudenosaunee Confederacy Chiefs Council.

This would be a tangible commitment to living as treaty people.

Peter Bush, Fergus