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TIES Cross-Cultural Event Connects Newcomers and Indigenous Peoples

News

TIES (The Immigrant Education Society), in partnership with the Calgary Justice Film Festival, recently hosted a cross-cultural event connecting newcomers with Indigenous peoples.

The event at The Confluence Historic Site & Parkland on Oct. 8^th featured the screening of the powerful Indigenous-themed documentary We Were Taken, followed by a discussion with some survivors of the Sixties Scoop.

“Hosting events that connect newcomers with Indigenous cultures and histories is not merely an educational gesture,” TIES Settlement & Financial Literacy Manager Noha El Tanahi said.

“It is an essential part of welcome and belonging,”

“Having screenings like this, sharing the information, bringing in indigenous elders and community members to talk to newcomers about their real experience is extremely important,” Calgary Justice Film Festival Executive Director Rowan Fisher added.

“It changes the needle on reconciliation in Canada.”

First-Hand Experiences

Daniel Campbell, one of the event’s speakers, is the treasurer of the Sixties Scoop Indigenous Society of Alberta (SSISA).

The group describes the Sixties Scoop as a “catch-all name for a series of policies enacted by provincial child welfare authorities starting from the mid-1950’s, which saw thousands of Indigenous children taken from their homes and families, fostered out, or adopted.”

Campbell, who was featured in the documentary, believes it’s important that everyone, including newcomers, know what “really” happened.

“Hopefully, it brought awareness. Hopefully, it brought them to a part of Canada’s dark history that they probably wouldn’t have known if they hadn’t attended this screening,” he said.

For one immigrant woman in attendance, the film was eye-opening and heartbreaking.

“It was good and sad too. Thank you so much for sharing everything that they say,” she said.

Changing Hearts and Minds

El Tanahi pointed out that most newcomers don’t know much, or anything, about Canada’s history when it comes to Indigenous peoples.

She pointed to her own experience arriving in Canada and being told only negative things.

She doesn’t want other immigrants to experience what she did.

“It’s an opportunity to build the connection and the bridge between newcomers and the indigenous because there is a lot of misconception.”

“We want it to shine a lens on a really different type of indigenous experience that perhaps newcomers aren’t seeing or don’t have access to,” Fisher added.

Campbell pointed out it’s harmful to only “judge a book by its cover” and added that what people see on the streets of many Canadian cities is not the full story.