COLUMN: Mayor’s monumental moment ignores Indigenous history – OrilliaMatters.com
May 25, 2026
‘Has the imagery of the monument been seared so far into the mayor’s psyche that he can’t ever see us as equals, as someone worth consulting?’
Arrival of European explorers/settlers, the fur trade, broken treaties, removing traditional governance, displacement to reserves, residential schools, Indian day schools, pipelines through unceded territory, mercury poisoning, dumping of nuclear waste, the Ring of Fire, man camps, poisoning of clean water supplies, air and water pollution, human trafficking, missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls, residential school denialism, inadequate housing on reserves, no potable water, deletion of laws protecting endangered species in order to get at resources in First Nation territories, ignoring Supreme Court decisions favouring First Nations, ignoring Canadian constitutional provisions protecting First Nation rights, racist legislation, the Indian Act and status cards, paying taxes (yes, we do), lack of consultation to achieve free, prior and informed consent on Indigenous issues — the list goes on.
