EDITOR:
Skmagn -The Waiting Place - a beautiful name to capture symbolically the waiting of the First Nations for justice denied them for centuries. To put this Mi’kmaq name first and only name on this parcel of their land would be appropriate. To leave alongside this name, the colonizer’s name to placate the ancestors is to re-colonize. That is not reconciliation or a step forward.
To claim that this to highlight the real history is to raise the oppression of the first peoples once again and say we are still in charge. The colonizer’s name carries with it the exploitation, isolationist policies, and institutions, began at that time which has as its results - the dispersal; displacement; dispossession of the Island’s First Nation.
“The Waiting Place”- Skmagn could be that sign of a beginning step in reconciliation. Let it stand alone as a sign to our First Nation that we want to start a new era which recognizes and incorporates as much as possible that 10,000 year history of the first caretakers of this land, letting go of policies ,names and institutions which have done such horrific damage.
Philip Callaghan,
Island Peace Committee,
Charlottetown
