Two new Heritage Minute videos have been released that look at areas of First Nations history that some consider to be 鈥渂lack marks鈥� in Canadian history.
The commercials released to coincide with National Aboriginal Day on Tuesday, focus on residential schools and broken treaties only a year after the that calls for a process of healing based, in part, on Canadians acknowledging history.
鈥淎s a country, we advance by learning from lessons of our past, both good and bad,鈥� said Anthony Wilson-Smith, president and CEO of Historica Canada in a press release. 鈥淚n this case the path to reconciliation begins with education.鈥�
The two commercials focus on darker moments in Canadian history unlike past commercials that have concentrated on recognizable Canadian figures and momentous events. According to Wilson-Smith, acknowledging past wrongs committed against First Nations people is the only way to move forward.
One of the short films features Chanie Wenjack, a 12-year-old Anishinaabe boy who ran away from the Cecilia Jeffrey Indian Residential School in Kenora, Ont. but died from hunger and exposure. The dramatization is narrated by his sister, Pearl Achneepineskum, a residential school survivor who speaks about Wenjack鈥檚 experience.
鈥淚 survived residential school,鈥� Achneepineskum says in the commercial. 鈥淢y brother Chanie did not.鈥�
The other Minute is about Treaty 9, a treaty signed by the Government of Canada and multiple First Nation band governments in Northern Ontario in 1905, to allow the two groups to share the land. The story is told by Rosary Spence, the great-granddaughter of George Spence, an 18-year-old Cree who witnessed the signing of the treaty and the broken promises that followed.
鈥淭reaties were essential to the creation of Canada. First Nation鈥檚 still fight for the agreements to be honoured,鈥� Alanis Obomsawin, one of the filmmakers, says in the Heritage Minute.
鈥淚f Canada is going to move towards reconciliation then we have to engage in some hard truths about residential schools and treaties,鈥� said Shane Belcourt, director of the two Heritage Minute commercials in the press release.
Both commercials were written by Canadian author Joseph Boyden, known for his historical fiction novels on the First Nations people. Boyden and Obomsawin both provided the ending narration for the commercials.
Historica Canada, an independent organization, is known for their Heritage Minute commercials detailing important moments in Canadian history including minutes on Canadian activist Nellie McClung, soldier and poet John McCrae and the Halifax explosion in 1917.
