Reconciliation Toolkit: Ideas for Action
Published November 18, 2020
Ongoing legacies of colonialism continue to this day and show up as Indigenous people’s lack of access to education, health, child welfare, justice, and economic opportunities and prosperity. Indigenous cultures and languages have also been intentionally harmed through the colonial process.
Reconciliation is work that closes the discrepancies that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people and ensure that Indigenous cultures (including knowledge systems, oral histories, laws, protocols and connections to the land) and languages can thrive.
These suggestions are excerpted from our resource Building Better Relationships: A Reconciliation Toolkit. Download the full resource to learn more about how you and your co-op community can help work towards reconciliation between Indigenous and non-Indigenous people in Canada.
- Designate one or more units within your housing co-op for Indigenous families (ensure your co-op is actively working to understand how to build a safe and welcoming environment for Indigenous members).
- Take active steps to include Indigenous families in your housing co-op’s intake process, and to consciously remove barriers to their success in obtaining a unit within the co-op. Conduct a review of your advertising, application process, member orientation, and policies to see where they could be more welcoming and supportive of Indigenous people and communities and remove unintentional colonial biases.
- Host a fundraiser for a local Indigenous organization.
- Host a workshop on dismantling racism.
- Show your support at protests or marches that are working to create change around the gaps Indigenous peoples and communities face.
- Regularly promote the work of local Indigenous leaders (including youth leaders) through your co-op’s social media.
- Choose a topic within the Calls to Action (education, health, justice, etc.) that addresses a gap where you want to promote change. Host learning opportunities around that topic, highlight and support the work of local activists, and write to your government representatives to ask about progress on the related Calls to Action.
- Lend your space to an Indigenous organization to support their cultural work, like language classes, beading groups or pow-wow clubs. Provide your space at no cost and even provide some refreshments!
Click here to download this list as a printable PDF.
If your co-op is taking action on reconciliation, we’d love to hear about it. Let us know at info@chfcanada.coop.
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