THURSDAY
MARCH 15, 2018
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Healing Forest committee has public disagreement over Indigenous monument BY DESMOND DEVOY
desmond.devoy@metroland.com
A monument meant to bring healing has instead brought discord among proponents of the plan. Two delegations from the same citizen’s committee — the National Healing Forest in Perth — put forward two proposals, and two different visions, for the proposed plaque in Perth, and, at the same time, publicly aired the differences on the committee, at Perth town council’s committee of the whole meeting on Tuesday, March 6. Andrew MacDonald told the council that it was his belief that the original intent for the monument, proposed for Last Duel Park, would “acknowledge the horrors done in residential schools,” MacDonald said. Instead, he was concerned that the Perth monument had instead morphed into a recognition of missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls. “I was concerned that it included women, girls, and two-spirited people, but did not include men,” said MacDonald, a member of the National Healing Forest in Perth committee. He felt that this change was
“bringing in a political dimension which was not part of the original proposal. I think we need to address the full scope of the problem.” He claimed that there were twice as many Indigenous men and boys who have gone missing or been murdered as there were Indigenous women and girls. “(Men) are not an add-on,” he said. In a century from now “when the political winds have shifted,” and the monument, as it is now proposed, still stands on the banks of the Tay Canal, the females will be remembered — but not the males, he said. “It’s not a women’s issue. It’s a Canadian issue,” he said. He added that the proposal was “one-sided (in) nature,” and that people were “not seeing the whole dimension of an issue we are hoping to heal.” The deceased are now “lying down together in death, with only half the story being told.” Coun. Judy Brown, who was chairing the meeting, told MacDonald and Roberta Petes, who was representing the National Healing Forest in Perth committee, sitting just feet away from MacDonald as he gave his See INDIGENOUS page P5
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