I'll start off with your second question, because I have more in mind to say about that, and then I'll move on to the first one.

The way we have contacted communities so far, mostly as a result of COVID, has been through phone and online meetings. I first approach the band office, and usually it's the lands department. There's a lot of work being done on cemeteries in communities. It varies, of course, in each community, but it tends to be done by the lands department. Usually they have a plan in place for where the veterans might be buried, and they share that with us.

One of the components of the indigenous veterans initiative is that we provide an honorarium for a member of the community or the band office itself to carry out the research on identifying the unmarked graves of a veteran on our behalf. Out of the 45 communities we've worked with, about half have had a researcher. That person is crucial to the work we do, because they identify who is missing a grave marker. They'll also help us find the traditional name of the veteran when it's available.

Thanks to technology, it's kind of worked so far. We haven't necessarily had to go to any community so far to let them know about this work. I would say we're lucky when a community has veterans, as there tends to be a veteran culture in that community. We're connected with people who already work on the Remembrance Day committee or somebody who honours the veterans. Usually that person is already interested in the work we do, so we've been lucky in that sense.

Where it's been tricky, I think, is if there's less of a culture of Remembrance Day in a community. There isn't really a key person to go to, so that's one of the challenges, even though there might be veterans buried in an unmarked grave in that community.

That's in regard to the second question.

As for the first question, when we started this work, families were asking us for.... One of the components is that, if there's a culturally relevant symbol, the family has the choice to add it on the tombstone. This is different from non-indigenous veterans, where we usually offer the cross or a military crest. For indigenous veterans, if the community has a symbol or if the family themselves belong to a clan or have a family symbol, then we definitely allow and encourage the family to go with that symbol if they like.

One of the gaps we noticed is that the families were asking for a certain type of symbol, but we didn't really have any in stock. One of the ways we tackled this was by hiring a Cree artist, who created seven symbols based on the seven sacred teaching symbols. These are offered to family as one of the choices they have if they would like to add them. It's been popular. Many families ask for eagles or a feather, and those are already available through the symbols we offer.

Related to culture and a big component of the program is adding the traditional name of the veteran. It's retroactive, so if we've placed a tombstone in the past and did not add the traditional name, we'll go back and add it. It's for any new tombstones as well. The family also gets the choice of where that name is placed. Usually we follow the name, rank and unit, but sometimes the family wants the traditional name above the English name, and that's completely fine as well.

We try to work with families so the tombstone is as beautiful as they envision it to be. I would say that's how we tackle that.

Transcript

Discussions (0)