June 21, 2017
The Chinese and Southeast Asian Legal Clinic (CSALC) would like to take the opportunity of the National Aboriginal Day to rededicate our board and staff members to the 94 Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
As a community based legal clinic serving mostly newcomers, immigrants, refugees and people with precarious status, we thank the Indigenous Peoples for allowing us to settle on these lands.
Over the last ten years, through our work as a steering committee member of the Colour of Poverty/Colour of Change Network (COP/COC), CSALC has begun the process of acknowledging and reflecting the history of the colonization of Indigenous peoples in our work, while respecting the nation to nation relationships between Indigenous Peoples and the Canadian state. In November 2013, we have had the honour of co-sponsoring a conference, entitled From Remembrance to Reconciliation with the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, along with COP/COC, the Ontario Human Rights Commission and OCASI – Ontario Council of Agencies Serving Immigrants, to explore the role of communities of colour in achieving reconciliation. We helped draft the enclosed “Commitment to Truth and Reconciliation” and have signed on to the Commitment. We have also taken steps to support the concerns and issues of the Indigenous communities in our reports to the United Nations on Canada’s compliance with various human rights treaties.
Through both personal acts of respect, and our clinic’s advocacy work in the promotion of social justice and human rights, the board and staff of CSALC vow to continue to commit ourselves to understanding and honouring Treaty relationships and to work in solidarity with the Indigenous Peoples of these lands and territories.