So I'm going to play devils advocate for a minute. I'd love for someone to give me a rational explanation of what decolonization really means. I think most of what people want is a civil rights issue, but how do we de-colonize Canada? Not standing in people's way is an obvious start, but what action are people specifically looking for? I see "decolonization" as another version of populism, it sounds great and people love to cheer for it, but few can really explain how it will actually work.
We did do a whole society-wide exploration about this via the Truth and Reconciliation Commission work that has lots of ideas about this and what to do. The overall goal is allow for full social, cultural and economic participation of indigenous Canadians in our shared society.
I am not an expert here. But I'll break it down my interpretation of it as a simple ways:
- Truth - acknowledge indigenous Canadians and indigenous culture exist and are a foundation of our society, acknowledge specific wrongs were done, acknowledge discrimination existed and still exists in explicit and implicit ways, acknowledge and identify barriers and problems that need to be address to allow indigienous Canadians to participate and thrive in our shared society, acknowledging the many different and similar assets, strengths and values that are shared and contribute between Canada's peoples, indigenous or otherwise.
- Reconciliation - build a different future together, one that builds off the truths in concrete steps in small and big ways throughout many different areas of society to reach the goal - full social, economic and cultural participation of indigenous Canadians in society (importantly, it's a shared society for all, not "our" or "their" society).
How to apply this to a publicly-owned arena project?
Firstly, not all the elements apply in all things. That's the smooth-brain fallacy of reactionaries that don't want to learn anything. Often it goes something like "How can we can't possibly do all these 94 things about resolving historic issues with Canada's treatment of indigenous people about an arena!? I have no idea how it applies to an arena
so therefore we should do nothing".
That's silly. You don't have to do everything all the time when it's not relevant. What can we do?
First, acknowledge the arena is more important than a just a random development because it's a big publicly owned facility with significant cultural and landmark value. It has a unique and important role in all this. In other words, don't just make it a Stampede or Flames-specific thing that acknowledges 110 years of settler history, or 45 years of a sports team corporation. It is more than those things and should be clear to everyone through design, programming and operations that it's more than those things.
Second, make efforts through design, materials, operations and messaging. Consider materials and designs that acknowledge local indigenous histories, local ecosystem, local materials, local colour palettes etc.
Finally - operations. Keep access open to all, program with publicly-accessible events consistently (in addition to targeted stuff like Flames games, concerts). Community rink will play a role here, but the overall facility's role in community celebrations should be a real thing - community means the
whole community, it's not just for specific groups that are the main users to dictate everything to everyone else to fight for scraps.
