Today@Dal

“With the raising of the Mi’kmaq First Nation flag here today, we welcome the First Nations community to our campus,” Dalhousie University Faculty of Agriculture Dean David Gray told an assembly of people gathered on the Bible Hill campus grounds Friday morning.

“And when I say our campus, I mean ‘our’ campus,” he said, turning to address members of the Sipekne’katik District Grand Council, seated to the right of the podium.

The flag raising represents the first permanent installation of the Grand Council flag within Nova Scotia and serves as recognition that the Dalhousie Agricultural Campus sits on traditional territory of the Mi’kmaq people, Gray said.

“The indigenous Mi’kmaq people have inhabited this land for thousands of years and during the late 1700s and early 1800s lived along the banks of the Salmon River, which runs between the Town of Truro and the Village of Bible Hill,” he said.

“Because of this history there is a very special relationship that needs to be acknowledged between Dalhousie University, the Faculty of Agriculture and the Millbrook First Nation community.”

Grand Council District Chief Ron Knockwood said installation of the flag offers verification of the historical significance of his people to the area.

“What it means to us as Mi’kmaq people is that there’s recognition, there’s a certain amount of pride, there’s education and a bit of a stamp of approval of who we are as a people,” he said.

“A lot of times Mi’kmaq people were always classified as second-class citizens. By acknowledging who we are as a people, from a basically mainstream society organization if you want, it sort of sets a tone that we’re digging our way out of that pit of second-class citizenship. It’s no more. We don’t want to be there, we never did want to be there.”

Knockwood said he was also pleased to have received a letter from Dalhousie president Richard Florizone acknowledging that the campus sits on traditional, unceded Mi’kmaq territory.

“We never ceded land to anyone or any organization,” he said. “So, that’s a big statement to make and people have to be educated. And that flag will represent that education, I think.”

Go to story (http://www.trurodaily.com/News/Local/2016-06-10/article-4556421/Flag-raising-recognizes-connection-between-Mi%26rsquo%3Bkmaq-First-Nation%2C-Dalhousie-AC/1)