Reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples

Board Voice is committed to advancing reconciliation for Indigenous Peoples across our own services, processes and structures as well as through the supports and information we provide to our member organizations. As members of BC’s Social Services Sector Roundtable, we report at each meeting on specific actions taken around reconciliation, using four key documents as a framework for these actions.

These documents are: the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Calls to Action; the final report of the National Inquiry on Missing and Murdered Women and Indigenous Girls; the Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples Act; and cultural safety as defined by the office of Indigenous Recruitment and Retention within the Ministry of Children and Family Development.

Government and Indigenous representatives at the Roundtable have provided us with calls to action and leading practices in cultural safety from all of these four documents, gathered into a single spreadsheet. Download that spreadsheet here. We will be bringing other resources to this section of our website and in our communications with BC community social service organizations as they follow their own journeys toward reconciliation.

As a Roundtable member, Board Voice has been asked to reflect regularly on the following questions, and to encourage our member organizations and other social-service bodies in BC to do the same:

What role can your organization play?
What actions can your organization take?
What distinctions-based approaches can your organization take?
Are there barriers that your organization can identify and remove?

As part of that work, we highly recommend that you take a look at this plan for advancing truth and reconciliation in the work of Community Living BC. The plan was put together by Joanne Mills, Executive Director of Indigenous Relations at CLBC, for presentation to the Jan. 21, 2022 meeting of the Social Services Sector Roundtable. What she lays out in the report is an excellent model for any organization wanting to figure out their own plan for bringing the principles of truth and reconciliation to life for their agency.

For a deeper read, here are the Draft Principles that Guide the Province of British Columbia’s Relationship with Indigenous Peoples, as well as the Reimagining Community Inclusion report, both of which are noted as foundations for Joanne Mills’ report. There’s also a plain-language summary of the RCI report.