This piece originally appeared on the Toronto Star.
“What does reconciliation mean to you?”
I asked that question of Miles Richardson, a Haida leader, former chief commissioner of the B.C. Treaty Commission and a close friend since we started serving together on the board of the David Suzuki Foundation in 2001. I had recently come from a workshop discussion where I had earned criticism from an Indigenous leader for conflating reconciliation with forgiveness.
So, I was looking for an understanding of reconciliation that was deeper and more nuanced than the dictionary definition: “the restoration of friendly relations.”