Mélissa Gélinas LJI Reporter

During the City of Gatineau’s Commission-du-vivre-ensemble on November 14, Roxanne Lauzon Rankin, Apitipi Anicinapek, presented her role as regional Indigenous partnership advisor, as well as the status of the Indigenous initiative of working on reconciliation by developing different strategies to facilitate it.

“My mandate is to develop and maintain partnership relationships with regional Indigenous communities,” she explained. “This includes citizens, various organizations, partner institutions at the Outaouais Higher Education Hub (PESO) as well as the City of Gatineau. I bring together the different teams to work well on Indigenous files, by providing them with advice and support […]”.

“Currently, several new organizations and projects are emerging on city territory. It is important to consult Indigenous communities by developing relationships of trust with them,” she says.

There are many files concerning Indigenous challenges, services, committees and projects. “Currently, we are working on a project with the President of Higher Education regarding bullying experienced by Indigenous students in schools,” Lauzon Rankin noted. “The project should be presented at the end of February, as part of Anti-Bullying Week.”

“At the city level, we all have a liaison for Indigenous community consultations, whether at the level of urban planning services, sustainable development, mobility services or citizen interaction,” she said.

To coordinate everything well, it is important to draw up a list of everyone’s needs, both on the Indigenous and non-Indigenous sides. Lauzon Rankin stated, “We must ask ourselves, ‘What are the needs of non-Indigenous people?’ in order to work well with these communities. And ‘What do the Indigenous people need?’”

To do this, an action plan was developed to identify strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and challenges facing Indigenous people. This plan can be implemented both within the municipality and within PESO institutions. Lauzon Rankin stated, “Right now, one of the biggest issues concerns the nuclear plant in Chalk River.” (an incident at the nuclear reactor in 1952 that contaminated the water and air)

“One of the main observations I made is that there are no, or very few, policy procedures, official written processes,” she says. “We have to deal a lot on a case-by-case basis,” she adds. “Indigenous files are worked on, but not in a uniform or structured way. However, I have noticed a great desire to want to work together.”

According to Ms. Lauzon Rankin, optimizing resources and development will certainly increase the visibility of concrete actions and allow their implementation to be faster. Notably, several indigenization committees led by PESO are emerging in educational institutions such as UQO, Cégep de l’Outaouais and Heritage College.

Photo: Roxanne Lauzon Rankin, Apitipi Anicinapek and Regional Indigenous Partnership Advisor (September 27, 2021) (MG) Photo: Roxanne Lauzon Rankin Facebook Page