The Sault Ste. Marie Indigenous Friendship Centre welcomed Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Matthew Shoemaker to its East Street headquarters Thursday afternoon in the name of building relationships between the city and the Indigenous community that calls it home.
“Today is a day of building trust, building that mutual respect and building friendships with the mayor and the urban Indigenous people in Sault Ste. Marie,” said Sault Ste. Marie Indigenous Friendship Centre Executive Director Cathie Syrette, who provided the Sault’s mayor with a historic overview of the friendship centre during his two-hour visit.
Syrette says the mayor’s appearance at the membership-driven, non-profit organization builds upon a declaration that was signed between the Ontario Federation of Indigenous Friendship Centres (OFIFC) and the Association of Municipalities of Ontario (AMO) during an AMO general meeting and conference in 2020.
The Declaration of Mutual Commitment and Friendship: Improving the Quality of Life of Indigenous People across Ontario's Municipalities — signed by both the City of Sault Ste. Marie and Sault Ste. Marie Indigenous Friendship Centre — is intended to help municipal governments and friendship centres build relationships and collaborate to improve support mechanisms and services for Indigenous Peoples throughout the province.
Syrette hopes city council will participate in the OFIFC’s Indigenous Cultural Competency Training program down the road as part of that pledge to work together.
“We have our Indigenous Cultural Competency Training that I feel our municipality, our mayor and our council members should be taking on an annual basis, just because sometimes people forget,” she said.
Shoemaker says one way the municipality can collaborate with the Indigenous community is through the revived Bawating Indigenous Advisory Council, which was launched in part by former Sault Ste. Marie Mayor Christian Provenzano during his time in office.
“I think through the Bawating Indigenous Advisory Council there will be ideas that will be brought forward from our Indigenous partners that the city can implement either to better improve our processes, make our community more welcoming — whatever their concerns are or their suggestions are on improvements to the municipality in terms of Indigenous services or Indigenous relationships, I think the city is happy to implement them or debate them at the council table,” he said.
The mayor also wants to make good on his campaign pledge to bring more Indigenous influence to city hall during his run as the city’s leader.
“We want to ensure we adopt Indigenous practices into those ceremonies because that is the historic way that ceremonial events or things of cultural significance would have taken place for thousands of years here in the community, so that’s important to us — and by us, I mean council — to incorporate Indigenous practices into our events and tapping into the Indigenous expertise of the friendship centre, or of our neighbouring nations of Garden River and Batchewana, will help us get there in that regard,” Shoemaker said.
Shoemaker took a number of questions from friendship centre staff during his appearance Thursday before being presented with a gift from the organization: the city’s coat of arms, in the form of a beaded medallion.
“I can’t imagine that the new medallion on the chain of office will be any nicer than this one,” said Shoemaker. “This is lovely, and very touching that I received it.”
The Sault Ste. Marie Indigenous Friendship will celebrate its 50th anniversary in June 2023.