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Indien sans terre mais avec plume 149 belief that some of those Aboriginal ideas and practices have great potential for renewing Canada’s socio-political vision and for strengthening the bonds uniting all Canadians,and second on my desire,as an Aboriginal Canadian and an academic, to see my own socio-political heritage recognized, embraced and put to serious and respectful use by my country, Canada. Above all, Aboriginal people believe in inclusiveness. In fact, we know that this belief and our practice of inclusiveness are truly the factor that has made our survival possible over the last five centuries. In spite of all the enlightened predictions by successive generations of scholars and administrators that we would rapidly and eventually disappear, not only are we still here, but we are now recovering strength in numbers, and in social and economic status in all parts of this country to which we belong in our own special way. All Aboriginal folks have stories that affirm their faith in inclusiveness. Just as the people of Newfoundland have a very valid claim that even though they may be the least affluent Canadian province, they are the most generous when it comes to helping other Canadians in need, my people, the Huron-Wendat, have this story, among many others, to also say that the apparently powerless should never be discounted by the more imposing. We believe that the great island of America was first created as a small island on the back of the Big Turtle by a Spirit-ancestress of all humans. But to begin creating that island, someone had to dive to the depths of the primordial Sea in order to bring back a little of the sacred mud, which First Woman would spread on the Big Turtle’s back, and which would then grow into the Great Island on which powerful spirits would create all the different Peoples of Beings, including the Human Beings. As customarily happens, the most adept divers all tried in turn to obtain some of the precious earth from the bottom of the sea and all failed. At last, seeing the despair among all her fellow aquatic creatures, the Toad, very humbly and with only sheer goodwill, said that she now also had to try. Of course, she was gone the longest of all underneath the great, very deep waters, and eventually swam back up,very weakened,but carrying in her mouth the blessed mud, which was then very thinly spread around the carapace of Big Turtle and which started to become the revered Mother-Earth, which we now all The Time of the Toad 150 inhabit. (Of course, in time we of the mainland lent some earth to the folks of Newfoundland, so they could one day be part of Canada … and yes, preserve there the true Canadian spirit. This part of the story ceases to be Aboriginal mythology.) Respectfully and seriously, I would ask you, dear colleagues and fellow Canadians, to look at your fellow Aboriginal Canadians as the toads in our great Canadian story. For it now seems that our best divers have all been failing in the attempt to find the sacred ingredient for the creation of a true, durable, unifying basis for us all to stand on and build happy, healthy, constructive lives for ourselves and our children’s children as Canadians and as members of the great human family. I would like to propose that we have reached the end of a first phase in Canada’s history. I would call that period the phase of innocence. During that time, Canadians have begun their existence as Canadians and have been mostly preoccupied with discovering and exploiting the resources of their new surroundings. It has been an intense age of character formation, with its attendant carefree, often wasteful material discovery. Canadians are now realizing with innocent surprise that their material space, while still bounteous, is by no means inexhaustible. We are now at the point where the spirit of our Motherland is commanding us to exercise our maturing minds, hearts, bodies and spirits to find the deeper meaning of our collective existence; that is, to understand how we are going to create a spiritual, and no longer simply material country for ourselves, in which all our fellow human and non-human creatures will also have a place and a future. That is the wisdom of our Mother Earth, which is also the wisdom of the Old Toad, whom we Hurons...

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