Truth and Reconciliation
The Green Burial Society of Canada is grateful for the teachings of Aboriginal people of Canada on end-of-life and death care. Traditional practices, such as caring for the deceased at home, digging graves, funeral processions, and natural burials, were shared by people across the globe for all of time. These traditions have not been lost in Aboriginal communities – settlers need only to look, to ask, with humility and respect, what we can learn from our neighbours.
Members of the Green Burial Society of Canada live and die on traditional Aboriginal territories. These lands provide us physical space, sustenance, safety, and community to work, live, learn, play, and ultimately, lay our dead.
We acknowledge that our ability to live and die on these lands today is a direct benefit of policies of expulsion and assimilation of Aboriginal peoples during the time of settlement and Confederation, and since. The harms of these policies are many and are still being felt by Aboriginal communities today. We express gratitude towards the Aboriginal peoples who have and will continue to steward these lands.
“There is no greater thing we as peoples can do for our Mother Earth and for our children of the future than to preserve our rich heritage and relationship with this land.”
– Robert Whiteduck, Chief of Algonquins of Pikwakenagan First Nation, 1998
