Indigenous communities across the world have often faced significant challenges in terms of accessing vital local public services, adequate representation and meaningful dialogue with institutions on important policy issues. Local government, being the tier of government people have the most interactions with on a daily basis, can be best placed to change the tone and substance of relationships between communities. This issue of the Global Local Recap takes a look at how communities and institutions are moving forward with sensitivity to create new understandings and better outcomes.
Parts of the world where indigeneity is not the way that tensions are framed can learn from others when it comes to listening to marginalized communities, assessing and addressing differential impact, and working through tensions created by different patterns of land usage and conflicting cultural traditions. For example, in the UK and Ireland, some have argued that policy approaches developed with and for Indigenous peoples could be helpful in the context of Traveller and Roma communities as we examine here. And local government has a huge role to play in advancing rights and better outcomes for Indigenous peoples, and the UN is calling for specific local government support as Melissa Thorne has reported here.
Some other issues covered in this issue of the Global Local Recap include:
- Australia’s first treaty?
- Vancouver approach to community planning
- More power for Aboriginal controlled local government?
- Celebrating Indigenous art sensitively.
Ingrid Koehler interviews Winnipeg councillor Sherri Rollins on being an Indigenous woman in local government, why representation matters and how we all have a role in choosing the leaders of the future. From Gerald Reid we also find out about Chief Thunderwater who led the call for local government reform among indigenous peoples of Canada in the early 20th century and the dirty tricks used to stop him. (See full show notes and links)
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