Mississippi Mills All My Relations is a group of community members who recognize that we all have a responsibility to help restore what was once a relationship of trust and friendship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous People in our country. We have a core planning council of about twelve members as well as a number of other volunteers who work together to provide Indigenous led educational events, offer opportunities for reflection and growth and raise funds for Indigenous organizations working towards our shared goal. Elder Larry McDermott, Algonquin member of Shabot Obaadjiwan provides guidance and advice to our group.
From time to time we offer experiential opportunities which help us reflect on our own thoughts and feelings as we participate in the Truth and Reconciliation process. These have taken the form of talking circles, blanket exercises, movie nights and the vigils.
We are not separately incorporated nor do we have charitable status. St. Paul’s Anglican Church initiated our group and provided a start up fund to create this website and to hold our first events. It continues to provide space for us to meet, support us financially, hold our funds in trust and include us under their insurance policy.
Our partners also include Almonte United Church, Community Presbyterian Church, Sivarulrasa Gallery, the Textile Museum and Plenty Canada.
We are always pleased to accept new members for our planning team. If you have inquiries about our group, would like to volunteer and/or receive our newsletter, please contact us HERE.
“All My Relations means that you recognize everything as alive and elemental to your being. There is nothing that matters less than anything else. By virtue of its being, all things are vital, necessary and apart of the grand whole, because unity cannot exist where exclusion is allowed to happen. This is the great teaching of this statement.
– Richard Wagamese, from Kamploops Daily News
…When a speaker makes this statement it’s meant as recognition of the principles of harmony, unity and equality. It’s a way of saying that you recognize your place in the universe and that you recognize the place of others and of other things in the realm of the real and the living. In that, it is a powerful evocation of truth… In its solemnity it is meant as a benediction… This phrase, this articulation of spirit, is a clarion call to consciousness.”