Decades after being punished in a residential school for speaking his own language, Sol Mamakwa will hold the powerful to account at Ontario's legislature in the very same language past governments tried to bury.
Ontario NDP MPP Sol Mamakwa poses for a photo at Queen's Park in Toronto on Friday, May 16, 2024. Decades after being punished in a residential school for speaking his own language, Sol Mamakwa will hold the powerful to account at Ontario's legislature in the very same language past governments tried to bury.
"Language is nationhood, language is identity, language is where history comes from and language is me and my people," Sol Mamakwa, a 53-year-old NDP legislator, said in an interview. "I think about the people who have lost their language, I think about the people who were not allowed to speak their language in residential schools and I think about my mom," Mamakwa said as he choked up. She lives with dementia and has good days and bad, he said."She's so proud, " Mamakwa's sister Esther Sakakeep, said of her mother. "As I am, for my little brother. I just wish our dad would be there, but I know he will be looking down on us.
Mamakwa said his comments were deliberate, trying to plant an idea for change inside the mind of Calandra, who also spoke at the event.The next morning, Mamakwa sipped coffee at the cafeteria in the basement of Queen's Park with his northern New Democrat friends, Guy Bourgoin, a Métis man representing Mushkegowuk-James Bay, and John Vanthof, a farmer representing Timiskaming-Cochrane.
Owen Macri, Calandra's chief of staff and a walking encyclopedia of legislative procedures, then told his boss Mamakwa was right. Within days of that encounter, Calandra's chief of staff had two standing orders ready to go, one specifically for Mamakwa and a second allowing all future Indigenous members of the provincial parliament to speak their language.
On Tuesday, one Indigenous interpreter will be in a broadcast booth inside the chamber usually occupied by the French interpreter, Goodman explained. The French interpreter will shift upstairs to an empty committee interpretation booth as part of a makeshift relay that's been set up.
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