An Idle No More round dance was called for Saturday, November 8, 2014, in support of Indigenous elder Gary Moostoos.
Gary Moostoos was originally kicked out of Edmonton’s City Centre Mall on October 26, 2014, by irate security guards who claimed that he was “suspicious,” that he hangs around known criminals and that he had been previously banned from the mall.
Moostoos at the time was eating a bowl of soup in the lower food court. He often is at the mall as part of his outreach work with Indigenous adults and youth without homes.
The confrontation by the security guards — an example of racial profiling — led to Moostoos being escorted out of the mall and told that he was now banned from the premises for six months.
The shopping mall’s administration later backed down on their threat and offered up a series of written and verbal apologies by mall manager Olympia Trencevski once the news of Moostoos’ banning hit social media.
Roughly 70 people marched into City Centre Mall on Friday, October 31, 2014, in a brief demonstration to show their disproval of Moostoos’ treatment by the mall and presented a letter to Oxford Properties which highlighted their concerns.
A round dance was called for Saturday November 8, 2014, which lasted two hours and was attended by hundreds of people. At the ceremony, Moostoos took an eagle feather and ran his hands the wrong way along its barbs to show disharmony, but then mended it to its original condition saying he has been uplifted by all the calls of solidarity. “Together, we can recreate that unity as human beings,” he told the crowd.
He added that he could not accept the apology from mall staff at the present moment and that would take some time and effort to mend the broken relationship. Members of the Indigenous community — on Treaty Six territory — hope that the mall’s security and administration by Oxford Properties goes beyond an apology to action; to overturn the banning of other Indigenous people.
Anni Mukkala-Stinn tells of the event, “The mood of this Idle No More event was sombre. The wounds that have been opened with the treatment of Elder Gary Moostoos were palpable. The healing that needs to take place was begun with a pipe ceremony.”
“The tone of the day was one that seeks healing and change. Each of us in Canada needs to be part of that change. Not just the others, but we as individuals. This kind of racism cannot continue. The continued pain it causes is just more of the historical trauma that has been done. Each of us has a responsibility to say, now we must change things.”
Elder Taz Bouchier, who called for the Idle No More round dance on Saturday, told the crowd that she would be checking up on the progress of reparations at the mall in six months time.
Photo by Anni Mukkala-Stinn
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