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For the 23rd consecutive year, Indigenous peoples and several police forces gathered in a flotilla to use Ottawa region waterways as a medium for communication and understanding between the groups.
“Police and Indigenous peoples have a history plagued with misconceptions, miscommunications, and outright conflict,” the Flotilla for Friendship group said in a release.
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“But we are building our future relationships (on the) things we get to know about each other right now.”
The annual event took place this year without activist Lynda Kitchikeesic, who founded Flotilla for Friendship in 2000. She passed away last November of a heart attack at age 58.
The flotilla travelled from Black Rapids Locks to Dow’s Lake Pavilion, a little more than a dozen kilometres, under perfect weather on Wednesday.
Among the police participants were members of Ottawa Police Service, Ontario Provincial Police, Sûreté du Québec, RCMP, Gatineau police, Kitigan Zibi police and Akwesasne Mohawk Police, while participating First Nations groups included Aboriginal youth from the Odawa Native Friendship Centre, Wabano Centre for Aboriginal Health, Minwaashin Lodge and the Ottawa Inuit Children’s Centre.
“This is not a race, but many feel the need for speed,” organizers said.
Marine patrol teams accompanied the flotilla for safety.
The event closed with a spiritual circle of participants organized by a First Nation elder when they arrived at Dow’s Lake.
“A lot of Indigenous youth don’t have interactions with the police and the police don’t have a lot of interactions or understanding of Indigenous youth,” one police organizer said at a previous flotilla. “So we allow the conversations to take place that would never have naturally occurred.”
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