Humber College teaching staff and students organized a local event as part of the nationwide Moose Hide Campaign, an “Indigenous-led grassroots movement aimed at reconciliation and ending gender-based violence.”
The event took place in the Learning Resource Centre at the North Campus and included discussions among Humber staff and students as well as a national virtual assembly livestreamed from Victoria, B.C.
It was the 12th year the national campaign held events and the first mask-free Moose Hide event since the pandemic.
Aaron Critchley is a Humber student who helped host the event. He said the event is a pledge to end violence towards women and children.
“It’s important to have conversations to create the space that’s safe for everybody,” he said.
He said the event started out as an Indigenous-oriented movement but has widened to include everybody.
“I think it’s important that we create a different set of standards for the future,” he said.
Critchley said violence is still a concern today, and there have been stories about that on campus.
The campaign was inspired by a walk by a father and daughter along the Trail of Tears in British Columbia, where a lot of women were missing and murdered, Critchley said.
An important aspect of the Moose Hide Campaign is the Moose Hide Pin, which “acts as a symbol of solidarity in standing up against violence towards women and children in Canada.”
The idea behind each pin is that it sparks five conversations. To date, the campaign has given out more than three million pins, which they estimate could mean more than 15 million conversations.
Guest speaker of the event, Elaine Alec from the Syilx and Secwepemc Nations said it was important to take into consideration non-binary people in the Indigenous community.
Alec said saying “grandfather” and “grandmother” instead of “grandparent” were examples of excluding non-binary people in the conversations.
“Many of us wonder how we are supposed to make things better. We focus on how to save our friends, family, and land, [or even] climate change,” Alec said. “Reality is we have stopped focusing on the individuals.”
She said the pandemic did not create problems but amplified them.
“Keep it simple,” she said. “You can’t change anyone else. The only thing you can change is yourself.”
Karry-Anne Daye from the Humber Counselling team has participated in Moose Hide Campaign events for several years and has seen firsthand how the pin can invite conversations.
“[The Moose Hide Campaign] changes people’s way of thinking in a gentle way,” she said.
She said having these conversations after the pandemic is good because people were not as visible.
“People don’t change overnight,” Daye said. “One’s 12-year-old self is not the same as their 30-year-old self.”
Bringing change is about broadening the conversations, not being combative, and not being violent.
“It’s about going back to our original teachings of respecting one another,” Daye said.