Jets, Oilers among organizations leading the way in indigenous tributes
WINNIPEG — As Winnipeg Jets fans make their way to their seats and players prepare to stand on home ice for the national anthem, an announcement fills the downtown arena.
The message — believed to be a first for an NHL team — says the Jets play on Treaty 1 land which consists of “original territories of Anishinaabeg, Cree, Oji-Cree, Dakota, and Dene peoples, and the homeland of the Métis Nation.”
It adds that True North Sports and Entertainment, which owns the team and its home arena MTS Centre, is committed to “a spirit of reconciliation.”
Acknowledging Canada’s colonial history is starting to trickle down to the hockey rink eight years after former prime minister Stephen Harper stood in Parliament to apologize to residential school survivors and almost a year after the release of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s final report.