President's Corner: September 19, 2026
Posted on: Sep 18, 2026
Every year, September 30 asks something specific of me. Not just as President, but as a Métis mother and grandmother. It asks me to slow down. To listen. To remember the children who were taken. To honour the Survivors who carried what happened home with them and never let it stay buried.
One day a year is not enough for what this asks of us. And I do not believe it was ever meant to be.
For your government, Truth and Reconciliation Day is not a just date on a calendar. It is how we speak to our Elders, how we teach our children, how we tell the story of who we are and what was done to us. September 30 is when the whole country stops long enough to notice. But our work does not stop on October 1 and get put on hold until next September 30.
This year, I feel the weight of the day more than usual.
We have said goodbye this year to two strong women whose names deserve to be spoken out loud on September 30. Angie Crerar. Pearl Sandor. Both of them were Métis Survivors. Both of them refused to let their generation’s truths be lost. Both of them spent decades of their lives making sure this country could not comfortably skip past what it did to Métis children.
Angie was one of the strongest Survivor voices we have ever had. She travelled, she spoke, and she made sure Métis stories were on the record wherever the record was being written. Pearl carried that same fire, right through to the last chapter of her life.
We owe both of them, and every Survivor who has trusted us with their story, more than a day.
We owe them the work. We owe them the long, careful business of making sure another generation of Métis families is not the last to hear their voices.
Our government’s Our Métis Survivors project exists because of that debt. It is a place for Métis Residential School and Day School Survivors to record their testimonies, in their own words, with the care their stories deserve. Survivors and their families are welcomed into that work whenever they are ready. There is no timeline. There is no template. There is just a room, a recording, and a promise that your story will be held with respect.
There will be flag raisings, walks, and ceremonies across Alberta on September 30. If you are able, please go to one. Wear orange. Bring someone younger than you and talk with them about why the day exists. That conversation, one generation to the next, is where reconciliation actually lives.
And if the day is hard, please do not carry it alone. Our supports are here. You are not the first person to feel the weight of this history. You will not be the last. And you have a government that stands with you.
Reconciliation is not a signature Canada can simply put on a page. It is not a policy the federal government can write for us. It is a practice. It is something we are choosing, every day, to build. Every Métis family that keeps a story alive is doing a piece of the work.
To every Survivor: we see you. We honour you. Your stories will keep being told, on September 30, and on all the days in between.
Maarsi.
President Andrea Sandmaier,
Otipemisiwak Métis Government