As we mark Aboriginal Veterans Day, and honour the courage and creativity of Canada’s Indigenous soldiers, I wanted to share this story of Alberta’s Charles Tomkins, a Cree “code talker”. #abheritage https://thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/charles-tomkins

The ironies here are many. At a time when it was official national policy to rob Indigenous children of their native languages through forced assimilation in residential schools, Cree speakers who had held onto their language became vital to the fight against Nazism.

As we remember those Indigenous Canadians who sacrificed their youths, and sometimes their lives, in service of a country that treated them and their communities so shamefully, we should be doubly awed by their commitment and service.