well, today is Canada Day, a day to celebrate all things Canadian, fly our flag high and proud, and talk about all the things that are wonderful about our great country. I’ve done this kind of thing before, and I will admit that each year on Canada Day I’ve felt kind of happy and proud to be Canadian.
However, I can’t help but feel this year that, because I love my country, I should talk about what I consider to be the greatest and most serious blight on the face of our nation, and that is the ongoing brutal colonization of Canada’s indigenous peoples. It’s something that I feel all non-indigenous Canadians should be extremely embarrassed by, and should be actively trying to correct. We have all benefitted from the brutalization, ghettoization, displacement, colonization, and genocide of First Nations people here in Canada, and we should be ashamed.
Indigneous peoples in Canada have had their land stolen, their communities displaced, and limitations put on their way of life as nomadic and communal people. They have had their children stole and put into residential schools where they were beaten for speaking to one another in their own languages, effectively losing indigenous languages for entire generations to come. Indigenous peoples are completely ghettoized and segregated onto reserves, where sometimes very basic municipal services such as clean water and sewage are denied, and every single infrastructural improvement done on a reserve has to be approved by some white male “Indian Affairs” bureaucrat in Ottawa – they can’t even change the fucking name of the department to reflect how indigenous peoples living in Canada self-identify and wish to be called. Poverty among First Nations peoples is epidemic, as is alcohol and drug abuse, incarceration, and lack of education. Native women are the most raped women in our country, and are abused and killed by their domestic partners at a much higher rate than any other racial group of women. Indigenous customs and traditions have been alternatively mocked and co-opted by mainstream Canadian culture. First Nations people who have stood up for their rights are commonly referred to as terrorists.
I’d say probably the majority of white Canadians think they should shut up and stop their whinging because they’ve been “given so much” by the Canadian government, and they should be “realistic” about property claims because it’s not like Canadians are going to cede their deeds at this point in the game ’cause by god we all work SO HARD for every little thing we get and why do those “indians” want to take that away from us when they’ve already been “given so much” – they’re just wasting all those golden opportunities to be under-educated by a system that teaches nothing but lies about indigenous peoples and to live tax-free in an uninsulated house with no running water and no central heating and no sewage on a scrap of land especially “reserved” for them.
To be fair, there are many bands that are well-off and many indigenous people who are well-educated. However, when are we going to acknowledge that these other situations exist? When are we going to do something to change the fact of rampant sexual and domestic violence against indigenous women? about levels of violence among indigenous men? about rampant poverty, alcoholism, and drug abuse? about devestating living conditions? When are we going to start respecting indigenous peoples instead of trying to figure out one more way to screw them over?
It breaks my heart to know that our indigenous populations are suffering in such terrible ways. And sadly, that makes me quite a bit less proud to call myself Canadian today.
The parallels here to the Australian situation are pretty much identical. It is heartbreaking. And now, in this last fortnight, the Australian government has decided to send in the army to some of these reserves, to the complete surprise of many of the indigenous populations. Right at election time…
Unfortunately, the problem tends to compound on itself — especially when land settlements/claims are involved. Currently, there are bands/reserves in Alberta that have signed land lease agreements to the oil companies, who provide a sum of money to each person on the reserve on their 18th birthday. This sum is often a large amount of money, I’ve heard of some at $150,000. What is happening, is that the young person receives the money the ongoing tradition is of quick spending, partying, large truck purchases, drug use, etc. In some stories, the money is gone within weeks. Each young person continues the trend, often pressured to spend away and treat the others, as other have. As a result, the problems of the reserve are compounded by the influx of large amounts of money… Unfortunately, there’s a reason why the small ‘city’ (town) of Wetaskiwin has 7 car dealerships… located near the tragic reserve of Hobbema.
Basically, the problems of the past (alcoholism, abuse, violence) have not been addressed, yet money is thrown into the mix making things escalate and become more complicated.
The Native American in the United States faces the same plight, and it’s horrible.
I’m not sure what to do about it. I feel **awful** about it, too. I’m Caucasian, and my people are the ones who set this UP.
One of the things I’ve noticed as a poor white is that there seems to be one *common thread* that impoverished whites, Native Americans, African Americans, and other oppressed groups have; we *all* have varying degrees of chemical dependency and violence in our subcultures. I’m not for a New York minute going to claim that poor whites “have it just as bad as Native Americans”–that’s a complete line of B.S. But~ I’ve noticed that working-class whites also, to a lesser degree, have a problem with chemical dependency and violence. This leads me to my next observation:
Talkingthebeat mentioned: “Basically, the problems of the past (alcoholism, abuse, violence) have not been addressed, yet money is thrown into the mix making things escalate and become more complicated.”
**Possibly** one thing that might help the indigenous populations and other POCs/working poor in the Western world (Canada, the U.K., Australia, the U.S., etc.) **might be** Manhattan-Project efforts by all Western governments to get extensive and freely available *treatment programs* to these subcultures. If this isn’t possible, maybe all communities involved could get something going along these lines.
I *don’t know* if any of these governments have made serious efforts along these lines. It couldn’t hurt, and I’m thinking that treatment and therapy made freely to all suffering from chemical dependency, violence, and post traumatic stress disorder/mental and emotional illnesses could *only* help get people up off the ground to FINALLY break the cycle of being ground down.
Just a thought.
Interestingly, these past few weeks have really highlighted how much racism FN has to contend with. So much for the liberal democratic view that Canada isn’t racist. I have read some things lately that simply broke my heart. Want to study the psychological and social effects of colonialism (like self-hatred), just check out our own colonized peoples. It’s all thriving.
sounds like a class issue you are describing there TG.
[...] by Jack Stephens on July 6th, 2007 Thinking Girl blogs about Canada Day: However, I can’t help but feel this year that, because I love my country, I [...]
[...] Day – Celebrating Colonization This post is originally from Thinking Girl, and, embarrassingly, the first time I thought about Canada Day being an issue was when I read this [...]