Why I’m NOT #Proud of #Canada150
Electoral Reform? For someone generally proud to be lucky enough to be Canadian, instead of being excited about Canada Day on our nation’s 150th Anniversary, I was embarrassed to be a Canadian. Not because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes himself to be an all powerful autocrat with the right to over rule his own party’s overwhelmingly adopted policy and thumb his nose at the majority of…
Electoral Reform?For someone generally proud to be lucky enough to be Canadian, instead of being excited about Canada Day on our nation’s 150th Anniversary, I was embarrassed to be a Canadian. Not because Prime Minister Justin Trudeau believes himself to be an all powerful autocrat with the right to over rule his own party’s overwhelmingly adopted policy and thumb his nose at the majority of Canadians who believe Canada ought to provide citizens with fair representation. That was bad, that was really, really bad, but that isn’t it.
We had a big coast to coast half a billion dollar party CBC reports that More than 70% of Canada 150 swag made outside the country
Oh, but that’s not the government’s fault:
The government argues that international trade agreements don’t allow it to restrict the competition for government contracts to Canadian companies or manufacturers — even when it comes to Canada 150 merchandise.
Its all the fault of those pesky “free trade” agreements, not the governments who negotiated these agreements in secret then sign & ratify them so they have no choice but to require massive changes to our domestic law (and now unaccountable international corporate trade tribunals to fine us if we fail) to comply. This excuse is a classic case of adding insult to injury.
Annoying as that is, that is not my problem.
Bingo! The problem is colonization, something that didn’t just happen hundreds of years ago, but a process continuing as Canadian government policy to this day. It is simply unfathomable to me that, KNOWING about all the horrors of “residential schools,” instead of embarking on a path to Reconciliation, our Canadian Government is continuing policies of Cultural Genocide. Residential Schools killed many more victims — all children — than people died in the 9/11 Twin Towers. In response to the Twin Towers Canadian Governments were quick to change our laws to increasingly erode the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. But Canadian Governments had to be legally compelled to establish the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. And now, instead of working hard to implement TRC recommendations, the Canadian Government has gone to court to fight for the right to continue to discriminate against Indigenous children and Indigenous women.
I’m not Indigenous, I’m a settler whose paternal ancestors arrived here before Confederation. Some suggest “settler” is pejorative term, but it’s not. It’s a simple statement of fact. Although my earliest ancestors came to this place before Confederation, I am not Indigenous. My ancestors came from Alsace, Germany, the Netherlands and Russia, places I have never been. Indigenous people’s ancestors came from Turtle Island. While I make my home on native land, I acknowledge that Turtle Island indigenous peoples have prior claim. Although I was very interested in history, I spent most of my life ignorant of the real Canadian history.
I am certainly not trying to speak for the Indigenous people’s of Canada; they are doing a brilliant job of speaking for themselves. As Romeo Saganash did in the Globe and Mail: 150 years of cultural genocide: Today, like all days, is an insult
No, I’m writing this for other settlers. To explain why I sat out Canada Day for the first time. To explain why I bought my husband a Colonization150 Tshirt. But most of all why I’ve spent the last little while reading and sharing articles about the real Canada that so many Canadian settlers still don’t know about. Some over and over.
I am still learning myself, because, like most people, I bought into the idea of the mythological Canada the Good. The Canada full of nice, polite people who respect human rights and care about each other. The Canada that helped fight and stop South African Apartheid. The Canada that chose to be a Multicultural mosaic culture, the nation that made peace and not war and helped write the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, our own Canadian Bill of Rights and then the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Canada willing to dabble in socialism to ensure everyone has healthcare and the necessities of life, the representative democracy that looks out for our most vulnerable population.
But that, my friends, is the public relations version, not the real deal. The real deal is a country that sells arms to Saudi Arabia, one of the most egregious human rights abusers in the world. The Canada that unequivocably supports Israel’s unambiguous Palestinian Apartheid. Of course it does: Canadian Governments have been perpetrating its own policies of Apartheid and Cultural Genocide for well over 150 years, and are still doing it today.
One of the ridiculous things I often hear Canadian settlers say is that the land issue was over a long time ago. But we Canadians believe in property ownership. Our society is built on property law. Canadians buy and sell property, we can own it and our heirs can inherit it from us when we die.
If I can inherit my father’s house, a house that he inherited from his father, who inherited it from his father before him, why should it be any different for Indigenous people?
Their ancestors made treaties — contracts — with the British Crown. But instead of living up to these agreements, the British then later Canadian Governments have been trying to erase them one way or another ever since. The Canadian Government took the land one way or another, and gave or sold it to settlers. That’s the land we buy and sell and inherit today. The authority for this high handedness dates back to a papal decree known as “The Doctrine of Discovery.” which was predicated on the idea that any land not populated by European Christians was empty. After all, only European Christians were human beings with rights.
Instead of living up to our obligations to the Indigenous population of Turtle Island, Canadian Governments have worked hard to enforce assimilation, to suppress Indigenous culture, eradicate Indigenous languages, and coralled them on a tiny unsustainable percentage of the land… a miniscule part of the land of Turtle Island, the whole of which they once roamed freely. The full might of Canada’s government continues its anti-Indigenous policies, all of which are geared to dispossessing them further.
Money: It would cost the Canadian Government a fraction of the money it is spending on Canada’s 150th Party to comply with the Human Rights Tribunal’s order to stop discrimination against Indigenous children. What is more important than children?
Electoral Reform to Proportional Representation is necessary. It took me a long time to understand why our supposedly “simple” electoral system never actually provided me with representation in Parliament. The Representative Democracy we Canadians supposedly enjoy is hollow so long as some votes are worth more than others but most don’t count at all. If we used some form of Proportional Representation, the result would be more democratic governance. This would empower us to elect politicians who would actually represent most of us. And maybe even govern the way they promised they would.
Further Reading:
Three years later, is Canada keeping its Truth and Reconciliation Commission promises?
Why is Trudeau Government Opposing Charter Equality for Indigenous Women?
Cultural Genocide of Canada’s Aboriginal People
Chief Justice says Canada attempted ‘cultural genocide’ on aboriginals
Canada was ready to abandon 1948 accord if UN didn’t remove ‘cultural genocide’ ban, records reveal
Residential school system was ‘cultural genocide,’ most Canadians believe according to poll
The Canada most people don’t see
Canada 150 is a celebration of Indigenous genocide
150 years of cultural genocide: Today, like all days, is an insult
The long history of discrimination against First Nations children
Rights and Reconciliation: The future of Canada rests on adopting the balanced world view of Indigenous people.
12 Easy Steps For Canadians To Follow If They’re Serious About Reconciliation
Dear Canada, It’s Not Me, It’s You It’s complicated.
ACCOUNTING FOR HISTORIES: 150 YEARS OF CANADIAN MAPLE WASHING
by Matthew Hayday, Professor, University of Guelph
Canada Day is poised to be the high point of celebrations marking the 150th anniversary of Confederation. Ottawa is in Party Central mode, with guests including Prince Charles, Bono and The Edge of U2 and a host of Canadian performers including Gordon Lightfoot, Buffy Sainte-Marie and Cirque de Soleil. But there has been a vocal debate across the country about how celebratory Canada 150 events should be — and even whether it should be celebrated at all.
Indigenous leaders have called the events a “celebration of colonialism.” A clever designer has been marketing T-shirts with an inverted Canada 150 logo over the words Colonialism 150. On Twitter, hashtags like #Resist150 and #Unsettle150 connect posts calling the celebrations into question. The @canada1504sale account draws attention to how corporations are trying to profit from patriotism.
Questions about how Canada 150 is being celebrated abound. Earlier this year the Parti Québécois launched a campaign called “L’autre 150e” to suggest Confederation has been bad for Quebec. People have questioned the hundreds of millions of dollars being spent on Canada 150-related activities. Some MPs have criticized the limited place for Canada’s history in the government’s plans.
Should planners be concerned that this party has gone completely off the rails? Well, perhaps not. Controversy and contestation have always been part of celebrations in Canada, including landmark birthdays and national holidays like Canada Day. It would be more surprising if there wasn’t active debate about Canada’s past or what the path forward from here should be.
Dissent about celebrating Canada goes back to the early years of Confederation. Debating an 1869 bill about making Dominion Day a public holiday, Nova Scotia MPs argued that they would rather make it a “day of lamentation.” For these MPs, Dominion Day showed their powerlessness in the House of Commons. The bill was withdrawn, and not revived again until a decade later.
After the passage of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act, British Columbia’s Chinese communities organized Chinese Humiliation Day events to be held on Dominion Day. They wore badges stating “Remember the Humiliation,” organized speeches and handed out leaflets. Their goal was to overturn the law, which banned Chinese immigration to Canada.
In the 1960s, organizers designed the Indians of Canada pavilion at Expo 67 to challenge the celebratory atmosphere of the centennial. The pavilion discussed issues such as language loss through residential schools. Throughout the 1960s and 70s, Quebec sovereigntists transformed the religiously oriented St-Jean-Baptiste Day events of June 24 into the explicitly nationalist Fête Nationale. This set up the holiday as a rival to Dominion Day events. Québécois artists took sides on the “national question” by deciding at whose party they would perform.
National celebrations have also had the potential to change the way our country functions. Governments have used them to set the tone about what Canada could be, rather than simply celebrating what it has been. As part of the 1927 Diamond Jubilee celebrations, the postmaster-general introduced a series of bilingual stamps. The stamps helped set a precedent for the gradual introduction of bilingualism into federal institutions.
The narrative of Canadian identity that has been part of the federal government’s Dominion Day and Canada Day events since 1958 has been dramatically transformed over the years. They used to be militaristic, British-centric portrayals of Canada’s heritage. Over the decades, bilingualism and multicultural Canada became central themes. Messages about Indigenous communities morphed from those that were explicitly assimilationist and colonial into a celebration of First Nations cultures and hope for reconciliation in the future.
The decisions made about which artists will perform at Canada Day celebrations, the languages they use and even the way they are dressed all send political messages to Canadians. Organizers of the Canada Day spectacles in Ottawa normally invite myriad francophone performers. They purposely include not just Québécois but also Acadians, Franco-Ontarians and other French-speaking Canadians. Doing so reinforces the idea of Canada as an officially bilingual country, and also sends a message that French-speaking Canada is not restricted to Quebec.
On Indigenous issues, the change in messaging has been dramatic. In 1965, First Nations were represented by tartan-clad, bagpipe-playing teenaged Indigenous girls from a British Columbia residential school. By the 1990s, this had changed to rock and pop artists who performed in the Innu-aimun (Montagnais) language or Inuktitut. It was a major shift from a message of forced assimilation to one encouraging revitalisation of Indigenous languages.
The laudatory ways that Canada is celebrated in official speeches on a Parliament Hill stage on Canada Day may mask ongoing deep problems in our society. But these events can also signal key symbolic shifts from the past, and possibilities of change in the future. It’s commonplace to dismiss Canada as a relatively young country by global standards. However, 150 years of a stable, democratic, multinational federation is nothing to sneeze at.
Canada’s political nationhood is an ongoing process that requires constant renegotiation and dialogue if we are to continue to live together. Events like Canada Day and Canada 150 provide opportunities to engage and educate Canadians about the problems of the country’s past and present. The stories of Canada told at these events may encourage Canadians to support new directions for the future. The controversies that surround the Canada 150 celebrations may actually indicate our desire to perfect and improve this country, rather than consign it to the dustbin of history.
Matthew Hayday is the co-editor of
Celebrating Canada,
volume 1: Holidays, National Days and the Crafting of Identities
Released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) License
This article was originally published on The Conversation.
Read the original article.
