Canada is often seen as a bastion of prosperity, human rights and freedoms. But news about missing and murdered Indigenous women, woefully inadequate health care on reserves and UN reports that highlight “distressing socio-economic conditions” for Indigenous peoples in Canada stand in sharp contrast to this narrative.
This news, however, highlights what many First Nations, Métis and Inuit already know: Canada for them is a place of racism, poverty and inequity.
Changing this reality will require acknowledging and addressing an ugly ghost — our colonial history — because its legacy haunts us still.
Some students were forbidden to speak their languages and taught that their cultures and faith were substandard and invalid because they were not European or Christian. At the same time, non-Indigenous Canadians were taught that Indigenous peoples were inferior.
From the 1870s to the 1990s, Indigenous children were removed from their homes and placed in Indian Residential Schools. Funded by the federal government and run by churches, the schools were a national project of assimilation. For more than five years, through the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, residential school survivors have shared their devastating experiences of fear, loss, dislocation and abuse.
Now, Indigenous and non-Indigenous people have a new opportunity to work toward right relationship — a relationship built on mutual respect. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission began in 2010 and closed with ceremonies, May 31-June 3, in Ottawa. [During gatherings held ] in Winnipeg, Inuvik, Halifax, Saskatoon, Montreal, Vancouver and Edmonton, we learned about the schools’ intergenerational legacy, the manifestation of colonization.
We now have much of the truth. We also have hope for reconciliation. To realize this hope and end the deplorable conditions facing Indigenous peoples, we need concrete action that transforms attitudes and public policies.
The churches that operated the schools and those that did not, but feel complicit in colonization, have begun this process.
Indigenous peoples are inviting Canadians into movements of change like Idle No More that help us to understand how aspects of colonization continue in the way we exploit the land and waters upon which we all depend.
All Canadians need to be involved. Residents of Canada are the beneficiaries of colonization. How can we, in effect, decolonize? What will a decolonized Canada look like?
In this decolonized Canada, Indigenous histories and cultures are taught in schools and to new Canadians; everyone knows whose traditional territory they live on and the treaty or ancestral law that governs it.
In this decolonized Canada, even the most remote Indigenous communities enjoy the same standard of living as their non-Indigenous neighbours, with access to clean water, healthy food and equitable education. There is an inquiry into missing and murdered Indigenous women to understand the roots of the problem and to help inform effective, collaborative solutions. Indigenous languages and cultures are thriving. Indigenous peoples are no longer treated like wards of the state, but as nations, with collective rights.
This Canada recognizes and respects treaties. This Canada upholds the standards of the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which declares that Indigenous peoples have the right to free, prior and informed consent on activities that directly impact their land, and all Indigenous peoples have the right to determine their own futures.
This Canada is not here yet. There is still racism, inequity and suicide. We are still in the hope stage, but the will for reconciliation is growing. The time is now to acknowledge our colonial ghost and take action toward right relations so that the narrative of Canada better reflects reality.
De-Colonizing Canada appeared earlier in the Montreal Gazette and is rewritten here with permission of its author Jennifer Henry who is the executive director of KAIROS: Canadian Ecumenical Justice Initiatives, based in Toronto. www.kairoscanada.org
