Canada Day - My Disappointment in my Country

             For as long as I can remember, I have been extremely proud to call myself a Canadian.  I was born here, as were my parents, as were their parents; I am a third generation Canadian, and I always thought that was special.  Growing up and learning about my country’s history in school always made me proud; we were known as peacekeepers, and we had a country where anyone could come to and join without much hesitation.  The more I grew up, the more pride I would feel for this country.  The natural landscapes I have seen are breathtaking, and for a good majority, the people I have met are pleasant, polite, and genuine.  My love for Canada was turned into a mark on my body as I designed a tattoo of the Canadian flag as if it were carved into my skin, and I had that tattooed on my shoulder back in 2012.

            Ever since I was younger, I always celebrated Canada Day.  Usually there would be a barbeque of some sort, I would spend time with friends and family, and more times then naught, there were fireworks.  Even once I grew up, I would go to parks to spend time with friends and watch the fireworks on the lawn.  Once I moved out, this didn’t change much, and currently I would sit out on my balcony with a drink and watch the numerous spots in my field of view illuminating the night sky.  Often, I would have my sleeves rolled up on Canada Day so I could show off the pride for my country on its day.

            I needed to start with all of this background information first.  I needed you, the reader, to know about my thoughts, my pride, and my familial history with this country.  It is essential to know where I came from, and where my heart lay regarding the country that I call home.  I loved my home, and I would brag about it and defend it if needed.  But this is something that I cannot do right now because the country that I call home, is deeply scarred by the choices our forefathers made.

            I’m not going to sit here and claim to be an expert regarding the issues I am about to talk about.  My knowledge doesn’t come from formal education on these subjects, but from others bringing me into the light of the truth, along with my own independent research.  I just want that to be known.

            This is the first year that I will not be celebrating my country, because I am honesty horrified by the treatment of the Indigenous people of Canada, and the government’s indifference to their strife.  It is a decision that I have struggled with in the last couple weeks, but a decision that I must stand behind.  As much as I wanted to try and mask the situation with my appreciation and celebration for the good that Canada through the years, there is a giant black spot on our history that cannot be ignored.

            Growing up, I had no real concept of Indigenous people and what colonists did to them.  When I was a kid, I knew of them as “Indians” and I only ever saw them depicted in movies and TV shows.  As I grew up, my knowledge shifted to “Native Canadians” as every once in a while, we would have a speaker at school who would talk about their culture.  I never thought much of it all; I always thought that their traditions and culture were cool, but it never expanded more than that.  We learned about the Indigenous community sparsely in history class; specifically, I remember the Métis and Louis Riel, but not much more than that.

            There it is my formal education regarding the Indigenous peoples of Canada.  Between my high school graduation (2010) and my informal education on the topic (2019), not much changed regarding what I knew about Indigenous people.  I found out that a couple people I was close with had Indigenous heritage, but I never asked them about their experience with it, which is something that I still regret to this day.  I worked in retail for some time, where I had my first experience with Indian Status Cards.  For those of you who don’t know about these, they are cards to be presented at the time of purchase that exempts the owner of the card from paying taxes; people who have these cards need to be able to prove that they are a certain percentage Indigenous, but I’m not aware on what percentage it is.

            On top of what I have mentioned above, the only other piece of information I had regarding Indigenous peoples was about a type of land dispute before them and the government in a city about an hour or so from my hometown.  I don’t remember much about it, other than they were painted in a bad light, and it made people scared to go onto a reserve.

            So, to sum up the above, until I was twenty-six years old, that is what I knew about the people who lived on Canadian soil before European Settlers arrived.  Now I can finally dive into what I now know, and why I cannot celebrate Canada Day this year.

            In 2019 I began to learn about the Indigenous community, specifically about Residential Schools.  In my most basic understanding of them, they were schools that Indigenous parents would send their kids to because they couldn’t afford a proper education; I was wrong in about every way I could be.  Residential Schools were created by the government and run by various churches, in an attempt to “beat the Indian” out of children, in an “attempt to save their souls”.  They were forced to abandon who they were and become who we were.  They were forced to accept our religion, and if they resisted, they were abused, harshly.  Those who left the school, lived with PTSD, and a great deal with them fell into addiction to cope with the terrible conditions they were forced into.

            What really opened my eyes to the horrors that these children went through is The Secret Path.  It was a multimedia project that was created by Gord Downie, the deceased singer for The Tragically Hip.  This man was a wordsmith and as he was dying of brain cancer, he brought forth the terrible truths of the residential schools to the public’s eye.  The Secret Path tells the story of twelve-year-old Chanie Wenjack, an Anishinaabe boy who lost his life as he was attempting to escape the residential school and return to his family.  All he wanted to do was return to his parents and siblings, but he lost his life along the way.

            The visuals portraying the aspects of this boy’s life, his joys, abuse, and refusal to give up, accompanied by Gord’s powerful lyrics broke me.  To think that children from the ages of four to sixteen were torn away from their parents, forced to assimilate into a drastically foreign culture, abused physically, emotionally, and sexually, it makes me sick.  I have attached the link to the video, and I urge anyone who reads this to watch it.  While I recommend watching the entire two hours, it’s the first forty-six minutes that show the production, and the subsequent fourteen minutes that shows Gord Downie meeting with the members of Chanie’s family.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGd764YU9yc

            So now the question is, why am I talking about this now?  Why did I celebrate Canada Day last year, even though I had knowledge of residential schools and the hardships of the Indigenous people?  Well, the short answer is ignorance.  Even though I knew what happened, I thought we were on a path to better days, and I thought my country was making amends for everything they have done, but I was wrong.

            Here’s the segment of the rant where I get analytical and lay down the hard facts of the recent weeks.  In total, Canada had 139 residential schools, and over the 120 years they were active, approximately 150,000 Indigenous children were forced into these schools.  During these years, its estimated that 3,200 – 30,000 of these children died on the premises.  The churches that ran the schools never disclosed any firm numbers.

            Over the last couple months, there have been new findings at these schools, due to investigations done by the Indigenous peoples of those regions.  As of the time I post this, there have been 1,252 unmarked graves found in 4 former Residential School locations.  This is just the start, as more investigations are underway.  If you do the math, this can imply that the true death toll of these institutions could be upwards of 45,000, meaning nearly a third of the children who passed through the halls of these schools perished.  Schools are meant for education and growth, but they were turned into tools of genocide.

            What really breaks my heart is that the Indigenous communities just want to educate and reconcile.  When I hear members of the community speak, they just want to know the names of the children, so they can finally be put to rest.  They want to be heard, and they want to be treated fairly, and it is time for the rest of Canada to listen.

            The government doesn’t care, they think that they can just throw money at the problem, when that isn’t something that needs to be done.  What needs to be done is the passing of laws and legislature to stop demonizing the community.  For example, if you were to dump waste into a Canadian body of water, you would be fined $1,000,000, but if you dump waste into a body of water on a reserve, the fine is a mere $100.  How is that ok?

For the first time I can remember, I’m hearing and seeing commercials on TV and the radio that are giving Indigenous people a voice and giving them a chance to not be portrayed negatively in the media.  That is sad.  More needs to be done, much more.

I’m disappointed in the people that came before me, and I’m disappointed that we never received proper education on the truth of what happened in Canada.  I’m angry at the fact that families would be starved out and refused rations if they didn’t relinquish their children to the corrupt system, and I’m angry at the half-assed attempts that the Canadian government has made thus far.  I’m devastated as I hear the stories come out of survivors of Residential Schools, the stories of abuse and crushed dreams.

This isn’t over, it’s far from over.  There is so much that needs to be done to heal the wounds.  To start, stop separating Indigenous children from their parents, and if there is evidence of child neglect, address it as you would with other Canadian citizens.  Stop treating their land as dumping grounds for our waste.  How about sectioning off areas so Indigenous people can worship the land as others research in churches?

I’ve been a proud Canadian for most of my life, but right now I have to take Canada off of the pedestal I had it on.  I can still stand by the natural beauty of this country, but I can’t stand by the people, not until change happens.  No doubt, there will be more graves found, and more sorrow felt.  The churches and the government need to be held accountable and they need to initiate the change we need.

As for me, I’m going to continue to educate myself on the issues surrounding the Indigenous community; learning and understanding is the first step here.  We need to stop the hate and the unfair treatment of Indigenous peoples, and until that happens, Canada should not be celebrated.

- Cody S