Indigenous Canadian here. I advocate for my community and my family on all the things that Canada has done to us in the past. I remind people of all of that and some of it is terrible history.
I’ll still remind people today … but at the same time I do know that this is a great country and many people are trying to come to terms with the past. I’ve been to many countries in the world … over 30 countries … so I know that we live in a great country.
My dad attended residential school and he was miserable and terrorized there … but before he died and all through his life, he always enjoyed Canada Day because it was a day to make it fun for us kids. We can remember the politics but we can still celebrate the significance of what this country is and continues to be.
Thank you for your perspective. This day is still celebratory to me but it definitely invites more reflection and awareness than ever before. I hope fellow Canadians are also pausing today to reflect on our past, both good and bad, and the values we want to hold as we move forward.
Thank you for sharing, I found that to be a good resource. I also recently learned that July 1st 1923 is when the federal government passed the Chinese Exclusion Act (link below). www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/…/federal-exclusion-act#:~:tex….
I really wonder what life would be like here if Turtle Island wasn’t violently and systematically colonized.
Thank you for the link too, I had heard about the terrible treatment the Chinese were subject to in the US, but had not known (but not really surprised) that Canada was up to the same crap.
And yeah, I wonder that too. I think the best we can do now is listen to those who survived it despite the continued attempts to erase their cultures, and learn from them.
Just because you're "challenging the status quo" doesn't mean you're inherently making anything better. It is perfectly possible to challenge the status quo that just drives division even further and ultimately makes everything worse than if you had done literally nothing at all.
This strikes .e as one of those cases, where the more effort you put in the further away you'll end up from what you wanted.
Agree to disagree. I don't think discussing indigenous rights on Canada day only achieves resentment, it also achieves raising awareness of the issues that indigenous people have historically and continue to face within Canada.
They aren't just discussing. Even if you stopped at the headline you'd have gathered that the goal is "do not celebrate Canada day."
By all means, we should be having discussions about the issues surrounding natives. But "don't celebrate Canada day" isn't the winning strategy you seem to think it is.
Only in people who would resent others for wanting equity and equality (in their country!!!), so you're saying much more about yourself there than you are about me, while helping absolutely no one (apart from perhaps the people who published that article, because you do prove them right, so not entirely useless I suppose), so as is always the case with bigots, your stance seems to be projection all the way down.
Editing here because I can't seem to respond further - in other words what you're saying is indigenous people advocating for themselves and explaining in depth and with great sensitivity why they would appreciate you, a coloniser of their land, celebrating in different ways that perhaps take in to account the centuries of continued marginalisation they endure, are in fact making themselves the other.
Not you, literally resenting them for "ruining" your "fun day" while wilfully choosing to completely ignore them speaking up for themselves (I guarantee you didn't read through the linked article or put your bias around the subject aside for even a millisecond) in favour of maintaining your own comfort in the way things are.
I'll give you one thing - that mental gymnastics would almost be impressive, if it wasn't the same bullshit every bigot pulls when faced with even the slightest request of change to the status quo.
It's a shame you can't see how pathetic you look from the outside.
I'm done engaging with you, bigot.
Well then it's a good thing I'm not resenting them for wanting equity and equality.
I'm resenting the people who think that "don't celebrate Canada day" does anything to bring anyone together. You want a nation that actually has cohesion amongst it's citizens across racial and economic lines? You don't get that by canceling the big holiday that's trying to celebrate Canada as a singular nation.
You want people to view the natives as equals worthy of respect? Maybe start by explaining how celebrating Canada day is inherently opposed to that. And when you realize that it isn't,then figure why you want people to not celebrate as a singular nation.
But every time you try to highlight that celebrating Canada somehow hurts natives, just remember that you are inherently makin them an other, something other than Canadian and therefore impossible to be equal.
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