The Land You Stand On

November 5, 2020 Mariah Brown

TW: mentions of: residential schools, abuse, youth suicide of Indigenous peoples

I’d like to acknowledge that the land I am writing this on is that of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation (ᐊᓂᔑᓈᐯᐗᑭ)

I’ve never felt comfortable describing myself as Canadian, however, the first time someone asked me where I was from, I did indeed say I was Canadian. This response was clearly wrong, because the adult asked four year old me “Where I was actually from” or “Where my parents were from”.

I never again said that I was Canadian without first mentioning some sort of background to my parents birthplaces and immigration stories.

For a while this was the norm. I didn’t see any issue until I realized that only POC people were being questioned about their origins in this country. No one asked questions when a white person declared themselves to be Canadian.

My first introduction to Indigenous peoples, was in the 7th grade. I didn't learn about their history in our country till much later on. In elementary school we opened our history textbooks and were told to read a chapter on Indigenous people. The chapter spoke about European migration to Canada and consisted of positive Euro-Indigenous interactions (with the exception of some groups who were depicted as “savages”), starting with Thanksgiving celebrations and ending with the sad, but mysterious (and totally not colonially related), death of a majority of these Indigenous people.

When my history teacher went to go teach it to us the next day she promptly declared the textbook would no longer be used and that she would do research on the subject and teach us herself. The book, she said, had grossly glossed over colonialism and Indigenous people in their own right, and had ultimately lied about several interactions and outcomes that had taken place, including Residential Schools¹.

When I think back to quite frankly almost every interaction I’ve had with someone asking me where I was really from, I think about how many generations someone should go through before they can be considered Canadian. If my great-grandparents had moved here, would people accept my answer of being Canadian? Or does the question have less to do with however many generations were born here and more to do with the continent that colonized the land we are living on today.

The fact of the matter is none of this land is ours. No one living in Canada today, who is not a person of Indigenous/First Nations descent is actually “from” here. Nowadays, people are born in Canada, but someone, somewhere, in their blood line, immigrated to Canada.

The fact that I was seven years old understanding that certain groups of people believe that they originate in Canada, and then not learning about Indigenous peoples till I was twelve, proves that we as a country continue to uphold colonial standards when it comes to talking about Canada. If it hadn’t been for my seventh grade history teacher, I wouldn’t have known the truth about the history of this country until I took mandatory history in grade 10, where we barely glossed over the fact that for almost 160 years 150,000 children endured years of physical, mental and psychological abuse at the hands of the Canadian government by way of Residential Schools.

The two arguments I’ve always encountered when talking about this issue are that 1. We aren’t the same Canada that had institutionalized cultural genocide entrained in our government and 2. If I was born here and my grandparents and great-grandparents were born here, don’t I have the right to call myself a Canadian and say that this is my land? Someone did conquer it after all, it just wasn’t me.

Firstly, the issue isn’t whether or not the same people are physically in power. Although the system originated a really long time ago, the ideals and racism that it produced are now ingrained in the same system we use today and this is shown in several prominent issues that still affect Indigenous communities. Additionally this land was stolen, and treaties were later implemented as a “legal” binding afterwards.

Secondly, no one is debating whether or not you’re a Canadian citizen. Legally speaking, your birthplace does indeed determine your citizenship status. However, the acknowledgement that the land you’re standing on right now, the land you were born on, the land you call home, was indeed stolen. It is an important part of decolonization and working towards mending the often fractured or non-existent relationship between Indigenous Canadians and non-Indigenous Canadians.

We’ve established that 2020 has been a hard year. But for a lot of Indigenous communities it was another year of some of the same stale issues that they’ve been grappling with for decades, with the additional problem of Covid-19. Water advisories plague our country in astounding numbers well into the hundred². A water advisory means that the drinking water in the community is not safe to drink without being boiled or treated or sometimes is not safe at all. There are Indigenous communities that have been on advisories for decades. Time and time again, a promise is made to rid these communities of these advisories but little is done. These water advisories are never first on the agenda of any government or any non-Indigenous Canadian voters’ minds. Water advisories are seen as a minute problem in our country because they don’t affect the majority of non-Indigenous Canadians. Most of us are able to open our taps and drink our water with no repercussions. We don’t have to think twice. In some of these communities even utilizing filters (eg: Brita), would not make the water safe to drink.

Doesn’t that sound like the conditions found in “third-world” countries?

Oftentimes as Candians we look at other developing countries and say “wow those conditions are horrifying”.

But it’s happening right under our noses in our own country.

Some Canadians don’t have access to clean water in their homes or even in their communities. And not just any Canadians. The only Canadians who are from here. The original people whose land we live on, whose land we learn on, and whose land we continue to claim as our own.

Attawapiskat is one of the communities that’s dealt with water advisories for decades.

It’s only 3 hours north of Toronto.

Let that sink in for a second.

Another issue that should be on the forefront of everyone’s minds is the youth suicide crisis that the Indigenous community has faced all over Canada. With mental health being talked about more now than ever, I expected this to be a bigger topic.

Mass suicides and suicide pacts, with children as young as 10, is a huge problem in various communities across Canada. In Ontario alone, the McIntyre River (located in ThunderBay), nicknamed the ‘River of Tears’ by Elders, has accounted for the death of 10 high-school aged children since 2000 and as recently as 2016³. Additionally, our Inuit population has some of the highest suicide rates in the world⁴.

A large part of the continuity of these poor conditions and high suicide rates in our Indigenous communties is due in part, to the lack of accountability we force our government to have. It’s also due to the fact that a majority of Canadians have yet to decolonize their language and to begin to form a relationship with the Indigenous population by educating themselves. We cannot begin to stand in solidarity with a community unless we are willing to put in the time and energy to learn about them and learn how we can help make the issues a priority so that we can live in a better country together.

We should all be outraged at the treatment of Indigenous people in this country quite frankly. This should upset you. This isn’t happening in some far away country that you don’t know anything about. This is the same country you were born in, or that you or your parents or grandparents or great grandparents moved here to live a better life in. Indigenous people were always here.

Fixing the water crisis and delegating the appropriate resources to Indigenous communities literally hurts no one. In fact, it makes us better, more considerate people, who love our country and want to make it a better and safe place for ALL Candians to live in, something that has yet to be done.

By acknowledging that the land you stand on is not your own and is a product of colonization and colonialism, we can decolonize not just our language but the ideals that go along with it. Once this is done we can begin to work with Indigenous communities across Canada to improve living conditions, mental health and trauma, education, and the relationship between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians in general.

We often boast that Canadians are some of the nicest, most caring people in the world.

Now's the time to prove it.