The Land I Live On

There are many identities that make me who I am today. I am a “Third Culture Kid” which means I was raised in a different culture than the one I was born into. I am a South Asian. Coming to Canada on my own at the age of 17, completing my post-secondary education, and then naturalizing to citizenship in 2019 gave me the new official title of a“Canadian Immigrant”. I am now a South Asian-Canadian. Being a Canadian means different things to different people. To me, it means I have the rights and freedoms I wasn't born with. It means being a woman and a person of color speaks volumes on what I can freely say and do now. I feel grateful for this opportunity and I feel committed to learning about Canadian culture before I start to exhibit it.

Canadian culture, to the rest of the world, is seen as extremely diverse and inclusive. This may be true when compared to our Southern neighbor but let's dive deeper into this claim. It would be a grave mistake to forget that Canada was once (and arguably still is) a European (French and British) Colony. Prior to colonization, the lands encompassing present-day Canada were inhabited for millennia by Indigenous peoples (First Nations, Inuit, and Metis), with distinct tribal networks, spiritual beliefs, and styles of social organization and leadership. Over centuries, elements from the Indigenous (not really), French, British, and more recent immigrant cultures have combined to form the so-called “Canadian culture”. It is also important to note that Canadian culture has been strongly influenced by its Southern neighbor, the United States.

So here is the truth: Indigenous culture truly suffered at the hands of white colonists as they tried to forcefully Europeanize indigenous children by kidnapping them and forcing them into “residential schools”. If that wasn't damaging enough, the government imprisoned those parents who tried to save their children from this traumatic fate. In the end, 150,000 indigenous children were wronged by this country and 7 generations had to pay the price. It was only in 1996 that the last residential school closed down. The truth and reconciliation commission was set up to bring this racist truth out in public to all Canadians so that a proper reconciliation process could begin. We are still far from that.

So why this history lesson? I believe that as a new immigrant, It should be my responsibility to understand the roots of the land and dismantle some of its colonial contexts. Coming from a predominant former British colony myself, this practice seems familiar.

In present-day Canada, the Indigenous peoples make up the majority population in the territories which include the Northwest Territories, Yukon, and Nunavut. But so many indigenous peoples live across the country — their country. So why do we forget that this land is theirs? Why do we refuse to accept that we, in the end, are always going to be settlers and colonizers on land that belongs to those who are being forgotten? As an immigrant, I'm struggling to understand this. I would like to start by dismantling the idea that there is harmony between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Canadians when it is actually an imbalance of power. Acknowledging that there is A LOT of work to be done, I would like to begin by calling the land I live on for what it truly is. I currently live on the unceded (forcefully taken away) territory of the Algonquin Anishinabe Nation. To settlers, that's Ottawa, Ontario.

For historical reference, watch this documentary on residentials school in Canada by Aljazeera called “Canadas Dark Secret”. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=peLd_jtMdrc&ab_channel=AlJazeeraEnglish