I often heard comparisons of Canada's treatment of indigenous people to Apartheid South Africa, and the Israeli Occupation of Palestine. As a lifelong bleeding heart leftist I think I even largely accepted them. However, I also believe I subconsciously took them with a grain of salt. "Europeans in Canada certainly were not perfect, but our history is not that bad", my thinking went.
Flying over the suburban sprawl of Southern Ontario, I was reminded more of the settlements in the West Bank than I would like to admit (albeit without the more ghastly mechanisms of the Israeli Occupation). I have spent so much time thinking about colonialism in Palestine, colonialism in India, colonialism in Egypt, that I have mostly neglected the many gloomy aspects of colonial Canada. We are settlers. There is simply no way around it. I am a settler.
My lifelong negligence is due in part to the fact that indigenous issues are simply less visible in my hometown of Kitchener-Waterloo (ironic enough considering its close proximity to the Six Nations). Conversely in Winnipeg Indigenous peoples are everywhere. We were nearly the only people of European descent on a weekend Greyhound bus trip. Downtown Winnipeg bursts with young indigenous people, and entire neighbourhoods appear to be almost completely Native. In Manitoba there is simply no ignoring this sizeable and unique demographic.
"So the problem with Ontario is that there are not as many Natives, so these issues are less obvious," I concluded, "right?" Wrong. A quick search taught me that Ontario has the largest population of indigenous people of any province in the country. Unfortunately native issues exist in the abstract at best for most Ontarians. This cloaking of a most troubling past and present relationship is dangerous. And all the bigotry in the world might be preferable to the constant ignorance and denial that relegates it all to being a non-issue.
The other day we drove to the MCC office, passing a seemingly endless stretch of big box stores along the way. The sight almost made me feel sick to my stomach. I wondered how a native Canadian might feel looking upon the great plains of empty parking spaces and even emptier consumerism. I wondered how an indigenous man feels to have to work in the Alberta tar sands because it is the only way he can support his family. And it all reminded me of a creeping destruction of societies and cultures around the world. A sweeping tide that comes by so many different names and faces.
Indigenous communities across Canada suffer from a laundry list of problems. Poverty, drug abuse, crime, prostitution, suicide. In one class we watched the powerful documentary Finding Dawn, about the many murdered and missing native women in Western Canada. We heard story after story of loss and abuse. Indigenous families and cultures obliterated by reservations and residential schools. The cycle has been a violent one, and the causes and effects for a most downtrodden people are not hard to see.
Simply put, the Canadian government will eventually have to give up large portions of its economic and constitutional power to indigenous communities. It is a basic and necessary step in addressing monumental and largely irreparable injustices that have occurred in Canada over recent centuries. The question is when we as a society will be ready to do this?
