WE NEED A NEW CANADA DAY THAT HONOURS ITS FIRST PEOPLE
Tara Collum | Special to MuskokaTODAY.com
We’re a nation that often defines ourselves by what we aren’t.
Our Canada Day isn’t a huge spectacle with parades; it’s usually a barbecue and fireworks if anything.
Gord Downie of the Tragically Hip once remarked, “It’s not Canada Day, it’s just Friday.”
Downie was a tireless advocate for Indigenous rights and was given a Lakota name that translates to, ‘He Who Walks Among the Stars.’
He also traversed the nation on a hero journey to say goodbye to us while dying of terminal cancer, in an epic unifying moment not usually seen outside of sports championships and Team Canada hockey games.
Not celebrating Canada’s birthday doesn’t mean you don’t love your country.
Before that storm of the pandemic has fully passed, we’ve been confronted by the reckoning of what Canada did, and is still doing to First Nations people.
Some people want change, and others cling to entitlement and old traditions.
While more residential schools are being searched, and more unmarked graves are being uncovered, there is a divide.
Some want to cancel Canada Day, and not everyone is on board.
Some want to march or honour the Indigenous, and others don’t want to be held accountable or responsible for anyone else’s pain, and insist it’s someone else’s fault — the church or the government — or that it’s all in the past.
Canada Day is not a day that gets a lot of attention anyway, unless it’s a big birthday like Canada 150.
It’s mainly a time for the dollar store to flood their seasonal aisle with Canadian themed merchandise, including items like dream catchers they have no business selling.
I was on the fence about Canada Day last year. Not because I don’t have any pride in being Canadian.
Canadian pride is special because it’s voluntary and not mandated by a certain day anyway. It’s impromptu crowd sing-a-longs of O Canada at special events, or our love for Terry Fox. It’s touching because it’s genuine.
It’s been a time of extremely difficult decisions, especially for parents. Do they send their kids out for Halloween because they don’t want to deny them tradition, or do they settle in at home for ghost stories, and a night of making new ones?
Margaret Atwood has often said that the Handmaid’s Tale is based on true events. Her story revolves around the forced removal of children from their families, punishing parents for trying to keep their children, and forcing children to replace their own culture for a new one.
I never dreamed that Atwood could have gotten ideas for her dystopian world from Canada. Or that South Africa was so interested in this government’s treatment of natives it used Canada as a case study while setting up Apartheid.
Indigenous families in Canada had their children taken from them and sent away with the goal of being assimilated into settler society. Children were forbidden to speak their language and practise their culture. They were forced to perform manual labour.
What words would we use if another country did those things? They sent kids to re-education institutions that were so brutal soldiers fighting in world wars had a higher survival rate than the children of residential schools.
We would most likely — if we’re not holding our tongue — use words like genocide.
They never returned the children either. And their families never learned what happened to them. Did the children go too far from home to find their way back? Are they among the missing and murdered Indigenous women and girls?
Imagine losing your child, and then finding out your government had placed them in an unmarked grave, and kept no records to explain what happened to them. How will these families ever receive closure?
We need to be a witness to the pain. We have to search for the ways we have been accountable in causing or condoning that pain.
Those schools had staff members and many may have suspected what was going on. Or if they tried to alert others were probably ignored.
The Catholic Church also has accountability. And the Indigenous community has secured an audience with the Pope in hopes of getting an apology.
It is our job as Canadians to make sure our government is held accountable, and make things right.
As Canadians we can also hold off on the fireworks.
Tomorrow CBC Radio and other stations will be broadcasting 12 hours of Indigenous music and stories. There are also Indigenous content creators on social media platforms like Tik Tok sharing their stories.
We need a new type of Canada Day one that includes and honours its first people.
Some people will have fireworks anyway, or chastise others for not being patriotic.
I’m not celebrating. It would make me ashamed to be Canadian if we did, and I think Canada is better than that.
