By: Shumail Sami
Canada Day commemorates Confederation, when the British North American colonies of New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, and the Province of Canada (current day Ontario and Québec) joined to form the Dominion of Canada. Canada is home to over 37 million individuals, the vast majority of whom trace their lineage to outside of Canada. Because many Canadians – at one point or another – are immigrants; we have chosen to call Canada our home and revere in the freedoms offered by this land. Canada Day has always been a day where we celebrate these freedoms, through parades during the day and late night picnics before fireworks.
However, this year, there are calls to cancel Canada Day all around the country. For the past couple of years, this day of celebration has been laced with something quite sour: the ill-treatment of Canada’s original inhabitants, the Indigenous people. This issue came to a head in early June when 215 Indigenous children’s bodies were found in a mass grave in a Kamloops BC residential school. The school closed down in 1996, only 27 years ago. This sparked many more mass graves to be uncovered across Canada, totaling the body count to over 1000 and still counting.
Indigenous tribes are the initial inhabitants of Turtle Island – the land we now call Canada – yet the Canadian government has put in place many institutions and laws that disenfranchise their existence. Residential schools were one of the most horrifying of those laws. Children were forcibly taken from their parents and placed in a school of the Catholic church, where they were forced to learn about Christianity and faced horrible abuse at the hands of priests, nuns and other “authority figures”.
Residential schools are part of Canada’s shameful history and their effects have had long lasting impacts on the Indigenous population. According to a study done in 2017, individuals that underwent residential schools had poorer general and self-rated health and increased rates of chronic and infectious diseases. They also had higher levels of mental distress, depression, addictive behaviors, substance abuse, stress, and suicidal thoughts.
As immigrants, we may wonder what this has to do with us. We did not steal the Indigenous peoples’ lands and take away their opportunities. However, the fact of the matter is that we are settlers in this society. This land, no matter when we came, does not belong to anyone other than the Indigenous peoples. Think about your own home. It is as if someone were to come to your house and tell you that you cannot live there anymore, while simultaneously allowing other people to stay. The Indigenous peoples of Canada went through that and more in the past 500+ years.
There is also the case of Canada’s treatment of immigrants themselves. For example, the Canadian Pacific Railway was built on the backs of underpaid Chinese immigrants, many of whom passed away during work due to improper and dangerous work conditions, and were not given the right to a proper funeral. There is also the case of Japanese internment camps. These were created in World War II for Japanese immigrants in Canada under the pretense that they could be spies. Historically, Canada has created increasingly restrictive immigration laws that seemed to only affect non-European immigrants. More recently, Canada has been practicing Islamophobic policies. Think about Quebec’s hijab ban from civil services and the increasingly common and vicious attacks against Muslims, Black people, and BIPOC in general, the brunt of which is felt by Black Muslim women. As Muslims, we are getting calls from loved ones to start being more mindful when leaving the house, carrying protective gear such as swiss army knives, pepper spray and more.
The Canadian Government itself has rejected votes to condemn all forms of Islamophobia and taken Indigenous activists to court for wanting recognition of the horrors of residential schools. There are so many atrocities the Canadian government is willing to commit to anyone not “worth protecting” in its eyes. Why then, should we feel proud to celebrate a country that does not care to give us security in our existence?
Instead, this July 1st, let us all stand in solidarity with our Indigenous brothers and sisters. Canadians, instead of reveling in the “freedoms” this country offers, should mourn the lives of the children and the peoples today who are still not afforded those same freedoms. This Canada Day should center around the unwavering determination of indigenous peoples and their practices that the Canadian government and catholic church tried to erase in the past. In addition, This Canada Day the government should feel accountable for their lack of action for the indigenous peoples and also for immigrants who are also at the receiving end of assaults simply for the way they look, dress, or talk.
