Canada Day 2021: A Time for Radical Reflection.
It is not about guilt, it’s about how we move forward as a country.
Since the late 1970s I developed an ambivalence towards my adopted “home” when I learned that the architects of apartheid South Africa visited Canada to study and learn from Canada’s Indian Act, its policies and practices towards Indigenous, First Nations, Metis and Inuit Peoples. This was also the time of the growing anti-apartheid movement across the globe. Moreover, my personal experience with education here in Canada when I was told by educators that I was aiming too high by wanting to attend university, as well as other experiences of direct and indirect racism and the increasing knowledge of settler colonialism, my resolve and commitment to making Canada my adopted home a better place began. Despite my cognition, mental state and motivations being questioned when I shared my knowledge of the connection between apartheid and the treatment of Indigenous Peoples, I pushed on. Some of my colleagues, students and friends, I am confident, will attest to my trials and tribulations related to effecting change within the spheres I travelled both in Canada and abroad. This commitment to making Canada a better place is an ongoing endeavour especially since I have come to realize that despite its shortfalls, Canada is still one of the better places in the world to live. I also believe Canada can definitely improve if we can have a collective visionary determination for addressing injustices.
This Canada Day, 2021 is an opportunity for all Canadians to reflect on Canada’s dark and ugly history especially its anti-Indigenous racism which is steeped in its colonial history. While some of us have known of this history, many others amongst us in Canada have revealed they did not know due to deliberate omissions in Canadian institutions especially education. The time to plead ignorance and willful blindness is over. The grim somber and horrifying discoveries confirming the deaths and unmarked graves of children in Kamloops BC, and Marieval, Saskatchewan is unfortunately only the beginning of such confirmations of the historic atrocities across our country. Therefore, since it is never too late to reflect, Canada Day 2021 should be a day for serious reflection on the past, a realization of having to go further in making Canada a better inclusive country for all, and especially committing to honour The Truth and Reconciliation Report, the Missing and Murdered Women and Girls Report and many other such reports and their recommendations. The fact that with the exception of Indigenous Peoples, the rest of us are settlers, directly or indirectly implicated in settler colonialism and its benefits, we need to realize that reconciliation is a national project that needs to be undertaken by us all.
Moving forward towards social justice for all Canadians is about belonging and inclusivity and for this the concept of intersectionality is very important if we claim to be committed to disavowing systemic racism based on Canadian and provincial human rights codes which prohibit discrimination of any kind, including anti- Indigenous, anti-Asian, anti-Black, anti-Muslim and anti-Semitism to flourish in our institutions. This work is difficult but needs to be done by starting with each of us questioning our biases, where and how we learned them and then committing to unlearning them to change our attitudes and behaviors since we are all influenced by various institutions.
Sabra Desai, Chair of Board of Directors, The Gatehouse.
June 29/2021