What do we do about Canada Day?

This July 1st, Vancouver titled its Canada Day Celebrations ‘Canada Together’ and worked collaboratively with representatives from the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations to build an event that includes a Coast Salish welcoming ceremony, storytelling workshops, and a performance by Eagle Song Dancers.

Halifax re-envisioned its festivities as ‘KANA’TA: Canada Day 2022’ in partnership with the Mi’kmaw Nation, and chose to include an Indigenous Cultural Village, including bannock tacos, craft making and live performances.

And in Winnipeg, organizers at the Forks have opted to reimagine ‘A New Day’, foregoing their fireworks celebration in favour of a powwow, pipe ceremonies, tobacco tie workshops and other cultural programming.

To be on the right side of history is to be intentional about co-designing events on Turtle Island in partnership with its original inhabitants. As an Anishinaabe kwe whose family has been directly harmed by Indian Day schools, I welcome cities’ commitments to change for the better. 

At the same time, I worry that events like these may be another form of lip service to Indigenous communities, or worse, examples of tokenism that suppress our real calls to action. 

Think about it: initiatives to re-centre the original inhabitants of this land on Canada Day have only started very recently, even though we’ve been here since time immemorial. It’s only recently that the holiday was even called Canada Day; before 1982, the holiday was called ‘Dominion Day’, and intended to celebrate confederation and Canada’s connection to the British empire’s imperialist project. Does changing the name of the holiday really change its true intent?

In 2021, Indigenous communities across Turtle Island were rocked by news of the discovery of the remains of 215 children who were students of the Kamloops Indian Residential School. Since that first announcement, more than 1300* potential unmarked gravesites have been found, with many more yet to be uncovered. 

Following these uncoverings, Idle No More and grassroots Indigenous folks organized protests against the celebration of a country built on attempted genocide and stolen land. In response, 80+ cities and towns across 10 provinces and territories decided to cancel their Canada Day events out of respect for First Nations. Even the pope offered an apology for the Catholic church’s role in organizing the residential school system. 

Do cities cancelling their fireworks celebrations change anything for Indigenous people? In a tangible sense, no. Cancelling fireworks celebrations will not directly impact First Nations communities experiencing boil water advisories, the overdose epidemic taking the lives of our family members, or the disproportionate rates of violence faced by our women, girls and two-spirit community members. 

However, it’s still important that they do. When cities choose to validate and stand with the struggles happening within our communities, it keeps Canada’s true past in people’s minds, instead of promoting the myth of Canadian exceptionalism. That spurs change and gives me hope that a reconciliatory, decolonial future is possible. 

Now that a year has passed and the buzz around residential schools has quieted, I worry that we have collectively forgotten. I don’t want you to forget. I want you to continue to show up in solidarity with us. 

You may be wondering: Isn’t Canada Day all about celebrating multiculturalism? What’s so bad about throwing a Canada Day party, or watching the fireworks, to celebrate that?

To that, I urge you to consider the irony of upholding Canadian multiculturalism at the expense of Indigenous peoples. Pre-colonization, there were as many as 2 million Indigenous peoples across what is now Canada; by 1867, disease, starvation and warfare reduced our population numbers to 100,000. We have built our population nearly back up to pre-colonization numbers (reaching 1.67 million people today), but even that only comprises 4.9% of the overall Canadian population. Furthermore, while there are more than 50 Indigenous Nations and 70 distinct languages (that’s more than Europe) across Turtle Island, only 15.6% of Indigenous peoples can conduct a conversation in an Aboriginal language, and most Indigenous languages in Canada are at risk of going extinct. 

How can we celebrate Canada’s multiculturalism today when the country was founded on European colonial assimilation and genocide? How can we throw parties, knowing that we are still uncovering Indigenous children’s bodies at the sites of residential schools intended to ‘kill the Indian’ in them? How can we idly watch fireworks celebrating Canada’s multiculturalism, when the original multiculturalism of Turtle Island is at risk of being lost forever?

Personally, I don’t think we can. So if you don’t want to celebrate Canada Day, here are ten things you can do, as an ally, to show up in solidarity for Indigenous peoples:

1. Begin taking a course to more deeply understand Indigenous peoples, such as this free, online one offered by the University of Alberta;

2. Source your news about Indigenous peoples from Indigenous publications, such as APTN;

3. Spend time consuming Indigenous creatives’ content on social media, television, podcasts and music;

4. Read the TRC and MMIWG reports to better understand the historical challenges and current realities Indigenous peoples are facing today;

5. Pay an Indigenous speaker and/or performer to attend an upcoming event you are planning;

6. Contact your local elected officials and ask them how they are working to implement the 94 Calls to Action;

7. Support Indigenous entrepreneurs by purchasing goods from their businesses;

8. Volunteer your time to an Indigenous charity or nonprofit;

9. Donate to Indigenous peoples’ GoFundMe pages and mutual aid requests;

10. Advocate for the protection of the lands and waters we share.

Notes:

*The numbers are not what matters. As Dr. James A Makokis (@drmakokis) tweeted, “No matter what the numbers are, there are not supposed to be graveyards at schools, ever”.