I think anyone who has stumbled across my website or my books probably knows I’m a Canadian. I was born in Hamilton, Ontario, to two immigrant parents fleeing political unrest in Argentina (where their parents had fled in the aftermath of WW2).
I can’t say I’m proud to be Canadian, but I certainly don’t mind it too much. There are much worse countries, and overall it’s a nation with a lot of good going for it.
The way we treat our Indigenous populations is not one of the good things going for it. Canada’s treatment of the various nations we rule has been… well, genocidal at times, and utterly contemptible the rest. It’s not a good look, and most Canadians, including many immigrants like my parents, either don’t care or are actively opposed to the government doing anything resembling reconciliation.
And, hey, I get it. Accepting that you are part of a nation that commits atrocities is hard. The idea that we have to pay, in a literal sense, for decisions that we had no part in is difficult. But I don’t think that absolves us of responsibility.
In a tiny, minuscule act of acceptance, I’m taking a course on Indigenous literature this semester. It’s been a lot of hard reading… I think I mentioned that I read Motorcycles & Sweetgrass a few weeks ago, and that was really a great read. A lot of fun, and tinged with sadness and weight, but not as soul-crushing as a lot of my reading has been. I’m now working on… less light-hearted fare, and it’s difficult to get through. But this is minimum-level work. Everyone should at the very least know about what their nation has done. You can’t make amends if you don’t at least acknowledge that anything wrong has happened.
Anyway, I have a big paper due next week, and a bunch of smaller assignments before that point. But, hey, at least I’m learning, right?
Hope everyone out there is staying safe and healthy!