What Would It Take to Celebrate Canada?

Canada Day.  Every year, I ponder what this day means.  The more history that I learn, the less proud I am of being Canadian.  Our home on Native land is sometimes sung during the national anthem and this feels true to me.  I am ambivalent at best about celebrating a colonial history built on the murder and displacement of the First Peoples.  And this is not just in the past.  It is still going on even today, Canada Day.

And yet, I was born here although my ancestors were not.  This is where I find myself.  I love the land and the waters in this territory.  I am a guest here on the ancestral land of the Wendat people and the traditional territory of the Anishnaabeg.  I am proud to live in a land that was protected and cared for by these people for thousands of years.  I am saddened and sickened by what the newcomers have done to these people, the land, the water and the other than human life in this territory over the past four hundred years.

Four hundred years seems to be a small blip in time compared with thousands of years and yet so much has been damaged and lost that it feels overwhelming.  But the Indigenous peoples of this land are holding firm.  They understand their responsibility to care for the land and the water.  They are the ones in court fighting the giant extraction companies that just want to take resources, create damage and then move on.  Indigenous peoples know that this is their home and that they have a sacred responsibility to care for it.

Why don’t we, the newcomers feel this way?  We protect our own “private property” while throwing garbage out the window of our cars.  Why don’t we act as though this land, these waters are our home, as though we are planning to stay here, as though we care about what we leave for our children and grandchildren?  Why do we call her Mother Earth and then treat her as a stranger?

And so, this year on Canada Day we went out on the water in our canoe.  I made my offering to the water and I sang to the water.  These things I have learned from my Indigenous friends, to show respect and love.  My partner and I marveled at the beautiful and fragrant flowers on the Dogwoods and the spotted Garpikes swimming beside us.  Our hearts thrilled when we saw the Ospreys on the nest for one more year.  In this way, we renewed our relationship with them.  We smiled to hear the Bullfrog and the Leopard frog sing from within the cattails.  Yes, this is our home and we love it.

Then we came across an old green tarp trapped in the branches of a shrub that stuck out of the water.  I began pulling on it and feeding it into a big bucket we keep in the canoe for just this purpose.  I had to unsnag the plastic from the dead branches.  It was not easy.  My partner came forward in the canoe to help.  It is an 18 foot freighter canoe with a flat bottom and it is quite stable.  He had to stand up and pull hard as the tarp was covered in algae and was very heavy.  I shifted over to the starboard side of the canoe to counterbalance him.  The tarp was huge and weighed down but with one final tug it broke free and we stuffed it all inside the bucket.  Later we stretched it out on the dock to dry.  It smelled pretty bad as we drove it up to the house so we could get it into a garbage bag and send it to a landfill site.  Not such a great idea but this is the reality of how our community is living here at the moment.

We frequently pull garbage out of the water when we are out in the canoe.  Some of it can be reused such as planks of wood and boat bumpers.  Styrofoam bait boxes and insulation have to be thrown in the garbage.  Water bottles and cans can be recycled.  This is something we can do to show our respect and to show some reciprocity for the life that water gives to us.  But it isn’t a solution.

We newcomers from the past few centuries have a lot to learn from the people who cared for this land before we arrived.  We would do well to listen carefully to their voices, advise and example instead of trying to silence, incarcerate and force assimilation on them.  Admitting that our worldview is seriously flawed, decolonizing our thinking and learning from Indigenous people will help us find our way here on this land and these waters in partnership, collaboration and respect.  That would be cause for celebration.