Comprehending the Legacy of Colonialism in Canada

I am not a historian. The only history I remember from school was grade 6/7 Canadian history and I now know that 90% of what I was taught was a lie, or massaged enough to be considered a lie.

Beyond the misinformation delivered to me in grade school, my comprehension of history on a global scale is pretty abismal. History was never something that really interested me but looking back, I’m honestly not sure why. These days I can’t get enough.

As I’ve mentioned, I’m currently working through a game-changing book called The Dawn of Everything. Yes, I’m still reading it. It’s not only immense in size but also exceptionally dense with concepts and ideas that are mostly new to me. Along with other topics, the book explores many misinformed historical concepts that are embedded in our colonial culture, so I’ve been nodding along as the authors continue to analyze and criticize the ideas that we, as a culture, have about hunter gatherer societies, where these ideas came from, and why they are so skewed from what it would seem that humans in the Neolitic era actually lived like. The evidence presented helps paint a much more complete picture of the diverse cultures and societies that existed in pre-colonial times in North America, all the way back to 10,000 years ago.

I’m not lying when I say the book is dense. I definitely haven’t committed all the information that I’ve read so far. There’s a lot that has slipped through my memory in late night reading sessions when I should probably be sleeping. But the flow of ideas helps paint a bigger picture that hasn’t been lost of me thus far.

One of the biggest influences the book has had on me is to help me understand the prejudices that I carry against Native American cultures that has been born of the misinformation that was presented to me in early education. I suspect I’m not alone in these prejudices or why they formed. Being able to unmask them and name them has really helped me understand how colonialism is racist and why the damage to Native people is ongoing. Just like all racism, waking up to these prejucides is sad and hard and hurtful but so fucking necessary. I am not ashamed. I’m ready to move forward without the harmful views I’ve been carrying around with me throughout my life.

Another major lesson that I’ve learned has to do with the scale of time which we have been living in a post-colonial society versus how long Native Americans lived in harmony with the planet, keeping checks and balances, and building a way of life that allowed them to thrive without wreaking total havoc on the environments in which they lived, not trying to control or decimate as we do today, but flourish along with all the other non-human beings on the Earth.

For, like, 10,000 years people knew how to live in balance with the world.

And in 300 years, we’ve destroyed it. We’ve done it in the name of progress; in the name of advanced civilization; in the name of the queen. Such bullshit.

Which brings me to the last concept has really affected me from The Dawn of Everything: that there is not such things as a straight line that all cultures, people, civilizations must travel over time to become more advanced. This idea that there are basic steps that all cultures necessarily progressed through regardless of time and space - this was engrained deep inside my cultural beliefs. I couldn’t point to a time which I was taught this explicity, but I did believe it. And now I realized how wrong this idea is - and how dangerous.

Native American culture is no less advanced that colonial culture. The culture is different, but not behind or preceeding. I’d dare say that it is better. But the important thing that I’ve come to understand is that it developed in a different way: it’s values are different, it’s storytelling is different, it’s life goals are different. The idea that these differences are somehow worse than the culture carried across the ocean by my ancestors is abhorent.

This is the racist legacy that was brought with colonialism and it is what this country we call Canada was founded on. Since those first treaties were signed between European settlers and Natives, the country has been built on lies and misdirection that was justified because colonizers felt they were superior to the Natives they encountered. But that belief was wrong.

We all know this. I mean, I think we do. The wars and plauge and lies are written right into the history books. But what we don’t comprehend is that we erased a culture (and continue to erase) which is better than our own, believing we were “saving the savages”. We killed off those that would teach us how to live with the land.

Today is Canada Day. But I feel only disgust. There is no pride in genocide. There is no reconciliation on stolen land, the murder of a culture. There is no celebration when soverignty is continually ignored in the name of this endless extraction and control. This joke of a country that only seeks to gain power and profit at the expense of people and the planet is a mere 155 years old. Babies. Like we know anything about how to govern. Native Americans lived here for over 10,000 years in balance with the world.

I used to write a lot about decolonization but I stopped because I realized that I was only talking about decolonization as a metaphor. It is not my place to claim what steps need to be taken to move forward, but I will still be here continuing to decolonize my beliefs, continuing to learn about the lies that this country was built upon.

Today is no longer about celebration, but pain and anguish at what has been lost and how far we all must go to recover what was lost.