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“Decolonize Canada!” That’s the rallying cry of activists and the politically minded these days. In truth, it’s been an increasingly common slogan in recent years, but with the discovery of over 200 unmarked graves at a British Columbia residential school last month, it has become more popular than ever. Give the land back, people say. Every ‘colonizer’ resident should pay reparations. In response, white Canadians start to feel attacked. Arguments ensue. Facebook comment sections turn to wastelands. Who’s right? What is the way forward? People just can’t agree.
Well, here I am returning to the keyboard to offer a solution – the only solution, I might add, that I think has any chance of working. One thing that has become apparent to me is that the people I know who talk the most about ‘decolonizing Canada’ do the least to actually make it happen. These are white university students I’m speaking of, a group that is perhaps better than any other at spreading information around, but the past has showed us that students are capable of a lot more than that. So why the lack of action? Maybe they feel that putting the word out is enough, or maybe they think that there is nothing they personally could do to advance that goal. If so, they’re wrong. They, in fact, have the ability to take concrete action, right here and now, to decolonize this country. How? By leaving.
I’m serious. You are the modern-day colonizers, right? White, and presumably middle-class if you can afford an education at today’s prices. Your school might be located on unceded territory. It might have a statue of a man who built residential schools out front. You’re contributing to the problem you’re complaining about. So if you want to fix it, go.
“But where?” you ask. Back home, of course… but wait. Where is home? Even if you’re descended from pure Italians or Hungarians or whoever, odds are that unless you yourself were born over there, you won’t fit in. Those countries are not your home, Canada is. And what about those of us who have a mixture (which nowadays is almost everyone?) Does that 2% African blood mean you should go back to Ghana? They do say Africa is the birthplace of humanity, meaning your ancestors there must predate the ones in Europe. So if you want to go back to your people’s land, you can’t go back any further than that…
But then there’s another problem. Even if you go back to, say, France, who’s to say that you won’t just be a colonizer there too? The modern-day French aren’t the original inhabitants of the area we call France. There were Celtic people living there first, and Germanic people too, so if we’re playing by modern social justice rules, the land should be theirs. Somebody had better go tell those nasty French to give France back!
Okay, if you’ve read this far, I’ll come clean. Of course this is a terrible, terrible idea. But when we speak of ‘decolonizing’ a nation, this is the ultimate conclusion we must come to. Those who propagate this idea of decolonization have their hearts in the right place, but I think many of them fail to realize that the only real way to decolonize is to get the colonists out, which simply isn’t going to happen. Some folks do realize that, and don’t mind it, but they have a different issue: they really think (as I’ve implied above) that every single white person in Canada is one of “the colonists”.
The people calling for decolonization are the same people who get up in arms (and rightfully so) about the plight of Hispanic or African immigrants, but they don’t realize that white immigrants from places like Ireland, Germany, Italy, and even Britain itself once faced the same struggles we now think of as exclusive to people of colour. The ancestors of the average white Canadian were not the ‘filthy colonizers’ we like to imagine. More often than not, they were downtrodden people, unwelcome or unable to make a living in their home country, who desperately sailed for Canada in the hope of finding a better life. These immigrants did not kill Indigenous people. Most never even met an Indigenous person. Why, then, are we so keen to blame ‘white people’ as a group for actions that were, in fact, committed by a few very specific groups?
Let us put the blame for this horrific discovery (and others) where it belongs.
Blame the government who developed and approved the residential school system, knowing full well the damage it would cause. And I don’t just mean the government of the 1870s. There are Members of Parliament still serving today who were in office while residential schools continued to operate. (And not by a small margin, either). Our current Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, has continued to fight legal battles against Indigenous individuals who were wronged by the Canadian government. Enough is enough. If the anger that currently gets directed at a generic ‘white colonizer’ was concentrated on the folks who are actually in charge, we might finally get justice at the proper level.
Blame the Catholic church, which operated more than half of Canada’s residential schools. The abuses Indigenous children suffered at the hands of priests and nuns are so disgusting and shocking that they do not bear repeating – but if we do not repeat them, we are likely to forget. Sexual abuse at the hands of clergymen was absolutely rampant, and there are stories of newborn babies resulting from these “unions” being thrown into the furnaces or drowned in ponds. And of course, boys were not immune to the same abuse. The men responsible for these acts often faced no consequences even when exposed, instead simply being shuffled along to another school, with the church willfully covering up records of their actions. Additionally, the forms of non-sexual physical and mental abuse disguised as ‘discipline’ in these schools defied all logic, taking the stereotype of the strict Catholic nun/teacher to an unprecedented level.
The Catholic church is one of the wealthiest and most powerful organizations on Earth. It has the power to make enormous strides in correcting the injustices of the past. Yet in the aftermath of the latest discovery, Pope Francis cannot even find it in himself to apologize for these occurrences. Why not? It is time for the Catholic church to take action and right the wrongs committed by the pieces of human garbage who were allowed to fester within its ranks.
Blame the other churches too – just in case you thought I was up to some undue Catholic-bashing. The Anglicans operated more than twenty residential schools. The United Church had more than a dozen. Even the Presbyterians got in on the business. The schools operated by these protestant churches were no better than those run by the Catholics, and they do not deserve a pass for their lesser numbers. These churches are not struggling for money or manpower. Will they commit, in some tangible way, to rebuilding the foundations they spent decades tearing down?
Lastly, blame the RCMP, whose men were directly responsible for literally tearing children away from their families and placing them in the schools. This iconic, world-famous police force is constantly held up as a symbol of Canadian culture. Attacking them is like attacking a beaver or a Canada Goose – you just don’t do it! But how can we continue to mythologize the men who were the most direct agents of colonization most of these Indigenous children every encountered? The Mounties are not innocent in all this, and they certainly have not always done what was right.
These are the organizations who need to atone for the tragedy of the residential school system. They, not average Canadians, are the ones who planned and orchestrated it, along with other attacks on Indigenous culture. Likewise, they, not average Canadians, are the ones who benefitted most tangibly from those attacks. It’s time to direct our ire in the right direction for a change: fight the system, not the average joes who have to live in it.
But if you, as the descendant of settlers, truly want to take a stab at decolonizing Canada, there’s only one way to go about it. It isn’t with slogans, it isn’t with protests, and it certainly isn’t with armchair activism. Just get outta here!
