Happy June 31st, Forever
On Canada Day being a problem for Canada but not necessarily for Canadians, OR, gimme cake, June 31st, Forever
The first time Anishinaabe leaders from my territory went to Ottawa to request some face time with those that ran this country was in 1907.
A contingent of Chiefs and Headmen travelled from the unrelenting towers of Canadian Shield in Treaty 3 territory via canoe, train, and moccasins to let our Big White Daddy know that they hadn’t made good on their Treaty promise.
Given the recent settlement between Canada, Ontario, and the 21 Anishinaabe communities north of the Great Lakes in the 1850 Robinson-Huron Treaty allotment area, you might say our leaders were onto something 116 years ago.
116 years ago, the Anishinaabe people in my territory alerted Ottawa that something wasn’t right.
And here we are.
It’s Canada Day again, and things still aren’t right.
Clean drinking water.
A youth suicide epidemic.
Broken Treaty relationships with Federal and Provincial governments.
All long-lasting issues in my homelands.
In 2021 Canada Day became a problem for Canada when 215 mass graves were found at a former Indian Residential School in Kamloops, BC. Indigenous families and communities mourned en masse. It was unlike anything I’d ever witnessed.
The non-Indigenous woke-ee wokes that run this country solemnly cancelled their holiday of fireworks, hotdogs, facepaint, and Tragically Hip covers in cities and towns across the country.
But why? Why cancel Canada Day? What changed?
It’s true this was another horrifying moment in Canadian history, but a predictable one and one that Murray Sinclair and the TRC warned Canada was coming back in 2015.
During the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s work, Murray Sinclair noted an ever-increasing number of first-hand accounts from IRS survivors of mass graves and burials at schools across Canada. At the time, Sinclair alerted the sitting Federal Conservative government and asked for a more thorough investigation into these claims - the TRC was denied additional support to do this work.
The story of mass graves and burials was a secret sitting in plain site.
As was the story of the electric chair used at St. Anne’s Indian Residential School.
As is the epidemic is MMIWG2SP+ folks. It took a National Inquiry for the world to listen to the decades-long claims of Indigenous families and communities that something was horrifyingly wrong here.
Canada has been a problem for Indigenous people for a long time.
For some Canadians, the very idea of Canada has now become a problem too. What a breath of fresh air.
It’d be an overstatement to say that Canada Day has become a problem for Canadians; it largely is not. Most Canadians don’t have a problem with Canada Day or Canada, dead Native kids or not.
As debwewin (deb-way-win, truth) finds its way into the hearts and minds of Canadians, and as more truth is brought to light, compassion, empathy, understanding, education, and, finally, action is needed.
Canada, You Are What You Are
Yes, mass graves were national news and, later, international news, but today Indian Residential School denialism is on the rise. This past month it grabbed headlines when Eleanor Sunchild, a prominent Indigenous lawyer in Saskatchewan, lobbied for IRS denialism to be added to the criminal code in Canada alongside Holocaust denialism.
"If you deny that that happened — if you deny the whole residential school system and its impact on Indigenous people and the trauma that was created from those schools and the deaths — then, of course, it should be seen as hate speech." - Eleanor Sunchild
In 2017, I was given a big opportunity to create a mini-series on one of Canada’s flagship radio shows on CBC Radio One called Day 6 With Brent Bambury. I pitched the idea that Canada needed a 12 Step program to get itself off of colonialism and they loved the idea - A 12-Step Program For Canada was born.
As big as Bambury’s show is and as important as the opportunity was for me, I spent much of my creative time arguing that colonization even existed in this country. It felt/feels like a wasted opportunity to be funny on a show with millions of listeners, which, frankly, used to be my job.
Suffice it to say; I’m familiar with the denialism that runs rampant here. And it is rampant here. There are many prominent Canadian media types that I refuse to link to here that have long argued that Canada’s Indian Problem is overblown, exaggerated, and silly.
I have built my career fighting, creating, and speaking against this denialism.
Canada.
You are what you are.
You’re a settler colonial state with a lying problem.
Admit it.
If you want your day of hotdogs and Tragically Hip cover songs, just be honest with yourself.
I’m not against your fireworks.
I’m on the record as conflicted and loving this country, too, because I do; I love this country. I believe in this country. I believe in its people, mostly.
So don’t cancel Canada Day.
Instead.
Do as I do.
Don’t celebrate July 1st as usual; instead, celebrate June 31st with me - a day to remember Indigenous Peoples, communities, and Nations are still here.
Despite everything, we’re still here.
Today. I’m eating cake. I’m eating cake for my ancestors that tied their moccasins up tight and walked to Ottawa over a hundred years ago to fight for something better.
Chocolate cake for all Anishinaabe people today.
June 31st, Forever.
Thank you for this, today is a good day for this kind of reminder... thank you for being kind in your frustration.