Gentrification Nation
- Cassidy Lue
- Jul 9, 2021
- 6 min read
In light of the hundreds of bodies found of indigenous children across Canada I've decided to write my first piece on Canada and the secrets that lie beneath the country's green grass and pride. Many people around the world believe Canada "perfect" and "Quiet". A place filled with people who were just too nice for their own good. And how instead of being a melting pot cesspool like the United States. We were a beautiful cultural Mosaic that displayed the beauty of every culture of every person on its land. I'm here to say it's all a damn lie. I was once like most Canadians. Ignorant. Sitting on my hands and listening to everything the textbook taught me. That was until the summer of 2018 crept around.
As usual, I was preparing myself for summer school like usual and because of my program's extreme lack of specific summer courses. I decided to fill out my electives with an Intro to Indigenous studies class. This is where I met my professor Nancy Stevens, the woman who changed my perspective. Her other name is Wasemok-Mzhaakwat-Kwe of the Bear (Makwa) Clan and the translation for her name is Lighting out of the clear day (something happening out of the blue). Over the next six weeks and 12 classes, my eyes were opened to the horrors that Canada has been hiding beneath the surface of this "openly diverse" land.
Beginning with the Williams Treaty of 1923. This treaty stated that those who came to this land were guests and it was up to us to take care of the land while upholding their [Europeans] side of the treaty. However, that did not happen. Instead, Indigenous people were forced onto reserves, while mass genocide was committed against an entire people. This genocide was committed in several different ways. The first was the spread of diseases including smallpox and tuberculosis. Blankets were coated in disease and sent off to reserves to kill hundreds of thousands of people, archeologists and anthropologists have estimated up to over 2 million deaths.
The second thing that has been coming to the attention of many people in recent weeks was residential schools. In America, Aboriginal people are treated like folklore and fiction because of the mass amounts of indigenous people that were killed during the creation of the United States. However, in Canada, because of things such as the Indian Act and the Williams Treaty, people cannot play ignorant and have to acknowledge that aboriginal people exist because we live on their land. With this being said, the Catholic church showed up to kidnap aboriginal children from their families, throw them into residential schools where they would be stripped from their culture, life, name, languages, traditions and everything else. These were essentially Canadian concentration camps for children. In these schools, children were used and abused, beaten, and broken until they had nothing but pain and trauma.
There were many people to blame for all of this, including residential school architects such as Egerton Ryerson and John A Macdonald. However, there is one man in particular who had an extremely negative impact on the lives of the indigenous community in Canada. Duncan Campbell Scott ran the residential school system at its peak which was between the years of 1913 and 1932. During this time 17,000 indigenous children were attending residential schools, which was now about 75% of indigenous children. He wanted to assimilate these children into the system and completely rip away their culture, background, languages and history.
A famous quote by him states,
“I want to get rid of the Indian problem. I do not think as a matter of fact, that the country ought to continuously protect a class of people who are able to stand alone. . . . Our objective is to continue until there is not a single Indian in Canada that has not been absorbed into the body politic and there is no Indian question, and no Indian Department, that is the whole object of this Bill.”
This statement is why he was heavily associated with the term “Kill the Indian, Save the Man'' which essentially meant to kill the indigenous person’s spirit in order to reshape the mind into colonizing to white social norms and society.
Now before I talk about the survivors of residential schools, I must explain that residential schools were not the only thing that existed. Churches also had Day schools. Day schools were very much like residential schools except that those children got the chance to go back to their families at the end of the day while residential school children were unable to leave unless they were 18 or dead. Which sadly as each day goes by, seems to be the most likely situation. For those who did make it out at the age of 18, they were often stricken with fear, pain and trauma. I learned a lot about the “drunk Indian” stereotype that used to show up in lots of fiction in the early 2000s. Most people in this day and age who are unable to see a therapist, for financial reasons or otherwise, turn to self-medication. This situation is very similar, aboriginal people who have made it through residential schools self-medicated with alcohol to deal with depression, anxiety and PTSD. The truth is, trauma is hard to live with and everyone does things to cope. So the fact that an entire stereotype was created based on a racist assumption and need for mental health help is absolutely heartbreaking.
Fun fact: Something that many people don't know is that generational trauma and indigenous cultures and households last up to 7 years. Along with this, the Catholic Church has yet to apologize for the crimes committed towards Indigenous people on their own land.
In recent days as well there has been a large number of catholic churches being burned down and sadly people have been blaming indigenous communities for burning them down. However, in the past, the Catholic Church and Canadian government have been known to burn their churches to hide the evidence and records of Residential schools. It has been recorded that the Canadian government destroyed 15 tons of paper documents related to the residential school system between 1936 and 1944, this included about 200,000 files. However, it is important to note the class-action lawsuit that was brought towards the Canadian government for residential and day schools in 2008 for reparations.
It was difficult for many families who had members in residential schools because of the requirements that were needed in order to get the money they so rightly deserved. One of the largest credentials was to have proof of your records but because many of those churches burned down, many people have got their records and therefore it was extremely hard for them to prove to the government that their family had suffered. On top of this, the payouts ranged between 10,000 to 250,000 dollars depending on “how much they suffered”.
These issues are important to me for many reasons but one of the largest ones is that I am a black woman who lives in Canada. If I lived in America, I would be fearing for my life every single day because I could be shot or killed at any moment. Meanwhile, as a woman, I fear walking alone at night. In Canada, Indigenous people feel that every day. Indigenous women have been disappearing for years and it barely gets any news coverage, indigenous men have been killed by police and get no news coverage. The Canadian government used their signs and emblems for the Olympics and put a giant stadium essentially on their homes in Vancouver a few years ago and when they protested, indigenous people went to jail for that. Right before the pandemic started they were threatening to build a pipeline through their homes and they protested for months. Their voices are not being heard and as Canadians it's our duty to stand up for the voices that are not being heard. I remember when the George Floyd protests were happening in Canada, Indigenous people were protesting alongside them. So it is only right to help protect the people whose land this belongs to and who’s land we are a guest on. I haven’t celebrated Canada day since 2018 because I am not a proud Canadian. How can I be proud of a country that lies openly to the world while building their hopes on the crushed bones of an entire people.
This may be the first time I talk about indigenous issues but this is definitely not the last time. I promise you. So until then please educate ourselves about Indigenous issues, learn about the history of this country and remember that history is told by the victors so history books are almost never telling you the truth.
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