As a young person, I remember wondering how my father could be so backward. A progressive intellectual type, my dad was one of the people I most looked up to. (He still is, by the way.)
But when I was about 16, so around 1999, Dad and I were in a knock-down drag out fight over gay marriage. He was against. I couldn’t understand how. We had always talked about how important the Brown v. Board ruling was that de-segregated American schools. It enshrined the principle that all should be treated equal and that separation and segregation of a group of people could never still allow for equality.
Within a couple of months, my Dad turned around. He admitted that marriage equality was actually the right thing. He even donated to the marriage equality group to which I belonged back then.
So, here I am in 2021 and I feel nothing but shame. I didn’t follow my own standards. I fell for the right wing talking points that blamed the elders for problems on reserve. I believed that the solution had to be either the status quo or some kind of soft cultural assimilation.
The recent revelations of the mass deaths of Indigenous children in Canadian Residential Schools forced on me (and many other Canadians) a re-evaluation of everything I have ever thought on the matter of Indigenous Canadians rights to equal treatment.
One way or another, truth be told, I have always thought that Indigenous communities were victims of a bad system. I have never thought that this damage was due to anything inherent to Indigenous people, but that the mistreatment suffered was so significant that assimilation into (my white) Canadian culture was the best way forward. It’s definitely what I was taught in school. I clearly remember a grade eleven class all about the 1969 White Paper and how much better things would have been had it been adopted.
I even spoke out and more or less repeated these things on several occasions when talking about the matter to friends. “I hate to say it”, I would often start, “but assimilation might be the only way to help these communities.” I never felt comfortable saying it, but I really thought that so-called “modern” culture — my own particular culture — was the best thing for everyone.
What an asshole I was.
Over the last few years, I have tried to educate myself more about Indigenous Canadians, their history under the Indian Act, and the promises Canada has made in the last — oh, I dunno — 150 years or so. I decided to start to read up a little on Indigenous history. That, the recent Black Lives Matter protests, combined with the recent discoveries at one time Residential schools have completely changed my views. And I am embarrassed that I ever held my previous ones.
The mistreatment of Indigenous Canadians represents, in so many ways, the complete and utter abdication of the principles I, as a progressive liberal, and Canada as a progressive country, claimed to hold.
If there had been any other ethnic or religious group in Canada that was treated the way Indigenous Canadians are, I would’ve been out protesting like I was in 1999–2000 over marriage equality. But I wasn’t. Because I didn’t think of it that way. I just felt a kind of nihilism about it.
Indigenous Canadians deserve equal treatment under the law and the promises made to all First Nations by the Canadian government must be fulfilled. Period. The federal and provincial governments must take real and meaningful action to protect Indigenous Canadians from violence and poverty. That means huge investments in new programs designed explicitly and exclusively to help Indigenous communities grow and develop in their own unique ways. These programs need to be run by these communities not by the central government for them.
The paternalism and ethnocentrism that I thought my dad showed in 1999 is the same one I did twenty years later. I didn’t even see the contradiction at the time. I’ve always thought of myself as a liberal and a progressive. But I wasn’t fully talking the talk or walking the walk. I had a blind spot. A big one.
But I see now. And I am here now just like my Dad was on marriage equality. I got to the right place eventually.
And I know what I’ll be voting for in every election from now on. And I know what I’ll be thinking about this Thursday — Truth and Reconciliation Day. Better treatment for my fellow Canadians. Better treatment for all. I will stand by Indigenous Canadians. I will no longer be blind to what our country has done.