Denman Island, BC, June 30, 2017

“In Quebec, the community of Kitigan Zibi has been without safe water since 1993. 

In the case of this particular community, uranium was discovered in the tap water approximately 24 years ago, but it was not until 1999 that the government finally declared the tap water unsafe for drinking following reports of residents getting cancer. 

Similarly, in Ontario, Neskantaga has remained without drinking water for 23 years. The Huffington Post cited testimony from an 18 year old girl who said showering at home left her body with blisters...

While the Canadian Federal government spends 500 million dollars on Canada Day celebrations, Inuit communities in Nunavut live in debilitating poverty, unable to feed their families...”

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Happy Canada Day! For as much as we have to celebrate, we also must remind ourselves of the problems which occur in Canada that other countries may not know about us.

Our government is arresting Indigenous protesters who are protecting their land, their lives, and the lives of their families. These protesters are as non-violent and peaceful as possible while taking a stand for their community. Our treaties meant to solidify Indigenous livelihood have been broken time and time again. 

First Nations communities frequently lack clean drinking water, and our government does not come forth to address the situation - this continues while white Canadians brag about how Canada is a land where you can have clean drinking water whenever you need it. 

Our country’s largest recorded mass executions are all against Indigenous peoples. The Canadian Acts which identify Indigenous identities continue to exclude Indigenous women and their children if their partner/spouse is white, suggesting that women have no cultural identity worth being recognized by our government or community. The atrocities committed by white Settlers against Canadians gets buried under layers of formality and civility. Indigenous communities feel routinely punished and ostracized for standing up for themselves, as if you can exclude original Canadians from Canada and celebrations of our own nation.

The things that make Canada a wonderful place for you to live in should be celebrated. If you and your family have thrived against adversity in this country, that is beautiful and no small feat. But be aware that many Canadians do not share these privileges with you, and that structures which maintain your privileges often have the same source as the structures by which colonialism took root.

Romeo Saganash is a residential school survivor and NDP MP in Abitibi-Baie-James-Nunavik-Eeyou, Quebec

I lose sleep most nights.

It started when I was young. Now I have a whole regimen of supports to help me sleep: exercise, healthy eating, music, darkness, relaxing tea, books of poetry. When it gets really bad: mandatory time off, writing, sleeping under the stars beside white pine trees, near a lake, on the land of the Eeyou, my people.

How colonization affects an individual is difficult to explain. How deep the tentacles reach. How vast the expanse of jarring totalitarian domination extends. Someone said to me recently that they like to have friends with different political and social points of view because it broadens their experiences and teaches them to refine arguments. For the past seven generations, in order to adapt to and accommodate the colonizer’s values, goals, institutions and society, I have learned to see so broadly that my eyes tear up.

You see, for us, nearly everything around us represents colonial domination and genocide and is an example of Indigenous resiliency. Except that I’m really tired of constantly having to fight to prove that I have the right to exist.

And I can’t sleep.

What does it mean to be safe and free in the context of a colonial state when it is celebrating its sesquicentennial? The front lines of Indigenous struggle are everywhere, now: from the prairies, boreal forests and rivers to city streets, in classrooms and in the buildings of Parliament. In a world where our very existence is criminalized and our presence is defiance, Indigenous people are forced every day to live in a world built by their colonizers.

Settler colonialism demands Indigenous erasure for the purpose of claiming Indigenous land. It is the symbolic and real replacement of Indigenous peoples with settlers who attempt to claim belonging.

The real problem with Canada 150 celebrations are the stories that the state is attempting to tell itself and everyone else. Specifically, that it has legitimate authority to make laws and policies, or even imagine a future, without Indigenous partnership. Any celebration of the state, the nation with its assumed sovereignty, stories of expansion and settlement or nation-building in general, replicate settler colonial narratives and are an insult to my ancestors, to my people, to me.

I have intentionally not told you the stories that you may have heard before. I have not given you a list of all the reasons that Canada 150 is a ridiculous concept to Indigenous people because this isn’t only a political and social reality: it is deeply cultural, spiritual and personal as well. I could list a thousand reasons why celebrating Canada 150 hurts and why it is just a magnified and compounded example of what every single day feels like. Instead, I will tell you a story because it is the clearest, most personalized example of settler colonialism and Indigenous erasure that I have found.

We never had family names. We were, and still are, connected by clan, community, band and tribe. Many of the surnames we use were written into treaty lists by priests or Indian Agents, the names distorted or assigned by the colonial representative. A friend of mine from Treaty 9 territory has the last name Nothing. When I first met her I thought that she was resisting and, like Malcolm X, had chosen to use a name that highlighted how, for a period, we weren’t even allowed to name our own children.

Anawtin is an Anishinaabe word that means Calm Wind. My friend’s grandfather was one of the signatories to that very problematic Treaty 9 and when it was his turn to add his name to the document, the Indian Agent heard him say “nothing.” With that one act, a name that was given in ceremony, one that would have connected her grandfather to his community, identified his character and attributes in stories and painted a beautiful image full of meaning and beauty, was reduced, literally, to Nothing.

The only appropriate way to respond to the narrative of the state whilst celebrating 150 years of genocide – the only way you can do it without losing your mind – is with a single-line press release reading, “Indigenous people are normal people deserving of the same respect afforded to anyone else and the recognition of their inherent rights – but they are rarely given that due to the machinations of settler colonialism.”

So I use the night to count how many different ways I can find to say that I am a human being, I am Indigenous and I am still here.