As the Canada Day weekend approaches, all over social media, I see bright posters saying “Celebrate Canada 150” and the Canadian flag soaring, red and white dominating the space. The image below was one I found going around quite a bit on posters:

(Credit: http://www7.mississauga.ca/hostsites/canada150/)

However, despite all the festivities, what most people have failed to acknowledge is that Canada 150 is the celebration of Indigenous Genocide, hundreds of years of colonial oppression and inherent racism. The entire nationhood of ‘Canada’ is built on the foundations of theft and violence. We need to acknowledge Canada’s dark history, and that the land in which we reside is stolen, unceded land belonging to the First Nations. Our festivities are predicated on the oppression of others. Indigenous communities have occupied this land for thousands of years— since time immemorial. This concept of Canada’s 150th birthday is a colonial idea pushed down our throats. It’s been a violent 150 years for Indigenous peoples.

What are we celebrating here— Ethnocide? The legacy of the Residential Schools? The thousands of missing and murdered Indigenous women? Cultural genocide?

(Continued in the next blog post)