As much as I want to write in part of Aboriginal peoples, I am a full-fledged Asian who has had little contact with Aboriginal cultures. My contact with the Aboriginal cultures has been limited to books and guest speakers so it is more of a knowledge as factual information rather than knowledge as experience. Therefore, I guess this puts me in a rather odd position in terms of discussing Aboriginal history which has been marked by complex social hierarchies and forced cultural assimilation mainly between European settlers and First Nations across Canada. My ancestry did not play a big part in Canadian history. So what does an Asian girl have to say? Isn’t Aboriginal relations something to be discussed between the Whites and the Indians?

The land we are living on is an unceded land. This land was never sold, relinquished, or handed over in any way and only too recently, I became aware of this fact (making me question the significance of my high school social studies class). We are merely visitors on this land. However, I look around and see the streets lined with fancy restaurants and stores selling designer clothing. Office buildings several stories tall have replaced oak trees and we have Ferraris and Lamborghinis roaming instead of deers and buffalos. The fact that we are living in this society that is overabundant with luxuries while some Aboriginal tribes are living in conditions that lack access to clean water, I believe that it is not an overstatement to say that us visitors, are also benefitting from the history of colonization. However, at the same time, I ask myself why I feel such resentment towards this society I live in. Isn’t this what we wanted? What is there to complain? Here is the pitfall where some non-Indigenous people who got tired of capitalism tend to fall under. They tend to identify and introject themselves with the Aboriginal cultures to temporarily escape from a capitalistic society and return to so-called “mother nature” while still holding on to the luxuries.

For this Big Idea project, I will examine our positions as visitors in Canada while addressing the issue of cultural appropriation.