Why is it hard for so many of us to consider Canada home? How is it that the First Peoples of Canada feel homeless in their homeland? And why do multi-generational Canadians feel not quite right about calling Canada home?
According to Chamberlin it has to do with the stories we tell ourselves about Canada. These stories are what tie together reality and imagination, and what connects people to the land they inhabit (3). The realities that fill the stories are the actual states of affairs and geographic locations that have to do with home, whereas the imaginings are the values and meanings people attribute to home.
Problems arise when there are contradictions between realities and imaginations (74), and between stories. The realities and imaginings the First Peoples had that tied them to the land had been erased, systematically and intentionally, by the Canadian government. Without these stories, they have been left homeless in their homeland.
For non-indigenous Canadians, there are two contradictory stories we can tell ourselves. On the one hand, is the story of the pioneer who came to Canada to tame the “open” wilderness and create a society that is now Canada. One the other hand, this “taming” essentially involved dismissing and discrediting the First People’s stories that tied the to their home (78). Their story was replaced by the pioneer’s story.
This second way of looking at the Canadian story creates another contradiction. Stories are what tie people to their land, but this story is one that severs Canadians from this land. It’s a hard pill to swallow that Canada was made our home by making others homeless. It creates tensions within our stories, such as whether Canada’s first prime minister was a national hero or a genocidal criminal.
Consequently, many Canadians don’t feel quite at home in Canada. For some, this is because they haven’t lived in one or any part of Canada long enough to internalize the unique stories that are needed to connect them to the land. For others, it is because they see themselves as descendants to thieves and are thereby complicit in the “unremittent horrors” the indigenous people faced (75) and continue to face today.
Perhaps this is a reason Canadians are so sensitive about criticizing immigration. Perhaps there’s part of us that feels like we’re being hypocrites by telling other they can’t come here to make their story. We know vicariously what kind of horrors this can unlock.
Works Cited
I enjoyed reading your post and agree in many points, especially about this duality when we come to call Canada a home. For majority of us immigrants, if we want to be honest with ourselves, Canada is an “adopted” home, a shelter from an uncertain past, a place of hope for a better future. In the tradition of stories that Chamberlin talks about, we bring our stories from the outside and attempt to weave them into the existing ones that stemmed from the Canadian soil. Because, as Chamberlin argues, a home is an image for the power of stories, “we need to live in them if they are to take hold, and we need to stand back from them if we are to understand their power” (77). It takes time for immigrants to take the hold, and it definitely takes an effort to stand back from them in order to understand their power, for example to understand the history of the First Nations if we have never been exposed to it before.
I would also agree with Chamberlin that home is so difficult to place, even when we understand the stories that constitute that home. It is difficult both literally and figuratively, indeed. An immigrant will always have the figurative interference of the home that was left behind and a feeling that the new, adapted home is intangible because its stories are not fully understood yet. This is where stories come to rescue to provide understanding of the new place to be.
Thanks for your comments.
Aren’t all homes adopted though? The demonstrable cruelty of human nature suggests history is a story of more powerful people taking land from the less powerful. This didn’t start with the Europeans. Even prehistorical evidence suggests Earth was full of many different hominoid species and that we are the survivors because we killed off the rest. How about the animal kingdom? Humans continue to kill off the other animals and take the land they lived on for millennia.
Hi Ryan
You make some great points.
My question is,
Do you think that it is there can be a difference of opinion on calling Canada home?
I feel as if there are a large group of Canadians who are proud to call this country home but are also aware of the many shortcomings and are willing to inspire change and create an understanding.
To the same extent there are also many Canadians who are not proud of their country. There is a lot of value in that opinion so long as these people are willing to spark change and an understanding as well.
Finding common ground means allowing for a difference of opinion and cultivates grown and understanding.
Thanks
MM
Hi Ryan,
Thanks for these eloquent and provocative thoughts. One of the things I liked the most about reading Chamberlin was the array of widespread, diasporic people and cultural traditions whose stories he referenced – the perfect means of reinforcing his self-proclaimed mission statement of finding ‘common ground.’ I think Chamberlin’s wording here is quite deliberate in that one of the biggest social divisions is always rooted in land – geography, territory, borders and boundaries, etc. – and I think you’re quite right to focus on the ever prickly national immigration debates here as a nexus where contradicting stories of what make us Canadian (‘cultural mosaic’ versus ‘Canada First’) butt heads.
I think that one of the reasons why Canada’s national identity has always been a touch shaky, on top of the warring self-conceptions of ‘pioneer’ and perpetrators of cultural genocide that you ably unpack here, is Canada’s role within the umbrella of the British commonwealth. Fun fact (which I just learned this year): did you know that, as a permanent resident attaining Canadian citizenship, you still have to swear fidelity to the Queen of England? That’s something that those of us born in Canada are certainly never subjected to, but for those legally becoming Canadian, it’s entrenched in the very means of formalizing the national identity. Now that’s an unsettlingly archaic ‘charm,’ as Chamberlin might put it, if ever there was one!*
John A. MacDonald is a really fascinating example of one who was, for over a century, painted as one of the grand ‘heroes’ in the story of Canada being rebranded as a villain. A lot of contemporary retellings of Canadian history (Chester Brown’s graphic novel Louis Riel comes to mind) overtly paint MacDonald as a scheming, almost ‘Bond villain’ figure rather than the sort of Abraham Lincoln-esq ‘Founding Father’ type figure that I was introduced to in my own elementary school experience of Canadian history. I think that this sort of historical reevaluation is really healthy and necessary (especially for holding figures like MacDonald, who was grotesque in his mistreatment of Indigenous peoples), but also speaks to the dearth of clear-cut, unambiguous ‘heroes’ in the ‘story of Canada.’ Maybe we still have yet to discover, popularize, or champion the right candidates. Maybe they have yet to rear their heads until an upcoming chapter of the story of Canada.
Ultimately, I think if, as you quite astutely put it, stories tie Canadians to their land, ours is a story and land that is constantly in the process of being reworked – reinterpreted, better understood, and rewritten – like new crops being planted and nursed in a farm field. I think we’re currently experiencing a very necessary influx of many of the more sordid and despicable earlier (and dishearteningly ongoing) chapters in the story of Canada, and that feeling disheartened, discouraged, and ashamed of them is both appropriate and necessary. The hope is – and this is something Chamberlin returns to time and again – that if we can adequately air out all of the Canadian stories that haven’t had their adequate day in the sun, we can work towards telling ourselves a narrative of a Canada that listens, learns, and rebuilds in a nation we can all be properly proud of. That’s probably as close as a ‘happy ending’ to the Canadian story as we can get.
*Another fun fact: as part of a new Canadian citizen’s citizenship ceremony, you have the ability to ‘rent a mountie’ to recognize the solemnity of the occasion, full old-fashioned garb and all. I love the narrative of becoming a Canadian citizen being so entrenched in antiquated symbolism – it’s right out of Dudley Do-Right.
Its my view that the fidelity towards the royal family is just another example of the 99% raw material to the rich fetishizing wealth and power.
I’m not sure I’m as optimistic as Chamberlin in regards to the healing properties of including the myriad harms and injustices in our Canadian narrative. The more I understand how the powerful crushes the less powerful, the more angry I become and the less inclined I am to identify as Canadian, or any “ian” for that matter.
Hi Ryan,
Thank you for your post! Many of your points really “hit home” for me and caused me to reflect on my so-called pride of being a Canadian.
You bring up immigration and discuss Canadian responses to it, which is a great factor in this overlying discussion. I wanted to ask: do you think that another reason that (many) Canadians are so reluctant in criticizing immigration is because they feel guilty in having a say and voicing their opinions, since Canada isn’t really “their land” or “their home”? I have talked to a couple of people about this before and they all said that they didn’t feel comfortable in having an opinion because they weren’t (and shouldn’t be) in a position to judge, as this land isn’t even theirs; its the land of the Indigenous peoples.
What would your response be to this question? I am looking forward to it 🙂
Hi Simran,
Yes, I do think some of the reason Canadians are reluctant to criticize immigration is because many don’t feel Canada is really their home. Perhaps Chamberlin is correct and many haven’t developed a story that connects them to this land, and many the story some of us tell involve making the first nations homeless so we can have a home .
Something I struggle with is the question of complicity and whether I am responsible for harms that occurred before I was alive. Should I feel guilty for something that I in no way caused or would want to happen?
cheers!
Hey Ryan –
I appreciate your question about complicity and would like to share a paper that I’ve found particularly powerful – http://www.nwic.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/Decolonization-Is-Not-A-Metaphor.pdf
Basically, they clarify that decolonization is the return of land, power and privilege to Indigenous people, and, until this happens, there is no justice. There is work to do. We are all a part of this work. Tuck and Yang go on to talk about settler moves to innocence- the ways that we relinquish responsibility for the harms of settler colonialism.
I’ve also appreciated Patrick Wolfe’s work which clarifies that settler-colonialism (meaning we came, and we stayed) is a structure, not an event. Colonialism hasn’t ended. Our legal and political structures are still creating harm to Indigenous people and privileging white folks, first and foremost.
You can look at the disproportionate amount of Indigenous youth in care today, disproportionate amount of Indigenous folks who are incarcerated today, disproportionate amounts of Indigenous women and girls missing or murdered, failure to respect Indigenous land, title and governance structures (see what’s been happening on Unist’ot’en territories) as hints that settler colonialism isn’t over. Even the governance structures currently operating on most reserves are mandated through the Indian Act (Canadian government policy) and power hasn’t been reawarded from the Canadian government to the majority of hereditary or traditional Indigenous governance systems (meaning, Canada is more willing to recognize the governance systems that they’ve imposed on Indigenous Nations, rather than the Indigenous Nations traditional models and ways of knowing). Why are English and French Canada’s national languages when so many nations have spoken so many languages for millenia? Why could Canada approve the KM pipeline in the name of “national interest” when Indigenous nations had clearly opposed the project?
Personally, I make personal, interpersonal, and systemic decolonial commitments. My examples include beginning to learn Cree (my grandmother is Cree from South Indian Lake), being mindful to consume equal amounts of Indigenous literature as other literature (and music, theatre, film, news), acknowledging the people whose land I’m on with respect, providing curriculum feedback to profs who are lacking Indigenous content in their courses, writing to government officials to condemn violence against Indigneous folks and communities, supporting Indigenous led projects in the ways I am asked, etc!
I’m open to sharing and listening more. I hope you’re feeling encouraged to take on some decolonial commitments. Small or big, they’re all positive steps.
Thanks for sharing your views on complicity and colonization Georgia.
The question as to whether we are complicit for harms caused by past generations is very different from the one that asks whether we are complicit for the harms the First Nations Peoples face today. My answer to the first one is a tentative no. I don’t see how its sensible for someone to be considered morally responsible for a harm they in no way caused to happen or even would have caused it if they were in a position to exercise influence.
Answering the second question is more difficult. Again, the issue of control comes up: what control do I have over a corrupt system that I happen to be born into? How am I responsible for the parents I happen to be born to? That is, how am I responsible for whether I was lucky or unlucky in the lottery of birth? Which part of me is benefiting from or being oppressed by the system – my European side or Metis side? Am I half exploiting and half oppressed? I could go on.
I honestly don’t know how to answer those questions because the more I think about them, the more complex they become and the more questions crop up. What is clear to me is Canada wouldn’t be Canada without making the First Peoples homeless. What I should and can do about that fact is less than clear.
Great question!
I don’t doubt many Canadians feel that Canada isn’t their home because it is, or should belong to the First Nations Peoples.
There’s cynical side to me that thinks that certain beliefs ought to have behavioural consequences – otherwise, in many cases, they’re mere ornaments that service to elicit positive esteem or to foster a sense of positive self-regard.
So how ought one act if they truly believe Canada is not their home?