1, Day, celebrates the start of the worst days of our oppression as Indigenous peoples

Commentary by Robert Jago, in Toronto Star, June 30, 2021

Conservative leader Erin O’Toole recently attacked those who wanted to “cancel Canada Day” by saying that “there is no place on this planet whose history can withstand close scrutiny.” But Canada Day isn’t a celebration of “a place,” or of all its history — it’s the celebration of the Canadian state.

The Canadian state, the creature that was birthed on , 1867, is not something that should be celebrated. Canada Day is the birthday of a child abuser, a human trafficker — a state that committed these crimes itself, and that recruited churches to help it, as part of its scheme to murder a culture and seize the inheritance of generations.

No one needs to tell people whether this is a land worth celebrating. We fought for a century against discriminatory Canadian laws that jailed our people for celebrating this land in our way. The system of government that was created on the first Canada Day mandated the repression of Indigenous peoples — that was a choice made by the country’s founding fathers. And contrary to what people like O’Toole may think, Canada’s cruel treatment of Indigenous peoples was not inevitable.

Take a look back to another July 1--decades before Canada would come into being.

On that day in 1808, my people, the Kwantlen First Nation [southern coastal ], made contact with Europeans for the first time. Simon Fraser of the Hudson’s Bay Company came ashore at the village of Qayqayt and met a man named Whattlekainum. The next day, Fraser would travel down the river to try to get to the ocean. He wouldn’t succeed, and if not for the efforts of Whattlekainum his small party would have been destroyed by the Musqueam people [region of the future city of ]. However, Whattlekainum escorted the foreigners out of our territory and used his own fortune to pay off enraged men who wanted to kill Fraser for his transgressions (he wasn’t a humble visitor).

Back in 2021, the family of Whattlekainum is once again wealthy and powerful — until recently at the head of our First Nation’s group of corporations. And they, like all of us, have enjoyed the material assets those foreigners brought.

By the 1850s, our people had purchased from the foreigners all the accoutrements of the West. We had all of the technology and resources we needed and we still had our land and our rights. It was the best of both worlds — that era proved that Whattlekainum was right to protect these people. Because the lesson of July 1 was that contact didn’t have to mean conflict.

One hundred years later [1908], our nation was in ruins. Our population had fallen from 20,000 to just a few hundred. Our children were locked away in residential schools — masters of their own country, being trained to be domestic servants to the grandchildren of the foreigners we had protected. It was the worst of all worlds — and their suffering had its roots in the July 1 you’re more familiar with. It came with Canada.

As early as 1875, a Canadian official reported, “Since Confederation, the Indians have undoubtedly become discontented.” He laid blame partly on the colonial policy pursued in pre- Confederation British Columbia, which was “based on the broad and experimental principle of treating the Indian as a fellow subject.” Which is to say, another approach was possible.

With Confederation came an end to any attempt at equality. Instead, what came of it was what we have uncovered in Kamloops, in , and what we will continue to uncover for years to come. It was the consequence of the choices made by Canada’s founders and celebrated on Canada Day.

I can understand the ambivalence and confusion some non-Natives might have with this view of Canada, and its history. The contrast between what Canada is to them and what it is to Indigenous peoples is present right from the beginning. The first speech given in Canada’s Parliament celebrates the “foundation of a New Nationality” and the creation of a “self- governing” people.

But in the same speech the self-governing people are assigned the task of managing “Indian Affairs”. And on the first day of legislating, Parliament considered a petition demanding the “surrender of the Indian Reserve Lands” in Anderdon, Ont. From Canada's birth, we were set apart from Canadian nationality, beneath it. On its first day of work, they began to take our land.

The history of this land of Canada includes the story of Whattlekainum. Celebration of the date of Confederation does not. The history of this land includes friendship and co-operation between Indigenous peoples and Europeans. The celebration of Canada marks the start of the worst days of our oppression. There are a million ways to celebrate this land and the partnership between our peoples — but the one way you don’t, is to celebrate Canada Day.

Robert Jago is a Montreal-based entrepreneur. He is a citizen of the Kwantlen First Nation (southern British Columbia) and Nooksack Indian Tribe (northern Washington state).