OTTAWA—Prime Minister Mark Carney gave his keynote address at the Liberal convention in Montreal last week. Yes, I do sleep better that he holds the role, and agree with and support many of his policies to strengthen this country against outside aggression. I also hold him to a higher standard and a higher depth of understanding. 

So … about the phrases in the speech that Canada was founded not in assimilation, but accommodation, through partnership and not domination? 

These clauses uphold the whitewashed veneer that Laurentian folks might want to believe, a safe history that doesn’t challenge anybody’s sacred sense of comfort. 

But that little white lie that Canada was built with accommodation? This ignores the facts. A word to Liberal speech writers: it would be helpful to reflect on the factual history of Canada instead of some whitewashed, fictional children’s story. 

The prime minister said these clauses while standing on the traditional territory and unceded lands of the Kanien’kehá:ka. No treaty, no partnership here, no agreement to work together. 

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There was no accommodation or assimilation for Kanien’kehá:ka who have cared for those lands for thousands of years prior to any contact from Europeans. Thousands of years of civilization, governance, and trade mapped across Turtle Island—it was all here prior to contact. But no treaty was signed by settlers to agree to partner and support each other in this part of what is now called Canada.

This is but one historical example of domination by a very new majority of settlers who refused to respect the rights of original peoples, and instead chose to take the land and resources in the name of progress. It is called colonization, and it is the history of Canada. 

A series of choices that were made across generations by Canada’s nation-builders that included the theft of Indigenous children, theft of Indigenous lands, and deliberate withholding of basic human rights to Indigenous Peoples. The early 1900s saw a chaotic mix of policies on Indigenous Peoples that were explicitly supporting Indigenous assimilation or extermination. 

Some of the most magical policies of these times uphold assimilation while hoping for extermination of those troublesome Indigenous Peoples. These were the series of choices—a very consistent series of choices indeed—that blow any argument about “accommodation” out of the water. Some of the worst parts of the Indian Act were dropped only after international pressure forced Canada to admit that Indigenous Peoples really were human beings with rights in the early 1950s, and in endorsing the United Nations’ Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples in 2016. 

For those who would rather retreat to the old line of “why can’t they just get over it,” here’s a thought. 

Indigenous Peoples are today still looking for the children who died in residential schools, demanding the RCMP be held accountable for calling our leaders ‘terrorists’ for simply being effectively political, and fighting back against some offensive clauses of the Indian Act, which is the race-based system of discrimination which nobody would dare call partnership nor accommodation.

Instead, we should call the Indian Act illegal. 

Indigenous Peoples are not living in nostalgia when we demand that Canadians know our shared history. Instead, we are very pragmatic in saying you need to know where you come from to know where you are today. 

Liberal Party members in the crowd, yes, you deserved a party. Good work. Convention speeches are always a bit of hyperbole and feel-good boasts. But don’t allow your celebration and a majority government get in the way of reconciliation. If you are truly allies for Indigenous Peoples, one of your jobs is to ensure the party demands that accurate history is reflected. Knowing our factual history is the foundation of reconciliation. 

Because Indigenous Peoples are here to stay. We’re here standing up for a good Canada. 

Rose LeMay is Tlingit from the West Coast and the CEO of the Indigenous Reconciliation Group. She writes twice a month about Indigenous inclusion and reconciliation. In Tlingit worldview, the stories are the knowledge system, sometimes told through myth and sometimes contradicting the myths told by others. But always with at least some truth.

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