Celebrating Canada Day: Colonial foundations and the myth of innocent celebrations (Part 1/2)

Canada is a settler‑colonial state which required the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the destruction of Indigenous societies, and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and identities.

By Fareed Khan
A version of this article can be found on Substack.

In two days—July 1st—millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day. Yet few pause to ask what, exactly, is being celebrated. The familiar rituals—fireworks, barbecues, flags, and patriotic speeches—invite a comforting narrative of national unity and progress. But beneath this spectacle lies a reality that cannot be reconciled with easy patriotism—Canada was built on Indigenous genocide, white supremacy, and systemic racism. To celebrate Canada Day without acknowledging these foundations is to participate in a collective act of denial and an erasure of history.

Canada is a settler‑colonial state. Its creation required the dispossession of Indigenous lands, the destruction of Indigenous governance systems and societies, and the attempted erasure of Indigenous cultures and identities. Scholars of genocide and settler colonialism have long argued that colonization is not merely about land theft—it is about the destruction of peoples, laws, and ways of life. Residential schools, the Indian Act, forced relocations, the reserve system, and the criminalization of Indigenous ceremonies were not unfortunate mistakes. They were deliberate tools of a project aimed at eliminating Indigenous nations as self‑determining peoples, and as a result are today seen as acts of genocide.

In recent years, Canada has been forced to confront this history more directly. The National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls concluded in 2019 that the violence inflicted on Indigenous women, girls, and 2SLGBTQ+ people amounts to “deliberate race, identity, and gender‑based genocide.” Parliament has acknowledged genocide in relation to residential schools, and political leaders have used the term publicly. Yet recognition without transformation is hollow. The structures that enabled genocide—policing, courts, resource extraction, child welfare systems—continue to produce what scholars call “multisided violence,” where state action and inaction normalize conditions in which Indigenous people can be harmed or killed with impunity.

Canada Day, in this context, becomes a ritual of denying this nation’s ugly history. It invites Canadians to celebrate this country without reckoning with the fact that its very existence depended on the destruction of Indigenous societies. Even when Canada Day events include acknowledgements of Indigenous peoples, the underlying narrative often remains one of progress and benevolence: that Canada has “learned from its past” and is now on a path of reconciliation. Yet the rise of residential school denialism and anti‑Indigenous politics on the far right shows that even the limited gains of truth‑telling are under attack.

Some communities have attempted to reshape Canada Day to reflect this reality. In Winnipeg, organizers renamed the main July 1st event “A New Day,” cancelled fireworks, and centred reflection on colonialism and residential schools rather than uncritical patriotism. Such efforts are important, but they remain exceptions. Across the country, the dominant message is still one of pride, promoting unity, and celebrating with a nationalistic fervour—often with only a brief, symbolic nod to Indigenous history and suffering.

The problem is not simply that Canada has a violent past. It is that this violence continues in the present. Indigenous communities still face disproportionate rates of poverty, incarceration, child apprehension, and police violence. Encampments of unhoused people—many of them Indigenous—are destroyed in the name of “public safety,” while solidarity encampments protesting genocide and colonialism are violently dismantled by police. The criminalization of poverty and dissent is not a deviation from Canadian values, it is a continuation of the logic that has always governed this country, one where some lives are expendable in the service of order and property.

Contemporary commentary has drawn connections between Canada’s colonial foundations and its foreign policy. One writer argues that Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide reflects a continuity between domestic colonial violence and international support for state violence abroad. The argument suggests that a nation built on genocide at home is predisposed to enable or excuse genocide elsewhere. This perspective reframes Canada Day not as a celebration of national virtue but as a reminder of unresolved injustice.

Canada’s self‑image as a human‑rights champion is fundamentally at odds with its record. A country that still struggles to provide clean drinking water to Indigenous communities, that has failed to implement the Calls to Action of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and that remains complicit in ongoing violence against Indigenous women and girls cannot credibly claim to embody justice and equality. When Canadians gather on July 1st to celebrate “our values,” they are often celebrating an illusion.

This does not mean there is nothing worth preserving in Canada. There is beauty in its landscapes, richness in its diversity, and potential in its institutions. But potential is not achievement, and celebration is not owed—it is earned. A nation that has yet to fully acknowledge, let alone repair, the harms it has inflicted on Indigenous peoples has not earned the right to uncritical celebration.

Canada Day, then, should not be a day of simple celebration. It should be a day of reckoning. A day to ask, what does it mean to celebrate a country whose birth was a catastrophe for the peoples who already lived here? What does it mean to wave a flag that has flown over residential schools, police raids, and courtrooms where Indigenous rights are denied? What does it mean to celebrate a society that erased the original nations of this land?

On Wednesday, millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day. But if they do so without confronting the genocidal and white supremacist foundations of this country, they are not celebrating a mature democracy—they are participating in a collective act of denial. The question is not whether Canada can be celebrated. The question is whether it has done the work necessary to deserve celebration.

Until Canada fully acknowledges its genocidal past and present, and commits to dismantling the structures that sustain colonial violence, Canada Day should be less about fireworks and more about reflection. Less about pride and more about responsibility. Less about what Canada imagines itself to be and more about what it has actually done.

Only then—if ever—will Canada Day be something more than a ritual that papers over injustice with celebration of the red and white maple leaf.

Part 2 will follow tomorrow.

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