Canadian governments are failing Indigenous peoples when it comes to reconciliation

Canada’s colonial and post-Confederation governments have a 263-year history of breaking promises to Indigenous peoples, and have consistently refused to honor treaty obligations or recognize Indigenous sovereignty. 

By Fareed Khan 

A version of this article is available on Substack.

Tomorrow, September 30th, will be National Truth and Reconciliation Day in Canada. The Prime Minister’s office will put out a statement talking about the importance of the day, about the important role the Indigenous people have played in the history of Canada, maybe mention the horrific way that they were treated in the past, and then possibly talk about the importance of working with Canada’s first nations as the government works to make Canada’s economy more resilient in the face of threats from the United States. But likely nowhere in the statement will there be mention about how Canada’s governments are failing Indigenous people when it comes to reconciliation, more than a decade after the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) issued its Calls to Action.

Eleven years after the TRC released its final report and 94 Calls to Action, Canada stands at a crossroads it refuses to acknowledge. In 2015, the TRC offered a roadmap for repairing the deep wounds inflicted by more than 150 years of anti-Indigenous racism, residential schools, forced assimilation, and systemic discrimination. In 2025—on the tenth anniversary of that report—only 15 of the 94 Calls to Action had been completed. Independent monitors like the Yellowhead Institute report even lower numbers, noting that progress has stalled on the most substantive reforms. Now, more than a decade after the TRC report’s release, the pattern remains unmistakable: Canadian governments are not serious about reconciliation (if they ever were). What they are serious about the appearance of reconciliation, without taking substantive actions

The evidence is overwhelming. Symbolic gestures—orange shirts, land acknowledgments, commemorative days—have advanced quickly because they cost governments nothing. But the structural reforms that matter most to Indigenous peoples remain largely untouched. Worse yet, governments continue to violate Indigenous rights in ways that contradict the very spirit of reconciliation. From resource extraction on Indigenous territories without consent to political processes that ignore treaty obligations, Canada’s actions reveal a nation unwilling to confront the colonial systems it still relies on.

A decade of neglect, by the numbers

The TRC’s Calls to Action were meant to be implemented rather than being aspirational. Yet independent tracking shows that work on 41% of the Calls to Action have not been started or are stalled as of 2026. The federal government’s own reporting paints a rosier picture, but Indigenous-led organizations—those closest to the impacts—consistently show that progress is slowest where change matters most: child welfare, justice, health, education, and land rights.

The Gord Downie & Chanie Wenjack Fund’s 10-year anniversary review in 2025 confirmed that only 15 Calls to Action had been completed. These were overwhelmingly symbolic or administrative—establishing the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, appointing an Indigenous Languages Commissioner, creating Indigenous language programs, and updating archival policies. These are important steps, but they do not address the systemic inequities that continue to harm Indigenous communities.

The Yellowhead Institute’s multi-year analysis is even more damning. Between 2019 and 2024, researchers found that only five Calls to Action were fully completed. In two of those years, none were completed. Their conclusion is blunt: Canada has not demonstrated the political will to implement the TRC’s recommendations, especially those requiring structural change or significant investment.

Symbolism over substance

Canada excels at symbolic reconciliation. “Orange Shirt Day” is now a statutory holiday. Government buildings fly Indigenous flags. Public institutions host ceremonies and workshops. These gestures matter, but they are not substitutes for justice.

As Yellowhead Institute researcher Eva Jewell argues, reconciliation has become a “spectacle”—a performance meant to soothe settler consciences rather than transform systems. Governments have embraced the parts of reconciliation that are easy, while avoiding the parts that require confronting racist and colonial power structures.

The Calls to Action most directly tied to ending ongoing harms—funding equity, justice reform, child welfare transformation, and land rights—are precisely the ones where progress is weakest. This is not a coincidence. It is a political choice by governments which falsely claim to be committed to reconciliation

The broken promise of clean water

One of the most glaring examples of Canada’s failure to deliver meaningful change is the ongoing crisis of boil‑water advisories on First Nations reserves. In 2015, former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau promised to eliminate all long-term boil‑water advisories within five years. It was a clear, measurable commitment—one that spoke directly to basic human dignity. Clean drinking water is not a luxury, it is a fundamental human right.

Yet eleven years later, boil‑water advisories still exist in multiple First Nations communities across Canada, with 40 advisories in place as of May 2026. While progress has been made—many advisories have been lifted—Indigenous families continue to live in conditions comparable to the developing world. Children grow up unable to drink from their taps. Elders must boil water to bathe. Communities rely on bottled water shipments as if they were disaster zones, and have so for years.

The persistence of these advisories tells a story about Canada’s priorities. The federal government has repeatedly claimed that reconciliation is a national project, yet it has failed to deliver the most basic requirement of public health. The Auditor General has repeatedly warned that federal infrastructure funding for First Nations water systems is inadequate, inconsistent, and plagued by delays. Indigenous leaders have emphasized that the failure to provide clean water is not merely a policy shortfall—it is a violation of human rights, and yet the pace of the government’s response has been criminally slow.

Trudeau’s promise was not symbolic. It was concrete, measurable, and achievable. The fact that it remains unfulfilled more than a decade later reveals a profound lack of commitment to Indigenous well‑being. If Canada cannot deliver clean water—one of the simplest and most essential public services—it cannot credibly claim to be advancing reconciliation.

Alberta’s referendum ignores Indigenous rights

One of the clearest examples of governments disregarding Indigenous rights is the Alberta government allowing a referendum to begin a process for Alberta to secede from Canada. Alberta sits entirely on treaty land, and under Canadian and international law, unilateral secession without Indigenous consent would be illegal. Yet the Alberta government refused to consult First Nations before launching its referendum process.

Alberta’s failure to respect Indigenous treaty rights is not a minor oversight. It is a direct violation of treaty relationships and the principle of free, prior, and informed consent (FPIC), which Canada claims to uphold under the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP). Indigenous leaders across Alberta have condemned the government’s actions, noting that any discussion of secession must begin with the treaty partners whose lands and sovereignty are at stake.

The Alberta referendum is a microcosm of a broader pattern across Canada. Amnesty International Canada has issued a report expressing concern about the roll back of Indigenous rights in Canada under Mark Carney’s government. Whether at the federal or provincial level governments had adopted a patter where they treat Indigenous people and first nations as stakeholders rather than rights holders. Consultation is treated as optional. Consent is treated as inconvenient.

Resource extraction without consent

The most persistent and harmful violation of Indigenous rights comes from federal and provincial support for oil, gas, and mining projects on Indigenous lands. Across the country, governments continue to approve and expand resource projects without securing the consent of affected First Nations.

Human Rights Watch’s 2025 report highlights multiple cases where Indigenous communities face environmental harm, policing abuses, and criminalization for defending their lands. The Wet’suwet’en hereditary chiefs’ opposition to the Coastal GasLink pipeline is one of the most prominent examples. Despite clear opposition from traditional leadership, governments approved the project, and police forces were deployed to enforce injunctions against land defenders.

The UN Human Rights Committee has repeatedly warned Canada about its failure to respect Indigenous land rights, noting that governments continue to impose unwanted decisions on Indigenous territories despite favorable Supreme Court rulings affirming those rights.

This is not reconciliation. It is the continuation of colonial resource extraction under a new name.

New federal legislation is a step backward

Recent federal legislation—Bill C‑39 (Building Canada Strong Act) and Bill C‑5 (One Canadian Economy Act)—has raised alarm among Indigenous leaders and human rights organizations. These bills grant the federal government extraordinary powers to bypass existing laws, including Charter rights, in the name of “national interest” economic projects.

Amnesty International warns that Canada’s legal frameworks increasingly erode First Nations’ ability to assert their rights, particularly in the context of resource development. The concern is clear: these laws could allow governments to override Indigenous rights to expedite pipelines, mines, and other extractive projects. If reconciliation means respecting Indigenous sovereignty, these bills move Canada in the opposite direction.

Canada’s failures are not only recognized domestically, international human rights bodies have repeatedly criticized Canada for its treatment of Indigenous peoples. The UN Human Rights Committee’s report on Canada calls for fundamental changes to law and policy, citing violence against Indigenous women, violations of land rights, and the failure to implement the TRC’s recommendations. The Committee was so concerned that it ordered Canada to report back within one year on progress—an extraordinary measure reserved for serious human rights concerns.

Human Rights Watch similarly documents systemic racism, service gaps, and failures in policing, housing, and health services for Indigenous communities. The Auditor General of Canada has confirmed chronic underfunding in First Nations housing and policing, while the Assembly of First Nations estimates the infrastructure gap at $350 billion—a gap that continues to grow.

These findings reinforce what Indigenous peoples have said for decades: Canada’s systems are designed to produce inequity, not reconciliation.

The legacy of broken promises

The TRC was not Canada’s first attempt at reconciliation. The Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples (RCAP) issued 440 recommendations in 1996. Almost none were implemented. The pattern is clear. Canada commissions reports, expresses regret, and then fails to act.

Indigenous Watchdog notes that Canada’s colonial and post-Confederation governments have a 263-year history of making and breaking promises to Indigenous peoples. From the Royal Proclamation of 1763 to modern land claims, governments have consistently refused to honor treaty obligations or recognize Indigenous sovereignty.

The TRC was supposed to break this cycle. Instead, it has become another chapter in the long history of failures by the Canadian government to act in the name of justice for Indigenous people.

Governments cannot be trusted on reconciliation

The evidence of the last decade makes one truth unavoidable. Canadian governments cannot be trusted to implement meaningful reconciliation. Their actions reveal a pattern that Indigenous people have recognized for generations.

Governments consistently prioritize economic interests over Indigenous rights. Resource extraction projects continue to override free, prior, and informed consent, treaty obligations, and environmental protections. When oil, gas, and mining profits are at stake, Indigenous sovereignty becomes an obstacle rather than a principle.

Governments also embrace symbolic reconciliation because it is easy. Statutory holidays, land acknowledgments, and ceremonial gestures require no structural change, no redistribution of power, and no challenge to the systems that uphold racist colonial domination. Symbolism becomes a substitute for justice.

Additionally, governments avoid accountability whenever possible. The National Council for Reconciliation — promised as a mechanism to track progress — was delayed for nine years, and even now its mandate remains narrow and constrained. It is designed to observe, not to compel.

Furthermore, the government resists structural reforms that would actually shift power. Calls to Action requiring funding equity, justice reform, land restitution, or the recognition of inherent Indigenous jurisdiction remain largely untouched. The reforms that matter most are precisely the ones governments refuse to implement.

And finally, governments continue to violate Indigenous rights in real time. Alberta’s referendum on independence proceeded without consulting First Nations whose treaty lands would be directly affected. Federal legislation such as Bill C‑39 and Bill C‑5 grant extraordinary powers to bypass legal protections — including Indigenous rights under the Charter — in the name of “national interest.” These actions show that Indigenous sovereignty is not respected, and Indigenous rights are routinely sacrificed on the altar of political expediency.

Indigenous people across the country see these contradictions clearly. They see governments claiming to “work on” dozens of Calls to Action while simultaneously advancing policies that undermine their rights. They see the widening gap between rhetoric and reality. They see that reconciliation, as practiced by Canadian governments, is not a path toward justice but a strategy for managing public perception while maintaining power.

Reconciliation requires ending harm, not managing optics

Reconciliation is not a branding exercise. It is not a holiday, or a flag. It is the hard work of dismantling colonial systems and honouring Indigenous sovereignty. Canada has not stopped the harm. It has not even slowed it.

Eleven years after the TRC, Indigenous communities continue to face systemic discrimination, underfunding, land dispossession, and political exclusion. Governments continue to prioritize resource extraction from Indigenous territories over Indigenous rights, and symbolism over substance.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission offered Canada a chance to transform its relationship with Indigenous peoples. Canada chose not to take it.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Celebrating Canada Day: A rightward political drift, post 9/11, and sleepwalking towards a cliff (Part 2)

The convergence of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, the escalating attacks on residential school truth‑telling, and the vilification of pro‑Palestinian demonstrators reveals a political environment where dissent is increasingly criminalized and racialized communities are systematically targeted.

By Fareed Khan

A version of this article can be found on Substack.

As Canadians get set to celebrate Canada Day tomorrow, we all need to demand an honest assessment of the country’s political trajectory. Since the post‑9/11 era, Canada has been drifting steadily to the right, reshaping its laws, institutions, and public discourse in ways that erode civil liberties, normalize racism and Islamophobia, and legitimize far‑right political views. Many Canadians, comforted by the belief that “it can’t happen here,” are sleepwalking Canada towards a cliff and the rest of us are doing little or nothing to stop it.

The post‑9/11 security climate marked a turning point. Under the banner of fighting terrorism, Canada expanded surveillance, strengthened security agencies, and introduced legislation that disproportionately targeted Muslims, Arabs, and other racialized communities. Islamophobia became embedded in policy and practice, with Muslim communities treated as suspect and their institutions subjected to heightened scrutiny. This securitized mindset has never fully receded, it has simply shifted targets and language.

Recent commentary has documented how Islamophobia and anti‑Palestinian racism have become entrenched at the highest levels of Canadian politics. One analysis of the appointment of MP Anthony Housefather as special advisor on antisemitism argues that his record of pushing anti‑Palestinian narratives reflects a government willing to appease pro‑Israel organizations while ignoring the surge in hate against Palestinians and Muslims. This is not an isolated incident; it reflects a broader pattern in which those who protest genocide are smeared, surveilled, and punished.

Since October 7, 2023, this pattern has intensified. Palestinians and their allies have been vilified as “terrorists” and “antisemitic” simply for opposing Israeli state violence and pointing out that it is committing genocide in Gaza. Pro‑Palestinian protesters have faced harassment, doxing, job loss, and political condemnation. It can be safely said that Palestinians are “the most persecuted people in the world today,” in light of the fact that Western leaders—including Canada’s—have seemingly shed their humanity towards Palestinians by treating their deaths at Israeli hands as acceptable collateral damage. The refusal of both the Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney governments to intervene to stop genocide, do nothing beyond issuing PR platitudes, even as polls show overwhelming Canadian opposition to current Canadian policy, exposes the gap between democratic rhetoric and actual practice.

This widening gap is where Canada’s rightward drift becomes most visible. When hundreds of thousands of Canadians march against the Gaza genocide and their leaders respond by continuing arms sales, diplomatic cover, and launching smear campaigns against protesters, democracy becomes a façade. A detailed analysis of Canada’s complicity in the Gaza genocide argues that successive governments have maintained military cooperation with Israel despite clear evidence of genocidal acts, thereby breaching both domestic and international legal obligations. This is not just foreign policy failure; it is moral bankruptcy.

At the same time, Canada’s right‑wing parties have moved further into territory that can only be described as quasi‑fascist. The Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre has embraced rhetoric and talking points that mirror those of the Republican Party under Donald Trump—attacks on “woke” culture, demonization of refugees and immigrants, hostility toward journalists and academics, and a constant framing of political opponents as enemies of “real Canadians.” While the specifics differ, the underlying strategy is familiar—weaponize resentment, stoke cultural division, and present strongman politics as the solution to perceived chaos.

The People’s Party of Canada (PPC), led by Maxime Bernier, has played a crucial role in legitimizing far‑right discourse even without major electoral success. A 2021 analysis of the PPC argues that the party has normalized racist, xenophobic, and anti‑immigrant narratives, giving them a veneer of political respectability. By railing against “globalists,” attacking immigration, and flirting with conspiracy theories, the PPC has helped shift the narrative—making previously fringe ideas part of mainstream debate. Even if the PPC fails at the ballot box, its impact on political culture is undeniable.

This is how far‑right politics advances, not only through winning elections, but through changing what is considered acceptable to say in public. When parties like the PPC push fascist talking points—about “invasions,” “replacement,” or the supposed threat posed by racialized communities—they create space for larger parties to adopt softer versions of the same narratives. Over time, the centre of gravity moves rightward, and what once seemed extreme becomes ordinary.

Meanwhile, Canada’s media ecosystem has often amplified these shifts rather than resisting them. Right‑wing commentators and outlets have demonized pro‑Palestinian protesters, framed solidarity encampments as security threats, and echoed government talking points about “extremism” and “hate” against Jews, even though many Jews are part of the movement. Anti‑Palestinian racism and Islamophobia are not only present in political institutions, they are reproduced daily in Canada’s news media ecosystem, through coverage and opinion columns. Multiple published commentaries have argued that this media environment dehumanizes Palestinians and legitimizes state violence against them.

The convergence of Canada’s treatment of Indigenous peoples, the escalating attacks on residential school truth‑telling, and the vilification of pro‑Palestinian demonstrators reveals a political environment where dissent is increasingly criminalized and racialized communities are systematically targeted. The same forces that once justified the dispossession and dehumanization of Indigenous nations now rationalize contemporary efforts to suppress solidarity with Palestinians. Residential school denialism and anti‑Indigenous propaganda have become tools for undermining truth‑telling and defending the settler‑colonial status quo, while politicians, right‑wing media, and pro‑Israel advocacy networks deploy similar tactics to delegitimize pro‑Palestinian voices — branding them extremists, security threats, or enemies of “Canadian values.” In both cases, historical and ongoing state violence is obscured through narratives that portray marginalized communities as dangerous or suspect, and those who challenge official narratives as destabilizing forces. As a result, protests against genocide and colonialism are met with police crackdowns, university sanctions, employment terminations, and political condemnation, reinforcing a broader pattern in which far‑right narratives seep into mainstream discourse and the machinery of the state is mobilized to silence those who resist it.

Canadians often comfort themselves with the belief that “we’re not like the United States or the United Kingdom” and that what’s happening to their politics can’t happen here. But the trajectories are increasingly similar. In the US, the far right has captured The Republican Party and reshaped national politics around authoritarian impulses and racial resentment. In the UK, xenophobia and anti‑immigrant hysteria have become central pillars of political discourse, with far‑right groups exploiting economic instability and cultural anxiety. Canada is not immune because it is simply at an earlier stage of the same process.

As Canadians get set to mark Canada Day they must remember that a nation complicit in genocide cannot credibly celebrate itself as a force for good. When Canada continues to sell weapons to a state accused of genocide, refuses to support international legal efforts to hold that state accountable, and punishes those who protest its actions, it forfeits any claim to moral leadership. Silence is not neutrality—it is complicity.

Canada is at a crossroads. It can continue drifting down the path towards a right-wing, authoritarian future, with the scapegoating of racialized peoples, and moral abdication, or it can choose a different future. But that choice will not be made by politicians alone. It will be made by Canadians who decide whether to accept the drift or resist it.

Millions of Canadians will celebrate Canada Day tomorrow and they are free to do so. But if they celebrate without reflection, without reckoning, without pushing back against the rightward political drift that has been happening for years, they may find that the country they once celebrated no longer exists. And by then, it may be too late to turn back from the cliff.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

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.

© 2026 The View From Here. © 2026 Fareed Khan. All Rights Reserved.

Canada’s reconciliation with Indigenous People will be incomplete without official acknowledgement of the Indigenous genocide on Canadian soil

By Fareed Khan

Today, September 30th, marked the first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation in Canada.  It is seen as a historic occasion where Canada officially acknowledged the history of what was done to Indigenous People on this land.

Creation of this commemorative day was one of the 94 "calls to action" in the final report of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) which was released in December 2015.  Establishing the holiday, according to the TRC report, was intended to honour survivors of Residential Schools, their families, and communities, and ensure that public commemoration of the history and legacy of residential schools remains a vital component of the reconciliation process.  It is also an opportunity for settler-Canadians to consider the trauma that was inflicted on Indigenous Peoples, and the trauma that they have been dealing with generation after generation until the present day.

Establishment of this day is a positive development in the process of reconciliation, but it is still only a small step forward since most of the TRC calls to action have yet to be implemented.  Canada still has a long way to go to address and undo the legacy of anti-Indigenous racism on which this country was founded.  While acknowledgement of Canada's racist legacy towards Indigenous People is part of the process of reconciliation it also needs to include an official acknowledgement by Canada's Parliament that colonial authorities and the Canadian government willfully and knowingly committed genocide against Indigenous People on the territory that became Canada.  Without this the process of reconciliation will be incomplete.

Evidence in the form of academic research, historical documents, actions by political leaders, and policies established by colonial and Canadian governments demonstrate that Canada was founded on policies of white supremacy, anti-Indigenous racism, and acts which constituted the genocide of Indigenous People.  The Indian Act and Indian Residential Schools are two examples of Canadian government policies that attempted to suppress and eliminate the Indigenous history, culture and people of this land.  Combined with colonial policies in the centuries before Confederation this led to a precipitous 95 per cent decline of the Indigenous population on Canadian territory.  This needs to be acknowledged officially at the highest levels of political leadership if the process of reconciliation is to have any meaning, and if Canadians are to understand the history underlying the nation that Canada became.

Under the Genocide Convention there are five acts which constitute genocide.  They include: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; and forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.  All the crimes defined under the Genocide Convention have been committed by colonial and Canadian governments against Indigenous People.  While officially acknowledging these crimes as genocide was not part of the TRC's 94 calls to action, doing so would send a strong message to Indigenous People about the desire of the government and political leaders to accept Canada's anti-Indigenous history.

The Indian Residential Schools system is one area that has received considerable public and political attention, especially so since the discovery of thousands of unmarked graves on the sites of former residential schools since the spring of 2021.

 

From 1831 to 1996 there were 140 residential schools across the country operated directly by the federal government or in collaboration with various Christian church denominations.  For decades, school survivors and communities spoke out about the intergenerational trauma caused by these institutions, which included physical and emotional trauma inflicted on Indigenous children, loss of language, community, and culture, and the ongoing forcible removal and assimilation of children under the present day child welfare system. 

 

An estimated 150,000 children were forcibly taken from their families and communities, and sent to residential schools, which in many instances were thousands of kilometres away from their homes. They experienced horrific conditions of physical and sexual abuse, unsanitary conditions resulting in disease, malnutrition and starvation, forced labour, and indoctrination to wipe out their identity, languages and cultures. Thousands of them never returned home, dying and being buried on residential school sites without their families being informed, or running away from the schools and dying in their attempts to return to their families. 

 

The colonial policies and practices which created Residential Schools continue today.  Indigenous children are overwhelmingly represented in Canada’s child welfare system. Indigenous women, girls, and two-spirit people experience staggeringly high rates of violence. And governments frequently approve industrial projects on Indigenous territories without the free, prior and informed consent of the communities directly affected. 

 

As Canadians observe this historic day they also need to think about pressuring the Canadian Parliament to officially acknowledge that an Indigenous genocide was committed on Canadian soil.  Because if Canada is going to recognize and condemn international genocides, like that of the Uyghurs, the Rohingya, and the Yazidis, then it would be supremely hypocritical for Canada's political leaders to refuse to acknowledge the genocide perpetrated on Indigenous People in Canada.  It is something that our political leaders must do if we want to demonstrate our integrity in the process of reconciliation. 

 

© 2021 The View From Here.  © 2021 Fareed Khan.  All Rights Reserved