Canada Needs To Decolonize Properly Before Another Immigration Boom Occurs

The Canadian government has announced plans to increase the number of immigrants by 500,000 people each year for the next three years (source). While this is planned with the intention of socially engineering the growth of the economy and to balance our aging population with an influx of younger people, there are some troubling foreseeable futures, such as issues with the availability of affordable housing and the already strained services such as healthcare, infrastructure, and education. However, these are all issues of the colonial society in Canada - what about the issues surrounding the traditional and Indigenous matters on these lands?

In the last month, I was fortunate enough to speak at various conferences to deliver my session on the topic of my capstone research, which examines visible minority experiences on the Indigenization of education in Alberta. In these sessions, I had the privilege of meeting with a variety of education professionals, in attendance with the aim of bettering their practices to understand how to get closer towards peaceful relations with all peoples on these lands, particularly the Indigenous peoples and the visible minority Canadians. Most were classroom teachers, but there were also school administrators and educational assistants from across the province, specifically in places like Grande Prairie, Red Deer, Calgary, and Edmonton. The discussions, reactions, lived experiences, and questions from my session attendees were so enriching and allowed me to connect my theoretical and academic capstone research with real examples from real people with a wider range of lived experiences. In each of the sessions, we were able to jointly co-create our understandings of what Canada is and should become, in order to truly reach reconciliation between the settlers and the Indigenous peoples. It was the continuation of the knowledge forming feedback loop I had initiated during my capstone research process and this convention tour extended my understandings immensely.

With all of this newly gained information from a wider geographic and demographic source, I came to the realization that accepting 1.5 million immigrants in our current state as a country is reckless and irresponsible, unless we resolve some key issues first. The most immediate and crucial issue is decolonization.

In my capstone research, I learned that visible minority newcomers have a tendency toward ignoring their responsibilities toward reconciliation because they view it as an old issue between the Caucasian/White settlers and the Indigenous peoples. By self-labeling themselves as "immigrants" rather than "settlers," newcomers have created a new identity that is not conducive to reconciliation.

Similarly, most of the existing academic research presented a binary understanding of reconciliation, illustrating a dichotomy of European/Caucasian and Indigenous peoples having to walk together in reconciliation. But again, this omits visible minorities and their unique situation of living both as the victims and instigators of colonialism. Some researchers noted this peculiarity, as they commented on the "settler privilege" of visible minorities, documented by their quality of life and educational attainment compared to the Indigenous populations. But the researchers also note that visible minorities have a long history of documented racism and discrimination in Canada as well. Visible minorities exist in a third, alternative space that is largely overlooked in our society and grossly overshadowed by the binary view of reconciliation.

By increasing immigration, we are growing this third group even more. This means a bigger problem for reconciliation in Canada. Visible minority newcomers are enticed to immigrate with a dream-like promise: plenty of job opportunities, respectful and friendly interactions, quality healthcare, world-class education, and so on. But once they arrive, the reality is different: newcomers end up mostly becoming underemployed, are targeted for their language and appearance, and struggle with navigating the bureaucratic systems in healthcare, housing, and other services. When faced with these realities, newcomers must adjust quickly and adapt by assimilating to the Eurocentric colonial ways to survive in Canada: speaking with a certain accent with certain mannerisms that involve code switching, learning and adopting certain attitudes and beliefs to align with that of a White/Caucasian Canadian, and to even forego their ancestral and "ethnic" identity by changing their name and limiting the use of their home language. But all of these changes for a newcomer prioritize Canada's White settler culture, rather than the traditional ways of the Indigenous peoples. This is because Canada still presents itself to the international global community as a White country with White ideals. What it means to be a "Canadian" in our modern society, is to be White and English/French speaking. If Canada was truly committed to reconciliation, this understanding would be changed to prioritize Indigenous culture instead. Canada would need to truly decolonize. Canada would present itself as a confederation of sovereign Indigenous nations with settlers from around the world who have graciously been allowed to live on these Indigenous lands by agreeing to help in stewarding and protecting the balance and harmony created by mother nature. That would be a start. The rebranding of Canada as a country, not even to itself internally, but to the international community as well.

Meanwhile, the colonial machine in Canada continues to expand and replicate itself with each and every newcomer, now eager to convert the 1.5 million newcomers announced by the government. Before that happens, we need to decolonize Canada and truly center the Indigenous ways in our country before receiving any more newcomers. We need to break down the colonial machine and create an open ground for the Indigenous communities to redevelop their ideal of society. We need to welcome newcomers to adopt and assimilate to the Indigenous ways, the ways that honour these lands. To achieve this, it is everyone's responsibility to decolonize. But only the Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers can help us to Indigenize. And time is ticking: the 1.5 million newcomers are coming, but also the Indigenous Elders and Knowledge Keepers are aging. If Canada truly wants reconciliation, it would decolonize itself now and stop the colonial machine from finishing its job.