Indigenous Canadian Quotes

The way that Canadians understood homelessness by the Canadian definition was about not having a house to live. I realize that it was more about a dispossession from something called 'all my relations' which is an Indigenous worldview where everything is interrelated, interconnected.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

There are no such things as dead ends. Only people who find dead ends.

What is more, some of the tribes have fought against the Europeans in order to protect their land. Although the Europeans were the ones that invaded their land, it was still the indigenous people that are conveyed as being eager to fight wars.

I do not think I was capable of understanding, as I was only six. My mother became distant and shut her feelings as she left me. How could she explain to me—a six-year-old—what was going to happen to me? This was a hopeless situation for both of us. A mother giving up her child to strangers is one of the hardest things to do, and I would soon know what alone meant.

When I left residential school, I became confused and saw life from a different perspective. I was not aware of society. I was now living in the world, seeing people other than priests and nuns. I was ashamed of who I was. After nine years of having negative messages drilled into my head at residential school, my mind was tattered by the time I was released. I had been taught that to be Native meant I had no value: that I was not human. I felt defective and did not know how to change this. I was overflowing with shame. When my relatives staggered down the streets, I would pretend I did not know them. I felt embarrassed seeing them drunk. When people saw them staggering down the street, they were not just calling them down, they were also including me. I took this so personally. I often wondered why they were like this. I did not realize they had the same pain I had, maybe more, and that was their way of coping.

The social realities that Indigenous people face today are that they live among other Canadians, frequently intermarry, and have other relationships that often result in children. This has been the case for centuries. Consequently, there are no Indigenous groups in Canada that are completely made up of "pure" Aboriginal peoples - even if there were a test to determine such a status. This fact, however, does not in any way detract from their distinct status as Indigenous peoples.

Indigenous people have always believed that we are “good for nothing” when it comes to the earth. We are critical to no other life form. Even the man-eating crocodiles, eels, sharks, and hippos have other choices. The earth cannot do without bacteria, mosquitoes, bees, and other such small beings, but it can do without us and thrive. This should humble us. We should stop calling ourselves the top of the food chain, the top of the life forms. This anthropocentric narcissism costs us lives on this planet.

At some point the Indian Act system will go. But that will be the result of a broad conversation involving Aboriginals and non-Aboriginals over how to settle the outstanding treaty, land and other issues. This won’t necessarily require a protracted debate. What it will require is that Canadians engage in the conversation instead of sitting back as if it doesn’t concern them. We have to be involved because what is needed is a serious transfer of responsibility and money, the exact opposite of dragging out treaty negotiations one by one. We need to do more than empower our governments to act. We need to push them. We need to make this a make-or-break issue. We need to elect or defeat them with these indigenous issues in mind.

In the US and Canada, the buffalo were slaughtered for their hides. Often, whole carcasses were left to rot after the tongue, popular in the cuisine of the day, was removed. This slaughter was encouraged by both the American and Canadian governments and was yet another implement in the colonial toolkit. Since the buffalo were critical to the survival of the Plains people, the decimation of the herds was an intentional strike against their ability to provide for themselves, a strike against self-sufficiency. The buffalo were a scared gift to the people, providing them with food, clothing, and shelter. The wholesale slaughter was devasting to the people, not only because of the resulting impoverishment and starvation, but also because of the horror of such wanton destruction of the Creator's gifts.

I remember once after sharing an article on Twitter about racism in the US, when a white Canadian tweeted back, ‘You should move to Canada, we aren’t racist here.’ I pointed out that, according to recent news of the reluctance of government officials to fully investigate the murders of dozens of indigenous women, the controversy over ‘carding’ of black Canadians by police, and the testimony of my Canadian friends of color—Canada was plenty racist. This white Canadian stranger kept insisting that no, there was no racism in Canada because he had not seen it. When some of my Canadian friends chimed in with helpful links about high-profile incidences of racism and investigations into systemic racism in Canada, the white Canadian continued to insist that they were wrong, and that racism doesn’t exist in Canada.

In his 1996 annual report, Max Yalden, head of the Human Rights Commission of Canada declared, once again, as he has for the past nine years, that the most pressing human rights problem facing Canada is the plight of its First Peoples. The successes associated with mainstream Canadian society continue to elude the aboriginal peoples dispersed across Canada; an overwhelming number of aboriginal peoples live in third world conditions in one of the most affluent nations in the world. During the nine years in question, and indeed since the dawn of white settlement in Canada, the aboriginal peoples have not been passive recipients of all that successive governments have meted out. Aboriginal peoples have fought and continue to fight for a foothold in Canadian society; for political, social, legal and economic equality; to be heard, to be recognized, and to be treated as equals in a society that has, by both subtle and blatant means, relegated them to the margins. In spite of all that has occurred, aboriginal peoples continue to survive in Canada. And that achievement in and of itself is quite remarkable in face of the many attempts to destroy, subdue, control and subjugate them. Furthermore, the natural resources of which the aboriginal peoples were once the only users and guardians continue to be expropriated and exploited without compensation. When the resources being expropriated are on lands under treaty negotiations, the expropriation has been accelerated by companies eager to get as much wealth from the resources as possible before the lands are “won” under land claims agreements by aboriginal groups.

Only Indigenous people are real Canadians, Kiwis, and Aussies, everybody else is an immigrant. Before you yell slurs at an immigrant of today, Start by heading back to Europe yourself.

Masterclass for Humans (The Sonnet) Only the Native Americans are real Americans, Everybody else is an immigrant. Before you tell someone to go back to their country, Start by heading back to Britain yourself. Only Indigenous people are real Canadians, Kiwis, and Aussies, everybody else is an immigrant. Before you yell slurs at an immigrant of today, Start by heading back to Europe yourself. Turkey was transformed by one man, Upon the foundation of thoughts most rational. Before you bring back the days of fanaticism, Start by taking down the statues of Mustafa Kemal. India never had any organized religion, Brahmin barbarians peddled a myth to have control. Before you cremate a secular beacon into safron ashes, Wipe out all memories of Kabir, Ambedkar and Tagore. From discrimination to assimilation, That's how we walk the course of progress. Till every trace of intolerance is history, Keep on struggling against mindlessness.

To put this even more bluntly, one might think about the difference between adding traditional and contemporary Indigenous art to the National Gallery of Canada’s historical Canadian wing and imagining the entire gallery curated from an Indigenous perspective of what a “National Gallery of Canada” might mean.37 Put slightly differently, the project of Indigenous representation in the gallery in Canada has been defined as “bringing aboriginal art in to the history of Canadian art” rather than of incorporating settler history into the history of Aboriginal art.38 Would such reimaginings mean, for example, a move away from the primacy of a liberal politic and of the artist genius as a cultural application of that politic?

In Aboriginal terms, the kinship was one that engaged concern and support with a respect for the autonomy of the individual, while, to the Canadians, it was one in which the children would obey the parent.

The construction of the Canadian Pacific Railway was the defining event of its era, around which most other events orbited—a catalyst for the powerful global forces that were pushing the land toward something new. Its story is a sweeping tale, with technological, political, economic, geographical and social components. It involves the dreams of politicians in Ottawa, Toronto and Montreal; the financing genius and manipulative shenanigans of railway promoters to devise a business plan that would justify the expense; the feats of engineers to push a railway through the rock and bog around Lake Superior and through the rugged mountains of British Columbia; the adventures and hardships of explorers and surveyors; the occasional resistance of Indigenous peoples; and the terrific and horrific work of the labourers who poured their lives into it.

Canadians who do recognize historical injustice seem to understand it in this way: Bad things happened. Bad things stopped happening and equality was achieved. The low social and political status held by Indigenous peoples is now wholly based on the choice to be corrupt, lazy, inefficient, and unsuited to the modern world.

Canada, the provinces, and Canadians generally must be willing partners and support our individual healing and Nation-rebuilding agenda.

More than half the kids in the Canadian foster care system are Indigenous and yet they make up only 7.7 percent of the general population.

Sir John A. Macdonald warned that if Asian Canadians had the vote, they would “send Chinese representatives” to Parliament, where they would enforce “Asiatic principles,” which he described as “immoralities” that were “abhorrent to the Aryan race and Aryan principles.”86

Indeed, so prevalent had his leadership on the battlefield been that day, that Langlade was jointly proclaimed “Ake-wauge-ketausa”, or “Military Conqueror”, by his Indigenous brethren, with the literal translation of his title meaning “He Who is Fierce for the Land”, although an alternative spelling of “Auke-winge-ketaw-so”, meaning “Defender of his Country” is also recorded. However, to the Menomonee (Folles Avoines) specifically, he was simply known henceforth as the “Bravest of the Brave.

Human beings have a finite capacity for outrage and at some point Canadians ran out of outrage at twelve-year-olds across the country killing themselves for lack of care. It was the litany, I think—one child suicide after another, sometimes in suicide pacts, in Indigenous communities few could find on a map, in situations that boggle belief and numb the mind. States of emergency became constants but the urgency never seemed to last long enough to produce lasting change; inaction left crises unaddressed and robbed those crises of their power. And it was the degree of systemic deprivation behind the awfulness—not just lack of mental health care but also lack of housing and clean water and opportunities for hope, and the legacy of residential schools and centuries of concerted genocidal attempts to stamp out entire people and their cultures.