Like Americans, Australians, New Zealanders and the British, Canadians are being schooled to believe that their country is essentially a “settler” colony, whose very existence largely echoes the racist European past. This ideology holds that everyone, except the First Nations, are essentially illegitimate colonialists from whom penance is required but forgiveness is forbidden.
Canada’s past record of settlement — once the source of pride — has been turned into a tale of unrequited evil. It has been held responsible both for real crimes, and ones, like systematic murders of Indigenous children at residential schools, that are highly exaggerated.
The settler concept was perhaps best articulated by the Australian anthropologist Patrick Wolfe in his 2006 article “Settler colonialism and the elimination of the native.” Under this formulation, settlers are cast as the historical equivalent of a potboiler villain. Wolfe saw settlers as having an enduring legacy, possessing “the logic of elimination” and wiping out the economic, spiritual and social lives of the Indigenous.
Canadian academics seem to be attracted to this notion. The deprivations and starvation of First Nations on the Prairies in the 1880s, argues James Daschuck, was not a consequence of climatic conditions or the disappearance of the buffalo, but the result of a purposeful policy of “genocide” that lay behind prime minister Sir John A. Macdonald’s “sinister policies.” Dominion efforts to save Indigenous lives, argues historian Nigel Biggar, were rather well-intentioned if late and often inadequate.
Professors at both the University of British Columbia and Queen’s report with favour the imposition of the settler/colonial ideology not just on college students but also at grade schools. For its advocates, notes the University of Toronto’s Alan Hayes, Canada’s colonial settler history transcends all other concerns. He notes: “Writers in settler colonial studies claim that it structures Canada more fundamentally than any other divisions, whether class, race and ethnicity, gender, or francophone/anglophone biculturalism.”
It’s clearly true that Indigenous peoples in Canada, the U.S. and Australia all experienced brutal suppression. However settler paradigms tend to miss the role of collaboration between peoples. In fact, Quebec, for example, grew largely in what historian Fred Koabel describes as “hybrid European/Indigenous communities“ that were critical to the functioning of early Canada. Many of this now-growing population, notably the Métis, are of mixed race.
The settler paradigm is often confused by history. Take the history of Israel and Palestine. Rather than simply being a region where peaceful “natives” were displaced by brutal Zionists, the area constantly shifted from one dominant group to another. Canaanites, Hebrews, Assyrians, Greeks, Romans, Byzantines, Arabs and Turks all came and conquered peoples who themselves were descended from past settlers. Close to half of Israel’s own population consists of non-European descendants expelled from Arab countries.
As we should honour the First Nations, we should also understand that they have had different experiences with settlement and colonialism. Some groups now considered victims of racism once conquered others, sometimes with cruelty. The notion that ethnic persecution is something just applicable to people of European descent ignores the universality of slavery and oppression among virtually every ethnic group, including in North America and Africa, where well before the conquest of the Europeans, there were constant wars and mass enslavement.
In terms of finding solutions to legacies of colonial activity, either in Palestine, Australasia, the U.S. or Canada, the weakness of settler ideology lies in its obsession with the past. Most current settlers, many of them there for generations, notes New Zealand legal scholar Jeremy Waldron, “have no place else to go.” There have after all been “huge changes” in these countries. Most immigrants, particularly outside Quebec, came long after the initial period of settlement, and the vast majority live in cities, far from the areas dominated by First Nations.
The settler ideology is also undermined by the rapid ethnic changes taking place in all these countries. The legacy of white racism certainly may be felt by the 1.8 million people who comprise Canada’s First Nations, but they number roughly the same as the Black population, originally escapees from American slavery, and now largely from the Caribbean and Africa. By far the fastest-growing group of immigrants, who also suffered discrimination, but now account for roughly seven million Canadians, have come from a diverse assortment of Asian nations.
The arrival of Asian and other non-white immigrants raises difficult questions about settler ideology. Is the computer programmer from the Philippines a settler? Does someone who came from North Africa represent just a darker version of the murderous colonialist? Rather than accentuate conflict, Canada’s future lies in accommodating these populations while ensuring they integrate into the fundamentally liberal national culture.
Such subtleties are missed in the mad rush, in media and academia, to blame all of Canada’s problems, indeed those of the planet, on European whites. The settler/colonial ideologues insinuate, notes Golnaz Fakhari, an Iranian-Canadian freelance journalist based in Vancouver, that the “white community” is the culprit for injustices, and that their history is “smeared with blood.” He concludes: “This agenda rarely ever points to the history of the rest of the world — and believe me, that history is just as gruesome, if not more so.“
Rather than obsess with race and retribution for past crimes, Canadians, like Americans and Australians, need to focus more on how to get our increasingly diverse people to get along in a commonwealth. The idea of being a “white nation” is very outdated as our populations become ever more diverse. After all, most of the latest “settlers” in Canada, the U.S. and Australia are people of colour.
Rather than fight over the difference between settlers and the existing population, including First Nations, the country needs to look beyond ethnic differences and embrace what the leftist French-Canadian philosopher Charles Taylor has called “the politics of recognition,” which is open to all the varied ethnic experiences. What is needed is not a renewal of nativism but an openness to defend the clear successes of our civilization.
We should learn the evils of Western expansion but also appreciate its blessings. As pointed out in a new book by scholar John Ellis, it was the West that pioneered early notions of gender equality, human rights and racial justice. Denial of this fact, notes Ellis, is among the “dangerous delusions” that inhabit our pedagogy. Anti-slavery movements, historian Nigel Biggar has suggested, emerged not in Africa or the Middle East, where the practice continues even today, but in the heart of the imperialist 19th century, Great Britain.
Rather than ignoring or obsessing over past history, we need to acknowledge the injustices of the past while crediting the accomplishments made in recent decades. This ability to reconcile the past with its complexities is critical to the future of Canada as a successful, liberal and multicultural society.
Joel Kotkin: National Post
Violet Jones, 4, sits on her father Andrew's shoulders to get a better view of the Canada Day parade in Sarnia, Ont., on July 1, 2024. Rather than obsess with race and retribution for past crimes, Canadians need to focus more on how to get an increasingly diverse population to get along, writes Joel Kotkin. PHOTO BY TERRY BRIDGE / POSTMEDIA NEWS
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