Mar
11
12:00am
Laurier Milton Lecture Series: Recovering and Relearning our Deeply Canadian (Indigenous) Heritage
By Milton Public Library
Canadian identity and heritage, in the political sense, have developed according to an economistic (resource-based) lens brought over from a distant continent—Europe—whose land and people were shaped by histories, political systems, and a cultural evolution completely distinct from the First Peoples of Turtle Island. Canada’s philosophical and political systems, which originated in Europe, have compelled its citizens to feel a sense of belonging to the Canadian society and ‘democracy,’ and protection from their rights as citizens—all of which are philosophical constructions and human thought experiments, and are, by definition, abstract, immaterial, and fleeting. Canada’s official national heritage is thus precarious and has shallow roots in the soil of Turtle Island. In contrast, Canada’s Indigenous heritage is rooted in the material and concrete: the land. Indigenous peoples across Canada (and the rest of the Americas) base their sense of identity and heritage on their love for Eatenonha (G. Sioui, 2019), the Wendat word for our Earth Mother, to which all human, Indigenous and non-Indigenous alike, as well as other-than-human beings, necessarily and inescapably belong. To the Indigenous mind, it is impossible to truly and meaningfully “belong” to immaterial political systems and ideologies, regardless of their geographical and cultural origins. Indigenous heritage is permanent and real, because our (human) relationship with the land will never be extinguished. While mainstream understandings and meanings of Canadian heritage, based on transitory political and economic paradigms in constant renegotiation, are immaterial, Canada’s Indigenous heritage offers a luxuriant source of inspiration for redefining what it means to be deeply Canadian.
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