Presentation of coast-to-coast-to-coast trip disappointed (16 Jan. 2018 Whitehorse Star Coloumn)
The legacy of Canada 150 was given stale, narrow reference while ignoring and outright rejecting the foundational and non-European meanings of continuous adaptations in Canadian constitutional laws, that are still to shape inclusivity, reciprocity and stability.
Crucial meanings consolidated out of Louis Hippolyte Lafontaine’s premiership as Canada’s first prime minister of a responsible government following March 11, 1848.
Lafontaine and Robert Baldwin had launched comprehensive human rights, democratic, electoral, education and governance reforms unknown to other Western powers.
On Jan. 7, an almost house-filling crowd at the Yukon Beringia Interpretative Centre witnessed a reminiscing evening from a 2017 Canada 150-inspired icebreaker voyage from Toronto to Victoria with seven Yukoners on board for increments of it.
This, along with observing images and stories, recalling opportunities along the journey for exchange and experiential inter-cultural learning, that were no doubt stimulating.
But unfortunately, a limiting vision of Canada seemed to hamper the striving.
On questioning by the author, this was explicitly asserted by one of the program leaders, who
dismissed and trivialized our constitution as “legalistic”.
dismissed and trivialized our constitution as “legalistic”.
The evening parroted the silly idea that Canada’s constitutional roots are of European characteristic, when really they were derived of Indigenous deep laws all along.
In fact, they grew out of this land, through 40 000 years, through 400 years and through 40 years, an arc that kindled a re-birth of a nation-to-nation space.
Multiple-personality-order is an ancient Indigenous achievement and, not surprisingly, First Nations are still, or are again, leading and defining discourse of substance in Canada.
Cutting off memory is undemocratic because it is cutting off accountability, which is at the heart of the neo-colonizing nonsense an all party political leadership in Ottawa, or in Whitehorse, has adopted.
Succinctly summarized by Mi’kmaq lawyer Pamela Palmater as “Trudeau’s Forked Tongue ...” (Canadian Dimension 8 Dec. goo.gl/pSXbZg ).
More than uninspired, people don’t care for neoliberal elites who don’t speak the language of our country.
It is precisely the phoney weasel words of a globalizer provincialism that puts reactionary armies into the field, and supercharges racism.
Just wait for a few elections to come in Canada.
To a large part, such dysfunctionality is where blockage comes from; that fails a vibrant Canadian future which is already inseparably dependent on releasing constructive energies inherent to reconciliation and colonialism reparation.
We are talking about a serious inability to co-shape a future in the land and partnering with First
Nations, not above nature, and not talking down to people more or less in the style of self referential European aristocrats and technocrats.
Nations, not above nature, and not talking down to people more or less in the style of self referential European aristocrats and technocrats.
I can only speak from the vantage point of a citizen who is also a settler immigrant.
And it seems to me that guiding youth in the C3 program towards diminished meanings and ignored memory is an expensive disservice to our country.
Such fostering of a spiritual and political lightweightness of non-Aboriginal Canadians is out of touch with the confidence of mothers and fathers of our Constitution.
A lack of confidence is harmful also because it freezes change and neuters courage necessary to become allies of First Nations, and be more than talk.
Being better than hollow words could mean listening.
It could mean returning some Crown land, tripling Aboriginal language and double education investment, strengthening labour and medicare rights, quitting nickle-and-diming, and stopping the technocratic standard for the frivolously litigious denial of many First Nations’ existence, even.
Warnings abounded under dark clouds over the C3 evening, from New Age identity politics and consumer feminism to ecocide-complicit carbon-pricing ( report released at COP23, goo.gl/KRUFEH ).
The reconciliation resolutions of some are un-grounding into another eternal pop culture notion without resolve or urgency.
