Tarek Fatah got hot and bothered because someone’s Facebook status on July 1 was “Happy Genocide Day Canada.” (what got me hot and bothered was the galling lack of punctuation.)
i probably had better things to do with my time than respond, but —- ok, who am i kidding. it was Canada Day. i had nothing else to do.
So, to extrapolate from Fatah’s article, to be Canadian is to refuse to acknowledge that Canada is deeply invested in oppressive policies at home and abroad. Yet there are many of us who, for a variety of reasons, claim ownership of Canada, and who, as a result, feel it is ethically incumbent on us that we recognise and resist the oppressions that Fatah totally elides in his post. In other words, it is because we are residents and/or citizens of Canadian that we are opposed to mindless displays of nationalism. Home is not for us the hollow utopia that Fatah has constructed, but a deeply contested space. Thus, at the same time that we resist oppressions that marginalise us, we resist oppressions carried out against others in our names by the Canadian government. This too is a practice of citizenship, but perhaps one more self-aware than what Fatah prefers.
Conrad Barwa 4:34 am on July 3, 2009 Permalink |
Interesting, I remember being told by a couple of Canadian colleagues that Canada had never practised either the murder or dispossession of indigenous peoples; I was a bit shocked at these statements at the time but was reassured when told by other Canadian colleagues that the former view was a fairytale version of Canadian history. Reaffirmed my faith in human nature really.
Clearly some Canadians are still in denial about the past; shocking them out of their slumber might be no bad thing.