DRIPA debate so painful

 This is what makes the DRIPA debate so painful for me.

I have been unhoused since 2019.

I have struggled through systems that were supposed to help me. I have experienced the humiliation of trying to navigate welfare, housing programs and government assistance while being told, in one way or another, that there wasn't enough room, enough money, or that I didn't fit the criteria.

Meanwhile, I watch Canada create programs and pathways for newcomers and refugees, while people who have been here for generations can still fall through the cracks.

And yes — I understand why people need help. Refugees need help. Newcomers need help. People fleeing war, persecution and poverty deserve compassion.

But compassion should not require forgetting the people already here who are struggling.

My own ancestry is complicated and deeply connected to this land. Parts of that history were erased, buried, legislated away and made difficult to recover.

So when I see a politician in Canada proposing to dissolve or dismantle a framework intended to recognize Indigenous rights, I don't experience that as some abstract political disagreement.

I experience it personally.

Because this isn't simply about one piece of legislation.

It is about whether Canada is willing to acknowledge the history underneath the country we live in.

It is about whether Indigenous peoples are expected to keep fighting to have their rights recognized while everyone else gets to treat Canada as a blank slate.

And it raises an uncomfortable question:

How can someone who comes from a country with its own long history of colonialism fail to understand why Indigenous people in Canada are still fighting the consequences of colonization?

I don't care where someone's ancestors came from.

India. China. Ukraine. England. Mexico. Anywhere.

You can come here. You can build a life here. You can become Canadian.

But becoming Canadian should also mean learning whose land you're living on — and understanding that Indigenous rights are not an inconvenience that can simply be legislated away when they become politically inconvenient.

I have spent years trying to find a place to live in the country where my own family history is buried.

So forgive me if I find it difficult to watch someone with political power decide that recognition of Indigenous rights is something that should disappear.

We need to talk about what Canada owes people — not just what people owe Canada.

#DRIPA #IndigenousRights #Colonialism #HousingCrisis #Canada #Reconciliation #BritishColumbia #Immigration #HumanRights #Abbotsford

10 Hard Reflective Questions

1. What does it say about Canada when someone born and raised here can inherit the benefits of Canadian society while reproducing the same hierarchical, exclusionary and colonial methods of control that Canada claims it is trying to dismantle?

2. Can a person be Canadian by birth and still reproduce systems of oppression learned through family, community, class, caste or colonial history — and are we willing to talk honestly about that?

3. What happens when ideas of hierarchy, inherited status and social superiority are carried into Canadian institutions and used against people who are already vulnerable?

4. If we condemn the caste system because it assigns people different social value based on birth, why do we become uncomfortable when caste-based attitudes or behaviours are alleged to appear within Canadian communities?

5. Why do we sometimes recognize colonialism when it is committed by Europeans, but become reluctant to examine colonial or hierarchical behaviour when it is reproduced by people from other formerly colonized societies?

6. Can someone be a victim of colonialism in one historical context while simultaneously reproducing oppressive behaviour toward another group in the present? Why is that possibility so difficult to discuss?

7. What happens when people use Canadian institutions — political office, education, employment, immigration systems or government programs — while bringing with them social hierarchies that can disadvantage people with less power?

8. If Canada is supposed to be a society based on equality, should anyone be able to use inherited status, social connections, institutional power or cultural hierarchy to place themselves above another person?

9. What responsibility does a person have when they recognize that beliefs or behaviours inherited from their family's history can hurt other people — especially Indigenous people, women, workers, newcomers or people living in poverty?

10. And the hardest question: if we demand that Indigenous people confront the effects of colonization, shouldn't everyone who lives here also be willing to examine the colonial, caste-based, class-based or hierarchical behaviours they may have inherited — rather than assuming only someone else's history needs to be confronted?