New flag is important symbol, but it’s just a start
If there is a lasting legacy to Montreal’s 375th birthday extravaganza, let it be the new era of acknowledgment and respect for the city’s Indigenous people, heralded Tuesday amid much fanfare by Mayor Denis Coderre.
That would be a positive direction for Montreal to head in the future, and a constructive way to mark the history of a place that spans — not 375 years as all the signs and memorabilia proclaim — but millennia.
What is today the island of Montreal was once known as Tiotia:ke, meaning “where the currents meet,” in the language of the Kanien’kehá:ka people, the first residents.
The Kaniatarowanenneh, the original name for the St. Lawrence River, which translates as “big waterway” in Mohawk, was a conduit for transportation and trade, dating back thousands of years. Hochelaga, the lost Iroquois village that explorer Jacques Cartier visited in 1535 on or near Mount Royal, might be considered the original borough.
In the more than 400 years since Europeans first arrived in the place we call Montreal and began to claim it as their own, the city is slowly coming to terms with its often cruel and inhumane treatment of its initial inhabitants. And it is attempting to right some of the wrongs that continue to reverberate in the high rates of homelessness and hopelessness among Montreal’s Indigenous population, which has grown 177 per cent over the last decade.
Tuesday was a day of symbolic overtures. It began with the raising of a new flag that puts Montreal’s Indigenous roots front and centre, adding a white pine to the four other images representing the city’s founding peoples. It ended with a show at the Old Port called the Voice of Nations, highlighting Indigenous art, music, culture and food.
All this symbolism might seem empty to some. After all, the billion dollars spent on 375th birthday presents and celebrations might have been better spent on concrete measures to resolve some of the social scourges that plague Indigenous Montrealers.
But symbols are nevertheless important. They are crucial in informing the public discourse, changing archaic attitudes and improving understanding about Indigenous history, both distant and recent.
Promoting education and awareness were among the key recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which gathered testimony of survivors of Canada’s Indian Residential Schools and delivered its final report in 2015. One of its findings was that shockingly few Canadians were cognizant of nearly a century of government policy that forced Indigenous children into boarding schools far from their families, cultures, lands and language, where they were often subjected to horrific abuse.
The state’s determination to “take the Indian out of the child” amounted to a cultural genocide perpetrated against generations of Indigenous people and its traumatic effects are still being felt today. The commission’s calls to action on this front have been answered in myriad ways across the country, from public schools and hockey arenas making announcements acknowledging they are situated on unceded Aboriginal lands, to the rewriting of history books to ensure this dark chapter in Canadian history is finally known — and never forgotten.
A daycare in Vancouver reads children age-appropriate stories about residential schools. A high school in Châteauguay sends Indigenous students into primary classrooms to read books to youngsters and answer questions. McGill University has undertaken trying to recruit more Indigenous students and faculty. Its law school held a symposium on Indigenous legal traditions to kick off the last school year. These individual and institutional efforts are welcome and necessary. But if true reconciliation is to occur, the public’s eyes must also be opened to the misdeeds, injustices and atrocities still taking place.
Too many land claims remain unresolved after decades upon decades of stalled negotiation. Too many communities have contaminated water and have had boil-water advisories in effect for years. Too many reserves have derelict or overcrowded housing. Too many families live in anguish wondering what happened to mothers, daughters and sisters who went missing or were murdered, while an inquiry to investigate their disappearance spins its wheels. Too many Indigenous children do not have access to the same standard of health, education and social services as other Canadian children. Too many Indigenous people suffer the scars of being forced to attend residential schools, where they were robbed of their culture and language and often subjected to abuse. Too many communities suffer from a sense of hopelessness and isolation that results in epidemics of suicide, violence and addiction.
It is incumbent upon Canadians to press higher levels of government to finally act on these urgent, major and complex problems. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau vowed to inaugurate a new era of relations, but has been slow to deliver.
Coderre is correct that Montreal must also do its part to address these issues in its own backyard.
The new city flag, the eventual renaming of Amherst St. after an Indigenous leader, the hiring of a commissioner of Indigenous affairs to advise city council, the training of city workers and police to better their understanding of Indigenous issues — these all make a good starting point.
But the symbolic gestures must be followed by real and meaningful action.