Challenging the stereotypes about indigenous people

The Native Youth Awareness Campaign aims to fight discrimination, says

Indigenous youth face racial discrimination every day. This cannot continue.

Racism doesn’t come from nowhere. It comes from society and those around us. No one is born racist, we learn it.

I am not immune. I have picked up various biases throughout my life, and make an active effort to be aware of them and to not let them dictate how I treat other people. But many are not aware of what ideas and assumptions they hold, and how they can affect others.

Questions like, “Do you pay taxes?”, “You got into McGill because you’re native, right?” or “Hasn’t the government given you all enough? Why aren’t you like the rest of us?” can lead to animosity.

The idea that indigenous people receive handouts from the government doesn’t take into account how much they have had taken from them — lands, resources, culture — or the obligations owed them by the Crown.

The idea I couldn’t have got into the university I did if it weren’t for preferential treatment due to being indigenous means it’s assumed an indigenous person couldn’t be successful enough to get to McGill on his or her own merit.

Discrimination can have a huge impact on youth. When those around you assume you aren’t worth it, assume you can’t do it and assume you aren’t good enough, you begin to believe it. This can have a significant effect on self-esteem, something many struggle with already.

It’s the notion that indigenous people just aren’t trying hard enough that contributes to situations like landlords not wanting to rent to indigenous people, service employees looking down on, rather than respecting, indigenous customers, and medical professionals assuming health concerns are the fault of the patient.

Indigenous people are not less intelligent because they are indigenous, but they do have lower educational attainment rates due to such things as chronic underfunding of education

Those who, just because they are indigenous, are denied a right that any other person would have, can report it.

for indigenous children and the legacy of residential schools. Indigenous people are not inherently more likely to be criminals, but can be trapped in cycles of poverty due to systemic neglect by the government.

I can’t address every stereotype out there in one short article, but I will say this: To believe that indigenous people are incapable or weak or needy is to ignore centuries of resilience during which indigenous people survived what amounted to an attempted genocide.

On Monday, Native Montreal is launching their Native Youth Awareness Campaign Against Discrimination, a culmination of months of work by indigenous youth from the Montreal area to raise awareness within indigenous communities of what discrimination can look like and how they can address it.

Youth who are faced with discrimination don’t have to take it.

Those who, just because they are indigenous, are denied a right that any other person would have, can report it. Whether they are indigenous or not, anyone can take a stand against discrimination by challenging assumptions and stereotypes head-on when they see them.

No one is born racist, but we are taught to be that way — sometimes by our parents, teachers or textbooks. Our textbooks largely ignore the history of colonial policies by Canadian governments that have left indigenous people in a state of systemic oppression. Our textbooks skim over the act of genocide that was Indian Residential Schools. Our parents have faced the same lack of education. No one is born racist, and we can work to keep the next generations from becoming so.

Native Montreal launches the Native Youth Awareness Campaign, “All this just because I’m Native. Today I want things to change,” at the Salon Urbain, Place des Arts, Monday, March 21 at 6 p.m. #JustBecauseImNative. www.nativemontreal.com