Yes, her name is Ta7talíya, but you won’t see it on her passport
On paper and to people who only know her by her government IDs, she is Michelle Nahanee.
To everyone else, she is Ta7talíya Nahanee.
And yes, there’s a number 7 in the ancestral name she’s given by her Indigenous family in the Squamish Nation in North Vancouver. The number 7 is actually a “glottal stop, similar to the stop in the middle of the word oh-oh!” and the name is pronounced Ta-ta-li-ya.
After carrying her English colonial name Michelle in her IDs all her life, Nahanee was excited when she heard in June about the federal government’s new process to allow Indigenous peoples, residential school survivors and their families to reclaim their Indigenous names on passports, travel documents, citizenship certificates and permanent resident cards.
But the Vancouver-based facilitator and strategist, whose work is meant to help undo colonial practices and impacts, says she was disappointed when she learned government systems can only print in Roman alphabet with French accents, meaning names with numbers and Indigenous characters and symbols won’t be accommodated.
“It’s just another one of these announcements of the government patting itself on the back for acts of reconciliation and yet without the actual fulfilment of that reconciliation,” Nahanee said.
In June, within weeks of the gruesome discoveries of 200 potential unmarked graves at the site of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, Ottawa announced it would make the standard name change process simpler for reclamation of Indigenous names on various valid immigration documents free of charge — a response to a Truth and Reconciliation Commission recommendation.
“We call upon all levels of government to enable residential school Survivors and their families to reclaim names changed by the residential school system by waiving administrative costs for a period of five years for the namechange process and the revision of official identity documents, such as birth certificates, passports, driver’s licenses, health cards, status cards, and social insurance numbers,” the commission said among its 94 calls to action in 2015.
It’s turned out to be a harder process than expected.
The immigration department said its document-issuance systems can only print Roman alphabet with some French accents, as well as three symbols: apostrophe, hyphen and period. Numbers in names are not part of its functionality.
That’s because its systems must abide by the current International Civil Aviation Organization standards to ensure all passports and travel documents are machine-readable since they are used in computer systems by domestic and foreign border-control agencies, airlines and airports for ticket purchasing, reservations and boarding card printing.
“All systems that handle passenger data, including personal identity information, follow the ICAO standards. This makes sure no matter where someone travels, their passport or travel document works across computer systems,” said an immigration department spokesperson, Nancy Caron.
During government consultations with organizations representing Indigenous communities, she said, participants did not raise concerns around the use of the Roman alphabet. Officials would not disclose which organizations were part of the consultations.
University of Manitoba Prof. Frank Deer said language is one of the fundamental elements of any national identity that “stores something” about a person’s cultural identity, communal identity, as well as their own personal histories.
“When people are concerned about names, they appear to me to be concerned about elements of those different identities,” said Deer, who specializes in Indigenous language education and identity studies.
Himself a Mohawk from Kahnawake in Quebec, he said there has been a growing awareness and interests of the Canadian Indigenous experience, but each community and nation is at different stages of the journey of reclamation.
For example, Deer has always had his Mohawk name, Aronhiótas, in his government-issued IDs and most of his people do not have an issue with reclaiming their traditional names. Whether to do it is also a personal choice and has much to do with individual life experiences.
“For some young people, there is a bit of shyness or nervous sort of orientation toward using their Indigenous name in a community that might not understand the importance of it. Maybe some are concerned about ridicule,” Deer said.
“There was a time when I was younger where I certainly was very nervous about being expressive about my national cultural background. “(Now) I’m older and I’m quite proud of myself. It is a personal choice, but that personal choice is informed by certain things based on where you are and who you’re with — that sort of thing.”
Nahanee’s birth name, Michelle, was given to her by her grandparents and father, who all endured residential schools and didn’t want their children to stand out and suffer as a result of having a traditional name, she said.
“A lot of Indigenous people at that time were just going through so much, having their children taken away and brought back in very rough shape,” she said.
“So there’s this direct disconnection, forced disconnection from their culture. And basically, they’re brainwashed into believing that their Indigenous language is not valuable.”
Ancestral names are sacred and often inherited and carried through family lines or given when the person is “ready” to take a name in different phases of life, but how and why a person receives a
“There was a time when I was younger where I certainly was very nervous about being expressive about my national cultural background.” FRANK DEER UNIVERSITY OF MANITOBA PROFESSOR
name varies across Indigenous cultures, Nahanee said.
Nahanee has two Indigenous names. She “received” her first one from a respected Squamish language teacher in 2003 in a ceremony for the whole family to honour her late grandparents.
That name — a translation of the childhood nickname her grandfather gave her — is so sacred to her that she only uses it when she’s with close family members in private.
She only acquired her second Indigenous name, Ta7talíya, three years ago at another naming ceremony just for her
work will likely look at how to determine that a mental illness is “irremediable” — incurable — one of the criteria required to access MAID in Canada.
“I think that one has to accept that not all psychiatric treatments work,” said Stewart, a professor at the University of Toronto and psychiatrist at University Health Network, where she conducts MAID assessments.
“Some of those patients will learn to live with their severe symptoms, and others will not and will request MAID. And I think that one cannot say that they cannot be considered because perhaps
sometime in the future something will be found that will perhaps treat it.”
Stewart said she hopes the panel will consider safeguards proposed by a range of authorities, including the Canadian Psychiatric Association and a report on MAID by the Council of Canadian Academies, as well as draw from Dutch and Belgian experiences.
These potential safeguards include at least one psychiatric consultation, special training for practitioners who would consult on these cases, longer wait times between application for MAID and the procedure being carried out, a minimum number of years of having lived with a mental illness, and mandatory reporting and reviewing of all such MAID cases.
Dr. Sonu Gaind, a professor of psychiatry at the University of Toronto and former president of the Canadian Psychiatric Association, opposes the expansion.
“The fundamental foot in the door is that it’s supposed to be an irremediable medical condition,” he said. “We simply cannot make any responsible predictions of irremediability for any person with mental illness.”
Gaind decried the lack of thorough parliamentary debate on the issue, noting it was added as a Senate amendment toward the tail end of the bill’s legislative journey.
Another concern that has been raised is around the capacity of those with mental illnesses asking for MAID. The Council of Canadian Academies report — in which Gaind took part — noted that it may be difficult in some cases to ensure that the person is capable and making an “autonomous decision” for MAID.
Some psychiatrists have countered that evaluating decision-making capacity is a core part of the job, and done all the time during MAID assessments on the basis of physical illnesses.
“The vast majority of people with psychiatric illnesses are indeed competent,” said psychiatrist Dr. Derryck Smith, a former board member of Dying with Dignity Canada.
He said he believes that part of the opposition to expanding MAID is related to the stigma that continues to surround mental illness. “We somehow presume that people with a psychiatric illness aren’t competent to make decisions for themselves and that society has to look after them.”
Scully said it would be “abhorrent” if the Conservatives removed the possibility of MAID on the basis of mental illness. He said he also doesn’t have faith in a re-elected Liberal government to ensure the procedure actually becomes legal in two years.
His focus now is to speak up on an issue that, he finds, hears far too often from medical professionals and academics and far less from people like him, those who live with severe mental illness and want MAID. “To shut us out is an abdication of moral responsibility,” he said. “How dare they make decisions on my behalf without hearing my voice.”
“The vast majority of people with psychiatric illnesses are indeed competent.” DR. DERRYCK SMITH PSYCHIATRIST
If you are thinking of suicide or think someone else may be, there is help. Call your local crisis line or go to the emergency room of your local hospital. Resources are available through the government of Canada. You can connect to a national network of distress lines at 1-833-4564566 and Kids Help Phone at 1-800-668-6868.