'Un-erase' Indigenous Peoples on Canada Day: What you can do to support the country's true heritage

A non-profit is teaching Canadians simple ways they can “un-erase” Indigenous people this Canada Day.

Victoria-based RAVEN, which supports Indigenous Peoples’ access to justice through public education and raising legal defence funds, wants people across the country to know the easy steps they can take to show support and invest in relationships with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis people.

The group is using Canada Day to get the message across that the ongoing harms of colonization are often minimized or forgotten when the holiday is celebrated.

“I want to encourage Canadians specifically to put some pressure on Canada to acknowledge that Canada is on Indigenous lands,” Jamie-Leigh Gonzales, communications manager with RAVEN, tells Yahoo News Canada.

One way that can be done is by signing a petition on a website launched by RAVEN’s called HomeOnNativeLand.com, which asks the Minister of Heritage to update the lyrics of the anthem to “home on native land”, instead of “Home and native land.

Singer Jully Black made headlines earlier this year when she sang the lyrics to the Canadian national anthem as “home on native land”, and committed to doing it again this week at a ceremony for graduating law students at the Toronto Metropolitan University.

The website also features ten free module courses that teach Canadians how to equip themselves with the knowledge necessary to support Indigenous priorities, rights and legal actions.

“Ultimately the course is aiming to show what Canadians can do to put reconciliation into action,” says Gonzales. “We have to go beyond just land acknowledgments…The series builds on knowledge necessary to support and discuss how we can have more contributions to legal justice for Indigenous peoples.”

According to one report, 67% of Canadians say that they have a personal role in reconciliation. But the same report also reveals that Canadians increasingly describe the relationships between Indigenous people and non-Indigenous people to be negative. Gonzales says this is likely the result of increased Canadian awareness of historical justices that have been on-going for Indigenous people.

This includes the report of the national inquiry into murdered and missing Indigenous women and girls, increased awareness of the Wet'suwet'en campaign against pipelines, and the identification of unmarked graves in Kamloops and other parts of the nation.

“When we see this shift in what Canadians are feeling, it’s just that they are starting to understand that there’s ongoing colonialism that is still impacting Indigenous people today,” she says.

Gonzales stresses that small efforts can make a big difference in the long run for Canadians looking to do more to show support for Indigenous people and their communities.

“It may feel insignificant but small symbolic changes are indicators that the public’s ready to be more open, to learn about these injustices and to make change,” she says.