“It is amazing how complete is the delusion that beauty is goodness,” Tolstoy wrote in The Kreutzer Sonata. He was talking about the human assumption that attractiveness equals kindness and integrity. For a moment, apply this to the relationship between settlers and the beautiful land that is called Canada. In this gorgeous, expansive country, most Canadians who live here are happy to do so. They feel lucky. Surely such a beautiful place could not exist on the foundation of an ugly oppression.
But fortune has not fallen equally among the people who live here. Five decades after Pierre Elliott Trudeau’s Liberal government adopted a formal multiculturalism policy, many Indigenous people are still searching for their identity within this land.
This story is from the January/February 2022 edition of The Walrus.
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This story is from the January/February 2022 edition of The Walrus.
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