Thoughts and Feelings About Canada’s Colonial History

1
Running head: NEW LANDS
New Lands
Name
Institution Affiliation

2
NEW LANDS
My thoughts and feelings about Canada’s colonial history are very unsettling for the most
part. I have never agreed with what indigenous people have gone through in the past which was
caused strictly because of their history, background of this community and most importantly
their beliefs which were ignored and erased from history (Cass, 2013). I find it so disrespectful
when the settlement of the indigenous culture took place. Colonialism is technically a way for a
majority group like Canada and the United States to just come in and strip them of their identity
and power, when that’s all they had, to live for . It’s extremely profound knowing that
indigenous people were considered “lesser humans” when realistically, we are all the same
humans at the end of the day, that are all here for the same reason: to live happily (Cass, 2013).
Concerning that, they were able to get relationship/rights to native land by the government as
they were the higher power controlling their every move, and placed them anywhere they wanted
to without minding their initial settlement. Even on top of that, they conceptualized their space to
shape and redefine the indigenous perspective of space by creating boundaries and map
territories to mark the limit of colonial power (Cass, 2013). Currently, indigenous people always
stay together within their community at these reserves as they were told that they had to stay
there since the colonialists gave the space just to them, hence disconnecting them fully from any
community outside of the reserves. Additionally, they created residential schools for the children
because they weren’t accepted anywhere else. It is evident that the indigenous people already
had their identity stripped from them (Cass, 2013).