When Does Canada Finally Become of This Place?

I have been thinking about Vine Deloria Jr. a lot lately.

Especially God Is Red.

And with all this talk about Canada becoming some kind of “associate member” of the European Union, I find myself thinking about something much bigger than the EU, Mark Carney, Donald Trump, trade wars, Russia or whoever happens to be leading which country today.

When does Canada actually become of this place?

I’m not anti-European. I’m not anti-American. I’m not saying America is better than Europe, Europe is better than America, or Canada is better than either one.

That isn’t my point.

My question is much simpler.

Where does Canada believe home is?

Because sometimes I wonder whether Canada has ever really left Europe.

Vine Deloria Jr. wrote about something that has stayed with me. Europeans physically crossed the Atlantic, but European civilization carried Europe with it. Its religions, governments, laws, economics and ideas about progress were laid over this continent.

People arrived here, but in another sense they never completely arrived.

Deloria contrasted a worldview centred heavily on time and history with Indigenous traditions rooted in place. Sacredness was not simply something that happened thousands of years ago somewhere else. The land itself mattered. Particular mountains mattered. Rivers mattered. Animals mattered. Relationships mattered.

Place mattered.

That has me thinking about Canada today.

Our relationship with the United States becomes unstable and almost immediately we start looking across the Atlantic again.

Now we hear about Canada becoming an “associate member” of the European Union.

What does that even mean?

More importantly, how does attaching ourselves more deeply to another enormous political and economic bloc create the Canadian autonomy our leaders keep talking about?

Autonomy from America by becoming dependent upon Europe?

Is that autonomy?

Or do we just need another bigger hand to hold?

I don’t say that sarcastically. I think it is a serious question Canada needs to ask itself.

Maybe we need to grow up.

Think what you will about the United States. America has its own history of slavery, colonialism, Indigenous dispossession, war and empire. I am not romanticizing it.

But over generations, many Americans developed an identity that deliberately understood itself as separate from Europe.

What about Canadians?

We still have a monarch living across the Atlantic as our head of state. Our political institutions came largely from Europe. Our economic and legal systems were built through European colonialism.

And whenever our relationship with our closest neighbour becomes uncomfortable, we seem to look back toward Europe.

Maybe the choice shouldn’t be Washington or Brussels.

Maybe we need to stop looking for another parent.

Maybe Canada needs to become part of this place.

Turtle Island.

And I realize there is complexity in me even writing those words.

My own family history is complicated.

I am the child of a residential school survivor. I have ancestry connected to African American slavery. I also have European settler ancestry.

Those histories all exist together.

That makes it very difficult for me to divide humanity neatly into good people and bad people, colonizers and colonized, Europeans and Americans, us and them.

I don’t want that world anyway.

I have joked before that my ideal future looks more like Star Trek. Humanity finally grows beyond many of the borders and divisions we keep killing each other over.

Maybe someday.

But until then, I feel something very strongly.

Connection to the earth.

Connection to land.

Connection to community.

Connection to the place where our feet actually stand.

I am not claiming that is the only right worldview. I’m simply telling you where my thinking increasingly takes me.

And it takes me back to Deloria.

He asked:

“Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land?”

That is an extraordinary question.

Who actually listens to the land?

Not who owns it.

Not who can extract the most from it.

Not who can sell its minerals, oil, gas, lumber, water or agricultural production for the highest price.

Who belongs to it?

Who accepts responsibility for it?

Because Canada should never become a prostitute to great powers.

Our country should not simply sell pieces of itself to whichever empire, superpower or economic bloc promises us protection.

Our energy matters.

Our critical minerals matter.

Our food matters.

Our water matters.

Our forests matter.

Our Arctic matters.

Our workers matter.

And the generations who will inherit whatever we leave behind matter.

That doesn’t mean we stop trading.

Quite the opposite.

Trade with Europe.

Trade with the United States.

Trade with Mexico.

Trade with Asia, Africa, South America and whoever else wants a fair relationship.

Have friends everywhere.

But friendship and dependency are not the same thing.

Partnership and submission are not the same thing.

And sovereignty has to mean more than changing who we depend upon.

There is another part of this conversation Canadians sometimes don’t want to have.

Geography.

The United States isn’t going anywhere.

Mexico isn’t going anywhere.

Neither are the Indigenous nations whose territories existed long before anyone drew the borders of Canada, the United States or Mexico.

We share this continent.

We share watersheds.

Wildlife.

Air.

Oceans.

Energy.

Transportation.

Trade.

Families.

History.

And ultimately a future.

Maybe that should matter more than we think.

Turtle Island first does not mean America First.

It doesn’t mean Canada First in some hostile nationalist sense either.

It means recognizing the place where we actually live and asking what responsibilities come with living here.

It means the peoples of this continent figuring out how to live beside one another without constantly reproducing the colonial relationships that got us here.

Indigenous nations.

Canada.

The United States.

Mexico.

People whose ancestors have been here for thousands of years and people who arrived yesterday.

Different peoples.

One land.

A shared future.

I also think about what Canada once wanted to represent internationally.

I was proud of Canada as a peacekeeping nation.

Warriors, but not warring.

There is a difference.

There are times when people have to defend themselves. There are times when countries have to defend themselves.

But I don’t want Canada searching for wars.

And I certainly don’t want our foreign policy determined by somebody else’s wars.

Europe has legitimate security concerns about Russia. Russia has its own history and claims. The United States has its interests. China has its interests.

They can argue those interests.

Canada needs to figure out ours.

And ours should begin here.

With the people trying to pay their rent.

The family staring at the grocery bill.

The worker wondering whether there will still be an industry employing them ten years from now.

The community dealing with addiction and homelessness.

The farmer wondering whether another generation can afford to stay on the farm.

The Indigenous community trying to protect land and water while building a future for its children.

The young Canadian wondering whether home ownership will ever be possible.

Those people should matter more than geopolitical theatre.

I don’t know exactly where all of this leads.

Maybe that is why I keep returning to Vine Deloria Jr.

Because perhaps he was asking a deeper question than which political system should govern this continent.

He was asking whether the people who came here would ever truly become people of this place.

Not by pretending to be Indigenous.

Not by erasing where their ancestors came from.

But by developing an actual relationship and responsibility to the land beneath their feet.

Deloria ended God Is Red with words that have stayed with generations of readers:

“Who will listen to the trees, the animals and birds, the voices of the places of the land?”

And eventually, he wrote, the newcomers might discover that:

“for this land, God is red.”

Maybe Canada still hasn’t answered him.

Maybe we have spent so much time asking whether we belong to Britain, Europe, America, NATO, the Commonwealth, the West or whatever other category we create that we have neglected the most obvious answer.

We are here.

This is home.

Maybe true Canadian autonomy isn’t finding the right powerful country to stand behind.

Maybe it is finally standing on our own feet.

Friends with America without becoming America.

Friends with Europe without trying to become Europe.

Trading with the world without selling ourselves to it.

Strong enough to defend ourselves without becoming consumed by war.

Different peoples learning how to share a continent.

And maybe, after all these generations, finally becoming part of the place where we already live.

Turtle Island first.

Not because everybody else matters less.

Because this is where our responsibility begins.