How learning about my roots strengthened my commitment to take action toward reconciliation
By Anne Harding
I grew up like many Canadians of settler backgrounds, identifying simply as “Canadian.” The notion that I was anything other than germane to the country where my family had lived for generations was a foreign concept. As I started to work with and learn more about the history and experiences of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, though, it became clear to me that I would benefit from a deeper understanding not just of my family’s heritage, but also of their stories with this land.
“Our family has been here for generations. We’re Canadian.” “We’re Maritimers, and have lived in Nova Scotia for centuries.” “We’re farmers from Saskatchewan where we’ve homesteaded for over a century.” I’m sure these phrases, or slight variations on them, are familiar to some. These were the family stories and identities that I grew up with, and that worked for me for the first 20-some-odd years of my life. They worked for me because I’m white, and our systems in Canada are intentionally set up to benefit people like me. Coming from an upper middle class family in Calgary, I never needed to defend or question my background or heritage. I just existed as ‘Canadian’, pretty much blind to the fact that my experience was so very different from the experiences of Indigenous people who were (and still are) subtly and overtly discriminated against because of their heritage.
This really hit me about seven years ago when I started digging deeper into my family’s story. I was spending so much time working with and learning from Indigenous friends and colleagues who had such rich understandings of and appreciation for their families’ longstanding (like, several thousand years’) connection to this land. If I was really identifying as ‘Canadian’, why didn’t I have a stronger personal connection to this country and its people? So I went on a personal fact-finding mission.
I was thrilled when I was chatting with my mom one day and she said “well, you know you have an ancestor who was a Red River Settler, don’t you?” I said, “what does that mean?” and she said “I don’t know. But here’s a USB stick with our family’s history on it - look in there.” What I learned from that USB is that my great-great-grandfather John Nielsen was part of the Wolseley Expedition in 1870.
The Wolseley Expedition (or Red River Expedition) was a government military expedition that was launched at the same time that the government was passing The Manitoba Act, which guaranteed 1.4 million acres of land in what we now know as Manitoba as a dedicated land for Métis people. The expedition was retaliation for Louis Riel’s execution of Thomas Scott, and not so subtly intended to punish the Métis for standing up for their recognized rights. By the time the expedition made the 3 month journey across Northern Ontario and into Manitoba, Riel had fled to the United States, where he stayed in exile before coming back up to fight in the Red River Resistance and ultimately being the only Canadian executed for high treason to this country (for fighting for Métis rights) in 1885.
Now for his service, my ancestor, John Nielsen, was granted 160 acres of land in the province of Manitoba, which surely would have belonged to a Métis family. John brought his family out from Ontario and learned to farm in Manitoba for about a decade before moving with a mission to Saskatchewan, where my family has “homesteaded for over a century.”
It has been incredibly impactful for me and my work to learn this story. To fill out my identity as a Canadian. To connect my personal story with the story of Indigenous people in our country. I am now able to better understand that my privilege growing up as an upper middle class white girl in Calgary can be directly traced back to racist government policies of assimilation.
The fact that my parents and their parents were encouraged and supported to pursue post-secondary education, to own property, to have stable careers and loving family lives, all relate to the fact that John Nielsen was a white militiaman in a government expedition to quash the ability of Métis people to maintain their identity and way of life. The same Métis people who were integral to the formation of this country through their pivotal roles in the fur trade, as navigators and negotiators between Indigenous and European traders.
Learning this history didn’t change my interest in reconciliation, but it most definitely deepened my commitment to seeing my privilege as a responsibility. To make sure that I do everything that I can to use my privilege to help build a country for future generations that celebrates and recognizes the unique rights and identities of Indigenous Peoples, rather than a country that fights tooth and nail to force a whitewashed set of values and way of life on all who call this country home.
My mom passed away just over a year ago, quite unexpectedly, from pancreatic cancer. One of the ‘affairs’ that we needed to get in order was to deal with the parcel of land she owned, 8 miles east of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. It was part of the Nielsen homestead lands that had been passed down to my mom from her mom, Bessie Persson (John Nielsen’s granddaughter). It’s about 20 acres of forest/marsh that were affectionately known as “Bessie’s trees” by her siblings and relatives. As far as I know, the land has been untouched, as it was considered too much of a swamp to be used for “productive” purposes, like farming.
While my mom was in the hospital, I had an idea that I shared with her. Bessie’s trees were discounted by our farming ancestors, seen as holding no real value, so they were left untouched. To me, that means that the trees, plants, berries, and medicines on that land are indigenous to that territory, which may be a bit of a rare thing, given how prevalent settlement and farming is in that part of Saskatchewan. How wonderful would it be to partner with an Indigenous organization in the future to use that land for traditional Indigenous practices, like harvesting or ceremony, particularly for Indigenous youth living in Prince Albert, which is a mere 5 minutes away? I was fortunate enough to be able to share this idea with mom before she passed, and she loved it.
So I am now the proud steward of Bessie’s trees. And I look forward to one day partnering with an Indigenous organization to have my family’s homestead lands used to contribute, in a small way, to the revitalization of cultures that my ancestors were once sent to destroy. To start this journey, I’ve contributed 5% of my revenues to the Indigenous youth organization Canadian Roots Exchange over the past year. While I thought it was important to begin with a financial commitment, I look forward to continuing to deepen this relationship over the coming years, discovering new ways that I can use my privilege to advance reconciliation, and one day partnering to see these lands used for healing and a re-storying of what it means to identify as Canadian.