Building Relationships and Strengthening Identities Among Canada's Aboriginals and Newcomers

When thinking about immigrants and refugees and how they intersect with aboriginal identity I was at a standstill. I didn’t really know what I could write about when it came to these two different groups. One group was the original inhabitants of this land [aboriginals] and had faced much hardship from racism, survival, struggles for equality and the fight for self determination. This much I knew about from a previous class that I had taken in native studies. But when it came to the group of immigrants and refugees, who were newcomers to this land from another country, I didn’t really have much knowledge about them. Nor did I see a way that I would be able to interconnect these two groups with one another. When I thought about the relationship that aboriginals had in the past with newcomers to the land Europeans and colonization popped into my head; Then, from there all I could think about was how the aboriginal people of today probably don’t like the idea of immigrants and refugees coming to Canada to take jobs that could have been theirs or cause less opportunity for economic prosperity for aboriginals. Although this way of thinking maybe partially true, this isn’t the way most aboriginals see immigrants and refugees.  Traditionally, aboriginals were said to be very welcoming people, and that hasn’t changed, they may be less trusting then they used to be (this of course is just my speculation), but that doesn’t mean they won’t give newcomers a chance, after all, today’s newcomers aren’t the ones that caused aboriginals their hardship.

The program that I found that I thought would be a perfect example for this topic and shows how aboriginals are working to understand and embrace newcomers more openly is the Dialogues Program, which is a program based out of Vancouver, BC. The goal of the Dialogues Program is to bring together the aboriginals of Canada, as well as the immigrants and refugees and create a bond of understanding between them (Suleman, Z. 2011). They look to create this understanding by making the aboriginals and newcomers get past the misconceived stereotypes that each may have against one other (Suleman, Z. 2011), misconceptions that more often than not are not based on reality. So in order for these groups to correct these misconceptions that they have on one another the Dialogues Program set out to re-educate them and bring them all together to talk amongst one another and converse about certain topics, this process of discussion is called Dialogue circles and in them topics of the past, present, and future of the relationship between these groups could be talked about (Suleman, Z. 2011) One thing I found to be enlightening was the discussion portion that took place about the aboriginals of the land. The newcomers spoke about what they knew about aboriginal people, which wasn’t much and was mostly based upon stereotypes (Suleman, Z. 2011), and talked about how they would like to know more about the original inhabitants of this country but the lack of easily accessible information makes that slightly difficult (Suleman, Z. 2011). In the project book it talks about how the project took note of that before the newcomers placed any thought upon aboriginals they needed to know more about the history of the aboriginal people in Canada. They brought up such topics as colonization and the history of the hardships that they endured, as well as aboriginal traditions, the land, and the culture of aboriginal people. Although there was much more discussed about the project these were the things that stuck out the most. I found it very illuminating to know that there are projects out there that are bringing together different groups that are so diverse and unique in their own distinct way and encouraging them to get to know one another before they place judgment towards each other.

When thinking about this program I see progress being created by these groups and I can see how they are all working to better understand their own, as well as other’s identities. It is important to interact and communicate with others and to build understanding because the thoughts of others build on our identities. As James Frideres (2008) states in his article Aboriginal Identity in the Canadian Context “our identity cannot be determined without considering other people we are directly and indirectly involved with in social interaction. Hence, the responses of others necessarily play an important part in the construction of our identity.” (p.4) From this we can see that the way people respond to us shapes a part of who we are, but what the dialogues program is doing is taking these two groups and changing the misconceived thoughts they may have had about each other and re-educating them, therefore, building more positive identities for each of the individuals involved.

-          Jody

References

Frideres, J.. (2008). Aboriginal identity in the Canadian context. The Canadian Journal of Native Studies, 28(2), retrieved from http://proquest.umi.com.proxy1.lib.umanitoba.ca/pqdlink?vinst=PROD&fmt=6&startpage=-1&clientid=12305&vname=PQD&RQT=309&did=1872186461&scaling=FULL&ts=1321770604&vtype=PQD&rqt=309&TS=1321770617&clientId=12305&cfc=1

Suleman, Z. (2011). Vancouver Dialogues: first nations, urban aboriginals, and immigrant communities. Retrieved from http://vancouver.ca/commsvcs/socialplanning/dialoguesproject/initiatives/pdf/book.pdf