Flowers for my Father

Personal Land Acknowledgement

To begin aI want to recognize that I live and work on the territories of the Anishinaabe, including the Mississaugas, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, and the Wendat. Toronto, from the Mohawk word Tkaronto, which means "the place in the water where the trees are standing", is covered by the Dish with One Spoon Treaty which is about sharing a commitment to protect the land and never taking more than you need. In many ways I find this treaty reflects the roots of environmental values and the important role Indigenous peoples continue to play in protecting biodiversity in our world.

I also wanted to acknowledge the traditional territories of where I am educated in Waterloo - the which is located on the traditional territories of the Neutral, Anishinaabeg and Haudenosaunee peoples. The University of Waterloo is situated on the Haldimand Tract, the land promised to the Six Nations that includes ten kilometers on each side of the Grand River. I actually know this land acknowledgement better, because in my experience we've only really started saying land acknowledgements, since I started University so when I say and hear it it's often in Waterloo.

The relationship between Chinese diaspora and Indigenous peoples is something I talk about a lot, especially in my writing, so much so that it makes its way into pieces that aren't explicitly about the topic - for example Signal about my experience with systemic racism, that I shared a bit with you all before has the following lines

"A constant struggle of belonging, identity, and fighting to be seen,

Too Chinese-faced to be Canadian (what even does that mean, this country built on stolen land, stolen dreams, my people used as means to accomplish that)"

And what I'm specifically referring to is the way Chinese labourers were "imported" to build the railroad that our history books often claim was the backbone of Canada and leave out the fact that the Chinese workers were paid less than white or Black workers, just for being Chinese, and were also often given the most backbreaking, dangerous work, and then this railroad was used to absolutely decimate Indigenous populations especially in the prairies, because it facilitated killing off the Bison which were a really important food source.

So clearly it's a very complicated relationship between Chinese-Canadians and Indigenous peoples. There is an element of shared oppression I've written about experiences the communities share like assimilation and children being unable to speak to their grandparents due to language barriers, and I always present it as space for solidarity and not the "oppression olympics" but there's also an element of benefit from oppression. which comes with its own challenges.

What I'm realizing though is that it doesn't change the fact that with this history of the railroad, people like me ultimately started establishing in Canada due the oppression of Indigenous peoples, and this along with things like segregation are what facilitated the establishment of places like Chinatowns that make me feel seen and safe but also represent, again, shared oppression - Vancouver's Downtown East Side is a sort of Chinatown, where the population is mostly Chinese and Indigenous and is one of the poorest postal codes in Canada.

Spadina Chinatown in Toronto was moved there from Yonge and Queen because that neighbourhood was torn down to build New City Hall. It boomed during that time because the Chinese Exclusion Act, the only legislation in Canadian history that ever specifically barred a ethnic group from immigrating, had finally come to an end. During the 24 years we were barred from coming to the country, those already in Canada also had to register with the government and get identity cards which seems strikingly similar to Indigenous Status cards.

And it is with all of this history that my family became a Chinese immigrant family to Canada,. I was born in Wuhan China and we moved to Canada when I was two. China also has very complicated relationships between ethnic groups, that I won't get into because honestly I need to learn more, but I will say there are 56 ethnic groups in the country and my family is of the Han majority. Now we are here and we've become a "minority". Something I've thought about a lot in our immigratin story is the fact that we were "allowed" here by the laws and regulations of the Canadian government which was set up by stealing Indigenous land, and for a while that made me question the validity of me, my family, and other settlers being here at all.

But the conclusion I came to is that all of us are currently here, it's extremely unlikely that we can return to a society like it was before, and to force people "back" would probably be cruel. But like urban areas become a novel ecosystem, you're not going to bulldoze a city and restore it to native grassland, but you can take what you have an make sure it is environmentally wonderful, I believe we can create a novel ecosystem type of humanity that respects the reality, past and current, of Indigenous peoples of Turtle Island and all of us settlers and newcomers who have arrived since. To refer to Robin Wall Kimmerer and her book Braiding Sweetgrass, the responsibility of people like me is to make sure we naturalize, to not crowd out but live peacefully and respectfully, and in reciprocity with what was already there, with the promise that we are setting down deep roots and that we will keep this place a great home for everyone and for generations to come.