Canada 150 Persuasive Speech

585 Words3 Pages

The celebration of Canada 150 can easily go both ways. Personally I do not have a strong opinion either way. I do find, however, that I struggle to support the celebration. I think that it is simply a reminder to the Aanishinaabek nation of the colonization, genocide, assimilation, loss of language and culture, and broken promises, to name a few. Although Canada is celebrating 150 years, the Aanishinaabe people have been here for over 130,000 years. In order to celebrate Canada 150, I think that you should understand the full history of Canada first. George Santayana said that, “If we don't understand history, we are doomed to repeat it”. This is a powerful quote that stood out to me, and I believe it is relevant to our own country. …show more content…

It is simply a reminder to the Aanishinaabek nation that colonization, genocide, assimilation, STOLEN LAND, loss of language and culture, broken promises, water crisis - and the list continues. These are ongoing problems that still happen today in Canada. One example is residential schools; a church run, government-funded school that attempted to “kill the indian in the child”. It was assimilation and cultural genocide to the First Nations people. Because of this, families are suffering from intergenerational trauma. Things would be much different if First Nations people had not experienced all the suffering that they unfortunately did. Our culture wouldn't be at risk, there wouldn't be a lot of suicide in First Nations communities, and perhaps racism wouldn’t be as harsh as it is today. Despite everything that happened to us, we have a lot to be thankful for. Although we faced many things, we are still here after 150 years of assimilation, racism, and genocide. Canada is celebrating 150 years of confederation, yet our ancestors have been here over 130,000 years. We should be careful not to always look at the negative side of things, especially when we have so much to be thankful for. We are still here and we are still strong, and that’s all that