National Day for Truth & Reconciliation Commitment
Today Canada celebrates its first National Day for Truth and Reconciliation. This coincides with Orange Shirt Day, where many Canadians wear orange to commemorate Indigenous lives lost to residential schools and survivors who live with the trauma of that experience every day. Canada and the United States both had “schools” set up for Indigenous children to sever their connection to their cultures and assimilate into settler society. Attendance was mandatory and children were separated from their families. The “schools” had terrible living conditions and Indigenous children attending were often abused and forced to do hard labor. Thousands of children were murdered by this system, many of whom are still being found and returned home after laying in unmarked graves for decades.
At this point you are likely wondering why a marching arts organization is saying something about this. It is important to recognize that Canada and the US share a foundation of genocide which the rest of our history was built on. This history includes marching arts as an American activity, particularly one with a military origin. As an organization and community we have started unpacking how society’s biases and barriers manifest in marching band, drum corps, color guard, etc. but colonialism is something few people have touched yet. If we are going to critically think about the activity, that demands that we must consider ALL angles of oppression. Colonialism is directly tied to the historical roots of our activity, and thus is not exempt from our consideration of oppression.
There are a lot of ways colonialism manifests in the activity. This includes show designs that perpetuate negative stereotypes of cultures, corps uniforms and iconography modelled after historic American soldiers, cultural appropriation, and “America themed shows” being an actual genre which uncritically celebrates the colonial history of the country. We could not unpack all that in a day nor should we. This statement is to let you know we’re making a commitment to critically think about the activity through an anti-colonial lens and hope you join us.
For our first exercise, let’s think about our relation to space and land. In this activity people from many places come together. There is often a lot of joking about various regions and what being from them means, both for performers and organizations. These regions are a colonial construction. Whose land are you from? Which cultures were suppressed to create the region and culture you know now for you and the organizations you’re with? We invite you to find your home and your organization’s location on this map: https://native-land.ca/. It is within our responsibility as an activity that travels across stolen land to spread knowledge about Native peoples and our activity’s history with them. Do your own research about the people, languages, and treaties you see. Reflect on this information and consider writing a land acknowledgement. Here is a resource on things to think about when writing a land acknowledgement.
Share what you learn with others in your area or organization. Let us know if you write a land acknowledgment for your organization because we would love to share it. We hope to learn more and critically unpack colonialism and marching arts with you over time. If you’re interested in helping create content, research, or run events around this topic please consider getting involved as a core member. Visit our Get Involved page to learn more.
Thanks for reading and joining us for this exercise. For more resources, make your way through this Twitter thread. Lastly, If you aren’t Indigenous, please donate to Indigenous mutual aid funds or Indigenous-led resistance efforts today if you have the means.
Sincerely,
Marching Arts Access, Safety, & Inclusion Network (MAASIN)