I'm indigenous but have never lived on a reserve. My mom moved away from her home reserve for school and has gone back to live in reserve periodically, but never really resettled there. She married a white man and had me and my siblings.
Her experience was one of loneliness and long periods of adjustment. She likens it to immigrating to Canada from another country. She still often misses living on reserve, even after 40 years away, and she spends a lot of time visiting despite the distance. The reserve isn't great and is rather poverty stricken but it's home to her.
As I said, I never grew up on reserve but spent a couple summers there and drive out to visit the cousins a couple times a year, usually for Treaty Days and my Aunty's birthday. I wouldn't say it feels like going home, but I imagine it's not disimilar to a children of immigrant parents visiting their family back in the old country. It's a little sureal, and I do feel like a bit of an outsider, but it's also weirdly comforting being around other natives, even with being a mixed-urban native. I'm sure any mixed person can relate, especially if half of you is white, but you never truely feel 100% connected to either racial identity, but you feel a little less excluded from the non-white side.
Thanks for sharing your experience :) My parents immigrated here before I was born, and they had a similar struggle to your mom with missing the family and culture "back home". You're right, when I visit my extended family in the Caribbean it's familiar and comforting being around my people but I am still considered "Canadian" to them so I don't really fit in. I feel lucky that I haven't lost all connection to those roots though
I'm 34 now. Left the reserve, where I was born and raised, at around 20. I was born and raised on a reserve between Sudbury and the Soo in Ontario. Lived all over Ontario since then. Nothing compares to coming home though. I felt instantly disconnected from my reserve and culture and language the second I moved away. Economically and almost everything sociologically, everything is better off reserve. Easier access to family doctors, transportation, healthcare, was off the reserve. Easier access to my own language and its specific dialect, family, long time friends, access to all things regarding my anishnawbek ulture, is on the reserve.
Your story resonates, I was a military kid who moved around the world, and felt disconnected where ever I was. Now as a senior, I have no place that feels like home. I’m glad you still have that place.
I want to thank everyone who has answered this question & told their stories. We all have a lot to learn from each other. I appreciate being able to learn from each of you & grow to become a better human
My mom is Indigenous. They moved away from the rez when she was about 10 years old due to my grandpa finding a “white man’s job” that paid well enough to support his wife and 7 kids. She grew up in a small city, pursued post-secondary in a bigger city and went back home to the rez with her fancy credentials. Ended up doing spectacularly in her role and impressed some higher-ups in an organization they had partnered with, they offered her a position, she took it and blazed through her career.
She is by all accounts what society would consider successful as she nears retirement. She’s married, raised a family, highly educated, homeowner, debt-free, all that good stuff. Career-wise, she’s been a Director, managed major projects, handled many significant initiatives, advocated for legislative changes, etc. etc.
However. This is what she calls “white man’s success”; her definition of the word differs greatly. Obtaining all this means she lost her connection to her family, her land base, her language, her culture. And by extension we, her descendants, lost that too.
She’s moving back home when she retires.
As a child of immigrants who became Canadianized, I can empathize. Success in another culture often means the loss of or erasing of one’s original culture. I’m glad that a number of people are able to go back.
Typing for my father. He grew up on a rez until he was about 13 in the 70's and moved to the city with his mom afterwords he can't recall why she left. On the rez they had no telephones and no sanitation systems so they had to use outhouses and boil water. Moving to the city improved those aspects. But he says growing up on the reserve had more freedoms like being able to swim and fish whenever and wherever. Snowmobile and atv paths everywhere and driving dune buggies. Could even ride horses down the street. The reserve is fun as a kid but holds no real future as a teenager/adult. But it's still a place he holds close to him.
Not an indigenous person, but I grew up in a town where 85% of the population (or more) are status—the town and the reserve are basically intermingled, and most of what looks like “the town” is actually Band land. The town is remote-ish, as in not near a city, but has a proper paved road to access it.
Almost everyone I knew growing up belonged to one of two Bands in the area, or were Métis. I come from a generation where most indigenous kids my age who graduated from high school were the first in their family to do so. If my indigenous classmates went to post secondary, they were DEFINITELY the first in their families to do so.
When kids from my class went off to the city after graduation (like most of us did) to get jobs or take classes at a college/uni, the indigenous kids often found it very lonely. There were far fewer indigenous people, and many that there were came from different tribes/cultures and they weren’t able to speak the same indigenous languages, didn’t necessarily have similar cultural practices, and felt just as alien as the white city folks they were now living alongside. The other factor that made things lonely for my indigenous classmates was that they were used to being surrounded by their extended families, and now were on their own. Establishing an equivalent social life wasn’t easy, and being misunderstood and stereotyped by the city people made things pretty miserable.
Given the culture shock, the loneliness, and the lack of connection to culture, many of my indigenous classmates went home and didn’t finish their studies. The ones who had been working often went home to poorer-paying jobs, but a life where they felt more comfortable and understood.
The ones who managed to make it through despite the feelings of disconnectedness, loneliness, and frustration sometimes feel like they “escaped,” and don’t ever want to go back. It’s not really my place to say, but some of my indigenous classmates who feel this way characterize life on the reserve as often being very socially dysfunctional, plagued with violence and addictions, and a place where folks who never left have no ambition whatsoever. They don’t want their new families to know that life. And they often get crap from their families for not wanting to “come home and help the family.” They’re pressured to feel like it’s their responsibility to come fix their families or community, because they were successful outside the reserve. When they refuse, they get chided with “so, you’re too good for your family/culture now?”
Again, I’m not indigenous, but this conversation has come up among my friend group many times since we all left our home town, and these are the things I’ve heard my indigenous friends say about it.
Sounds a lot like growing up in a remote town regardless of ethnicity. I feel like telling honest stories like this would do more to build bridges than most programs.
What a horrible guilt trip to lay. Darned if that doesn’t sound a little “culty”? I’m always concerned with language where if you leave you are a traitor to the “whatever”.
Lived on rez til I was about 6. I loved living there, we had a gorgeous yard surrounded by woods and a river, and everyone was my relative in some way so I had built-in friends.
We left because we got flooded out every spring (our house was outside of the dyke) and we hoped we'd do better off rez by not being evacuated every year for sometimes weeks at a time. Lived in the next town over for a few years and then moved to the city.
I miss home in some ways, I'm not as close to my cousins as I was growing up since I live farther away, I didn't get to do the same ceremonies, or spend as much time with my Koko or other family members. On the other hand, I went to a high school in the city with programs I would never have been able to access back home. I was settled in the city when I went to university and found that transition a lot easier than people from home who'd never lived in the city. I have a lot of advantages by being an urban Indigenous person, even if there are some things I missed out on culturally and with my family because of it. My husband (non Indigenous) and I are working to get our kids to spend more time out there and get to be involved culturally.
Mom moved me at 6 months old. It was a positive thing for us given our situation. We worked hard and have done very well. Simple straight forward story tbh.
There is a documentary called “Thunder Bay” which talks a lot about young students moving from reservations to Thunder Bay to attend highschool.
It’s very sad but I learned a lot and I think it’s worth a watch, I know it’s on Crave, not sure if it’s on other streaming apps.
"Thunder Bay" isn't the most accurate descriptor of the city or it's people. Nor what it's really like, from what I've heard from my fellow residents.
That being said. Residents from northern reserves who come for school or fleeing from natural disaster. Are universally and unfairly the most despised people. I don't get it personally.
As someone who looks native but isn't, 8 months in Thunder Bay was enough to experience a lot of what they portrayed in that series. I even lived in the nice part of town.
You start your response with the idea that the series is inaccurate, while it is the lived experience of every native person I've come across there. You don't understand why they're despised, but are effectively refusing to acknowledge the systemic racism that runs so deep in that city.
The city is great... If you're a middle class white person. Ideally Italian Catholic or Finnish. If you want the city to become a better place, you have to address the foundational problems.
>You start your response with the idea that the series is inaccurate, while it is the lived experience of every native person I've come across there.
And I said that wasn't the experience when? I said "from what I've heard". Doesn't mean that what I've heard is true. I've personally never seen it. Nor did I imply that I have.
>You don't understand why they're despised, but are effectively refusing to acknowledge the systemic racism that runs so deep in that city.
This systematic racism is very "understandable" unfortunately. These are individuals (local whites), who are ignorant morons with no knowledge of the outside world. I've met them on numerous occasions.
"OH why can't they assimilate?" or some comment of a lack of intelligence are common. As is a general belief that individuals from reservations are genetically wired to be criminals. I've heard it, and seen it all. And it not just first nations people that Thunder Bay residents hate. As you have intimated. Basically anyone that isn't Anglo or Scottish is a target. Yes even the Italians and Finns get it behind closed doors. The elderly are abused. Etc.
These days though, I've seen the hate being shifted towards Indians. Hindus especially.
Fact is, many current residents of Thunder Bay would loved the BUF.
Furthermore, policing in Thunder Bay is some of the worst in Canada. If not the whole country. Years of ingrained seige mentality, and corruption have rendered the force willfully ineffective. Investigation in to murder of first nations individuals is often not even done. Disabled and mentally ill people get shot, because cops are so gung ho. Etc.
What "I don't understand", is why it's still so prevalent in the modern age? We have the internet, education and more.
But then I suppose I can answer my own question now that I think about it. It's willful ignorance. They choose not to see the world from another's perspective. Nor consider ramifications of 200+ years of colonization and discrimination. They feel their polite society of white suburbia is being spoiled and invaded (ever though it isn't).
>The city is great... If you're a middle class white person
Not true. Thunder Bay sucks for basically everyone but the rich. It's part of the reason racism is so high I guess.
I'm reading the stories and it resonates a lot with the life and the struggles immigrants have. The loneliness, the feeling of missing home. It's being a learning experience reading about this.
I am what is referred to as Indigenous but I call myself Inninew. I didn’t grow up on the rez but I did live on it a few years growing up. I was too brown for the kids in school off rez and I was also too “white” for the kids on reserve. Quite often, I never felt I belonged anywhere. I’m over forty now and I still feel that way. I don’t have much of an interest in my people because they are too assimilated and christian, despite them speaking their original tongue. That seems to be the only thing “native” left about them.
I don’t think my life is a loss. I lived an interesting life and I have stories. I graduated high school and college. I have a wife and a family. I just wish I knew more about the people before assimilation and the colonizing. I wish I could think and speak in my language (I can somewhat but I’m not fluent). I only know a little bit about what it means to be Inninew. Inni is the elements of the earth. New is short for Newo meaning four. Inninew means “A being of four elements” so I sorta understand the connection to the earth.
Have you? That's a useless broad generalization. Yes, reserves statistically have issues relative to general communities in Canada. But there are plenty of 'nice' reserves (or settlement lands) all across the country.
Indigenous communities and peoples aren't homogenous. Like other Canadian communities there are haves and have nots.
I'm indigenous but have never lived on a reserve. My mom moved away from her home reserve for school and has gone back to live in reserve periodically, but never really resettled there. She married a white man and had me and my siblings. Her experience was one of loneliness and long periods of adjustment. She likens it to immigrating to Canada from another country. She still often misses living on reserve, even after 40 years away, and she spends a lot of time visiting despite the distance. The reserve isn't great and is rather poverty stricken but it's home to her. As I said, I never grew up on reserve but spent a couple summers there and drive out to visit the cousins a couple times a year, usually for Treaty Days and my Aunty's birthday. I wouldn't say it feels like going home, but I imagine it's not disimilar to a children of immigrant parents visiting their family back in the old country. It's a little sureal, and I do feel like a bit of an outsider, but it's also weirdly comforting being around other natives, even with being a mixed-urban native. I'm sure any mixed person can relate, especially if half of you is white, but you never truely feel 100% connected to either racial identity, but you feel a little less excluded from the non-white side.
Thanks for sharing your experience :) My parents immigrated here before I was born, and they had a similar struggle to your mom with missing the family and culture "back home". You're right, when I visit my extended family in the Caribbean it's familiar and comforting being around my people but I am still considered "Canadian" to them so I don't really fit in. I feel lucky that I haven't lost all connection to those roots though
I'm 34 now. Left the reserve, where I was born and raised, at around 20. I was born and raised on a reserve between Sudbury and the Soo in Ontario. Lived all over Ontario since then. Nothing compares to coming home though. I felt instantly disconnected from my reserve and culture and language the second I moved away. Economically and almost everything sociologically, everything is better off reserve. Easier access to family doctors, transportation, healthcare, was off the reserve. Easier access to my own language and its specific dialect, family, long time friends, access to all things regarding my anishnawbek ulture, is on the reserve.
SRFN? Glad you are able to get home and feed your soul
Your story resonates, I was a military kid who moved around the world, and felt disconnected where ever I was. Now as a senior, I have no place that feels like home. I’m glad you still have that place.
I want to thank everyone who has answered this question & told their stories. We all have a lot to learn from each other. I appreciate being able to learn from each of you & grow to become a better human
My mom is Indigenous. They moved away from the rez when she was about 10 years old due to my grandpa finding a “white man’s job” that paid well enough to support his wife and 7 kids. She grew up in a small city, pursued post-secondary in a bigger city and went back home to the rez with her fancy credentials. Ended up doing spectacularly in her role and impressed some higher-ups in an organization they had partnered with, they offered her a position, she took it and blazed through her career. She is by all accounts what society would consider successful as she nears retirement. She’s married, raised a family, highly educated, homeowner, debt-free, all that good stuff. Career-wise, she’s been a Director, managed major projects, handled many significant initiatives, advocated for legislative changes, etc. etc. However. This is what she calls “white man’s success”; her definition of the word differs greatly. Obtaining all this means she lost her connection to her family, her land base, her language, her culture. And by extension we, her descendants, lost that too. She’s moving back home when she retires.
👆This scenario is something that non-indigenous people will never be able to wrap their heads around.
I’m not indigenous but for what it’s worth reading these posts pierce my heart. Like being in a permanent state of yearning for home.
Yeah... having a place to call home is only a dream now and i cant wrap my head around it.
As a child of immigrants who became Canadianized, I can empathize. Success in another culture often means the loss of or erasing of one’s original culture. I’m glad that a number of people are able to go back.
Typing for my father. He grew up on a rez until he was about 13 in the 70's and moved to the city with his mom afterwords he can't recall why she left. On the rez they had no telephones and no sanitation systems so they had to use outhouses and boil water. Moving to the city improved those aspects. But he says growing up on the reserve had more freedoms like being able to swim and fish whenever and wherever. Snowmobile and atv paths everywhere and driving dune buggies. Could even ride horses down the street. The reserve is fun as a kid but holds no real future as a teenager/adult. But it's still a place he holds close to him.
Not an indigenous person, but I grew up in a town where 85% of the population (or more) are status—the town and the reserve are basically intermingled, and most of what looks like “the town” is actually Band land. The town is remote-ish, as in not near a city, but has a proper paved road to access it. Almost everyone I knew growing up belonged to one of two Bands in the area, or were Métis. I come from a generation where most indigenous kids my age who graduated from high school were the first in their family to do so. If my indigenous classmates went to post secondary, they were DEFINITELY the first in their families to do so. When kids from my class went off to the city after graduation (like most of us did) to get jobs or take classes at a college/uni, the indigenous kids often found it very lonely. There were far fewer indigenous people, and many that there were came from different tribes/cultures and they weren’t able to speak the same indigenous languages, didn’t necessarily have similar cultural practices, and felt just as alien as the white city folks they were now living alongside. The other factor that made things lonely for my indigenous classmates was that they were used to being surrounded by their extended families, and now were on their own. Establishing an equivalent social life wasn’t easy, and being misunderstood and stereotyped by the city people made things pretty miserable. Given the culture shock, the loneliness, and the lack of connection to culture, many of my indigenous classmates went home and didn’t finish their studies. The ones who had been working often went home to poorer-paying jobs, but a life where they felt more comfortable and understood. The ones who managed to make it through despite the feelings of disconnectedness, loneliness, and frustration sometimes feel like they “escaped,” and don’t ever want to go back. It’s not really my place to say, but some of my indigenous classmates who feel this way characterize life on the reserve as often being very socially dysfunctional, plagued with violence and addictions, and a place where folks who never left have no ambition whatsoever. They don’t want their new families to know that life. And they often get crap from their families for not wanting to “come home and help the family.” They’re pressured to feel like it’s their responsibility to come fix their families or community, because they were successful outside the reserve. When they refuse, they get chided with “so, you’re too good for your family/culture now?” Again, I’m not indigenous, but this conversation has come up among my friend group many times since we all left our home town, and these are the things I’ve heard my indigenous friends say about it.
Sounds a lot like growing up in a remote town regardless of ethnicity. I feel like telling honest stories like this would do more to build bridges than most programs.
Very interesting. What town did you grow up in?
Thank you for sharing your experience/thoughts. Interesting to read.
This answer was very insightful
Two bands and a town all on one plot of land? What reserves were they?? I'm super curious !
There are two Bands in the area and, while the one Band has the reserve, many members of the other live off-their-own-reserve in the town.
What a horrible guilt trip to lay. Darned if that doesn’t sound a little “culty”? I’m always concerned with language where if you leave you are a traitor to the “whatever”.
Lived on rez til I was about 6. I loved living there, we had a gorgeous yard surrounded by woods and a river, and everyone was my relative in some way so I had built-in friends. We left because we got flooded out every spring (our house was outside of the dyke) and we hoped we'd do better off rez by not being evacuated every year for sometimes weeks at a time. Lived in the next town over for a few years and then moved to the city. I miss home in some ways, I'm not as close to my cousins as I was growing up since I live farther away, I didn't get to do the same ceremonies, or spend as much time with my Koko or other family members. On the other hand, I went to a high school in the city with programs I would never have been able to access back home. I was settled in the city when I went to university and found that transition a lot easier than people from home who'd never lived in the city. I have a lot of advantages by being an urban Indigenous person, even if there are some things I missed out on culturally and with my family because of it. My husband (non Indigenous) and I are working to get our kids to spend more time out there and get to be involved culturally.
What (or rather, I'm assuming who) is a Koko?
Grandma in Ojibwe. Short form of the word Nokomis.
Aaah I see! Thank you for the explanation!
Not indigenous, but I do thank you for the prompt and all the answers. These answers are opening my eyes to what your peoples have and still endure.
Mom moved me at 6 months old. It was a positive thing for us given our situation. We worked hard and have done very well. Simple straight forward story tbh.
There is a documentary called “Thunder Bay” which talks a lot about young students moving from reservations to Thunder Bay to attend highschool. It’s very sad but I learned a lot and I think it’s worth a watch, I know it’s on Crave, not sure if it’s on other streaming apps.
"Thunder Bay" isn't the most accurate descriptor of the city or it's people. Nor what it's really like, from what I've heard from my fellow residents. That being said. Residents from northern reserves who come for school or fleeing from natural disaster. Are universally and unfairly the most despised people. I don't get it personally.
As someone who looks native but isn't, 8 months in Thunder Bay was enough to experience a lot of what they portrayed in that series. I even lived in the nice part of town. You start your response with the idea that the series is inaccurate, while it is the lived experience of every native person I've come across there. You don't understand why they're despised, but are effectively refusing to acknowledge the systemic racism that runs so deep in that city. The city is great... If you're a middle class white person. Ideally Italian Catholic or Finnish. If you want the city to become a better place, you have to address the foundational problems.
>You start your response with the idea that the series is inaccurate, while it is the lived experience of every native person I've come across there. And I said that wasn't the experience when? I said "from what I've heard". Doesn't mean that what I've heard is true. I've personally never seen it. Nor did I imply that I have. >You don't understand why they're despised, but are effectively refusing to acknowledge the systemic racism that runs so deep in that city. This systematic racism is very "understandable" unfortunately. These are individuals (local whites), who are ignorant morons with no knowledge of the outside world. I've met them on numerous occasions. "OH why can't they assimilate?" or some comment of a lack of intelligence are common. As is a general belief that individuals from reservations are genetically wired to be criminals. I've heard it, and seen it all. And it not just first nations people that Thunder Bay residents hate. As you have intimated. Basically anyone that isn't Anglo or Scottish is a target. Yes even the Italians and Finns get it behind closed doors. The elderly are abused. Etc. These days though, I've seen the hate being shifted towards Indians. Hindus especially. Fact is, many current residents of Thunder Bay would loved the BUF. Furthermore, policing in Thunder Bay is some of the worst in Canada. If not the whole country. Years of ingrained seige mentality, and corruption have rendered the force willfully ineffective. Investigation in to murder of first nations individuals is often not even done. Disabled and mentally ill people get shot, because cops are so gung ho. Etc. What "I don't understand", is why it's still so prevalent in the modern age? We have the internet, education and more. But then I suppose I can answer my own question now that I think about it. It's willful ignorance. They choose not to see the world from another's perspective. Nor consider ramifications of 200+ years of colonization and discrimination. They feel their polite society of white suburbia is being spoiled and invaded (ever though it isn't). >The city is great... If you're a middle class white person Not true. Thunder Bay sucks for basically everyone but the rich. It's part of the reason racism is so high I guess.
This was a great prompt OP.
I'm reading the stories and it resonates a lot with the life and the struggles immigrants have. The loneliness, the feeling of missing home. It's being a learning experience reading about this.
I am what is referred to as Indigenous but I call myself Inninew. I didn’t grow up on the rez but I did live on it a few years growing up. I was too brown for the kids in school off rez and I was also too “white” for the kids on reserve. Quite often, I never felt I belonged anywhere. I’m over forty now and I still feel that way. I don’t have much of an interest in my people because they are too assimilated and christian, despite them speaking their original tongue. That seems to be the only thing “native” left about them. I don’t think my life is a loss. I lived an interesting life and I have stories. I graduated high school and college. I have a wife and a family. I just wish I knew more about the people before assimilation and the colonizing. I wish I could think and speak in my language (I can somewhat but I’m not fluent). I only know a little bit about what it means to be Inninew. Inni is the elements of the earth. New is short for Newo meaning four. Inninew means “A being of four elements” so I sorta understand the connection to the earth.
Not me, but my grandpa moved off the reserve because he couldn't stand the victim mentality that everyone seemed to have
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Have you? That's a useless broad generalization. Yes, reserves statistically have issues relative to general communities in Canada. But there are plenty of 'nice' reserves (or settlement lands) all across the country. Indigenous communities and peoples aren't homogenous. Like other Canadian communities there are haves and have nots.