New immigrants’ perspective skewed by home-grown discrimination

Building bridges between Indigenous peoples and the immigrant community is becoming a priority as Canada welcomes more newcomers to the country.

“When immigrants and newcomers come in, they’re given the view of people’s discriminatory views. They get off on the wrong foot of understanding Aboriginal people and how we’ve come to be,” said Brad Bird, cultural coordinator with Aboriginal Friendship Centres of Saskatchewan (AFCS). “And on the other hand, when newcomers come in to Saskatoon, Aboriginal people sometimes look at them as if they’re taking jobs from them with the temporary foreign workers and things like that.”

Over the next six months, AFCS will be working with the Multicultural Council of Saskatchewan and the Saskatchewan Association of Immigrant Settlement and Integration Agencies on a project that will assess the relationship between the two groups.

Building Relationships through Intercultural Dialogue and Growing Engagement will involve community consultations this fall in La Ronge, Prince Albert, Saskatoon, Yorkton, Regina and Swift Current, all of which have been identified as having both high Aboriginal and immigrant populations. Following the consultations, gaps will be identified and work will begin on how to address those shortfalls.

Response to the call for proposals for the project was met with positive comments, Bird says.

“As we’re having more newcomers come in I think people are just realizing that this is important work and the longer it’s put off and not addressed the bigger the problem will be,” he said.

The researcher conducting the work will begin the project by looking at work undertaken across the country to address the disconnect that exists between the two groups.

In Kamloops, Paul Lagace, executive director with Kamloops Immigrant Services, has been working in that field since he took over his position in 2009. Lagace is also Metis, a former board member on the local Aboriginal friendship centre and has first-hand experience in Aboriginal communities having worked with an AIDS society.

“It’s important that we ensure that any newcomer… getting orientation to the community should be made aware that the First People were here and the issue of immigration and immigrants has been a 350-year process. That Europeans were not the original people,” said Lagace.

Since he joined KIS, Lagace has made it a practise to recognize the traditional territory whenever a guest speaker gives a presentation or a workshop is held. Lagace also initiated contact with the Aboriginal people when the Kamloops Multicultural Society planned Canada Day. However, this year the invitation to the Aboriginal community was put out by KMS. Lagace sees that as a victory in building relationships between the two groups.

A contributing factor to the growing disconnect between newcomers and Aboriginal peoples is the mainstream media, said Dr. Jennifer Dalton, who teaches law and political science in the School of Public Policy Administration at York University.

“Mainstream media … presents a really narrow picture of different groups and communities in the country,” said Dalton.
“When people focus only on mainstream media… they’re going to get a spin, especially because the big media outlets are governed by various corporate interests and political leanings.”

Dalton says it is important that both groups seek out local and independent media and employ critical thinking when engaging mainstream media.

Last year, Dalton helped organize a conference in Toronto that contrasted Indigenous and immigrant perspectives. The conference was the result of a conversation Dalton had with a colleague who raised the issue of immigrants’ experiences in Canada. A few years later, Dalton adapted the idea and organized the two-and-a-half day conference.

Former Prime Minister Paul Martin was a keynote speaker.

“He wanted to address up front that there is this disconnect, there is a tension and often times when people talk about what’s the so-called shared experience between Indigenous people and immigrant Canadians the response is it’s totally different. This is Indigenous land,” said Dalton. “He wanted to highlight that even if there is this disconnect there’s also a way to get past the disconnect to build bridges. It’s almost like building bridges through different notions, different experiences of exclusion.”

Dalton believes the most effective way to bridge the disconnect is through education. She says mandatory changes to grade school and high school curriculum is necessary so the full picture of the Indigenous peoples, including language, culture, and history, can be presented and “not in some vile, bias manner.”

She also believes that such education needs to extend to the post-secondary levels “so there are no people who are misinformed or uniformed, that would make the biggest difference in bridging the gap, not just between Indigenous peoples and immigrant communities but between all people who are in Canada.”