Thread by @arun_smith

I am committed irrevocably and fundamentally to decolonisation, including the comprehensive dismantling of the Canadian state and Canadian identity.

My personal Canadian history is international, but one theme remains ever present: the absolute horror of colonialism. #CanadaDay

By heritage, I'm mixed: Irish (Catholic, republican) and Indian (Punjabi and Gujarati). Together, these identities make me who I am, in addition to having been born and raised on Treaty 7 land.

I have to be committed to decolonisation because, in a way, I am Canada. #CanadaDay

The British Empire undertook similar paths of domination in Ireland and India: from creating famines to suppressing liberation movements, from partitioning lands with imaginary borders to dehumanisation and depopulation.

Jai Hind and Éire go Brách run in my blood. #CanadaDay

I grew up knowing much more about my Indian heritage than my Irish. Both tie into who I am today, though. I speak French, my Irish side having settled in Montréal; I speak English, my Indian side having been forced to learn it.

I am complicit in Canada's injustice. #CanadaDa

What does decolonisation mean to me, then? And why, despite purportedly being a place of refuge for both sides of my family, am I committed to dismantling Canada?

The easy answer: it's a moral imperative.

Really, though, it's significantly more complicated than that. #CanadaDay

I owe nothing to Canada personally; my birth on the lands it occupies was a simple birth lottery. Much the same, I owe nothing but contempt to Britain. However, they both owe an irreconcilable debt to the people against whom they have committed truly heinous crimes. #CanadaDay

This year, quite rightly, much attention is being paid to Americans ripping children from their families, but we forget that this has long been a Canadian and British tradition, and it continues still.

It continues on occupied and colonised lands, with impunity. #CanadaDay

From the children who were made orphans by the British-engineered famine in Ireland, sent to be adopted in Canada, to the countless children separated by Partition in 1945, this inhumanity is not new.

The same as with residential schools and the Sixties Scoop. #CanadaDay

The British, and over time, Canada too, used the dispossession of people in their homelands to perpetuate the dispossession and displacement of Indigenous peoples, turning survivors of colonialism into weapons of it.

No one should be able to forgive that, ever. #CanadaDay

This dual injustice is at the core of Canadian identity, complicated and reinforced further by an immigration systemresponsible for even more injustice: Komagata Maru, Chinese Head Tax, MS St Louis, and the eventual prioritisation of "economically productive" migrants. #CanadaDay

Canada likes to present itself as a nation of immigrants, each contributing in various ways to a cultural mosaic, but the truth is much more violent, much more harmful, and much more profoundly based in constituting Canada as a white supremacist state, forever. #CanadaDay

Today, Canada (and Canadians) pit migrants, especially refugees, of different generations and different origins against one another, all while using that distraction to entrench continued Indigenous dispossession, displacement, dehumanisation, and genocide. #CanadaDay

Canada pretends to be progressive, while ensuring that migrants compete for the title of Model Minority, but then weaponises the success of some migrants against the others, manifesting an endless cycle of impossible expectations, erasure, and denial of agency. #CanadaDay

Much as there is absolutely no justice in Canada for Indigenous peoples, there is no real freedom for racialised people: we are constantly instrumentalised, hypenated, critiqued, (self-)assimilated, and made to pronounce loyalty and devotion to an imperial construct. #CanadaDay

So, this year, and every year, I say no. I'm Indian, I'm Irish, I'm born and raised on colonised land, I'm a settler, and Canada will not have my loyalty, my identities, my story, my experiences, or my being. This internal decolonisation is key for me, but not enough. #CanadaDay

My liberation from being a colonised subject, from teetering on subalternity, must be bound inextricably in ensuring the liberation of the people on whose land I was born and raised. Much the same, it is bound in justice in my heritage homelands in Ireland and India. #CanadaDay

We cannot undo the past, but we have an obligation to remedy injustice through diverse, multiplicitous means. On the lands that Canada occupies, or those ceded to it (often through coercion), that means listening as a settler and prioritising Indigenous justice. #CanadaDay

We kicked the British out of India. We kicked the British mostly out of Ireland.

And we'll kick Canada off of the lands it occupies.

Then, we can talk about reconciliation.

Until then, my solidarity, my strength, and my passion are invested in decolonisation. #CanadaDay

In Ireland, the cry of the end of colonialism on the island entire comes as Tiocfaidh ár lá - our day will come.

I hope that one day, and one day soon, Indigenous people will have their days of justice.

Here's to solidarity across borders, boundaries, and binaries. #CanadaDay

We should not accept waiting another 151 years for justice, and there is no maple leaf large enough, no pipeline long enough, and no Parliament legitimate enough to gloss over what Canada has done and continues to do.

Celebrating Canada is a ridiculous idea. #CanadaDay

By all means, be grateful and be happy to live in a place that might benefit you, and that might ensure certain comforts in your life, but make sure to not universalise those experiences.

Even more importantly, make sure your experiences don't erase those of others. #CanadaDay