Day of Truth and Reconciliation

When I think about the challenges Indigenous and First Nations communities face in Canada today, it feels less like a checklist of social issues and more like a long shadow cast by history, one that stretches across generations and still falls over the present. It is a shadow shaped by choices made deliberately, systems built intentionally, and values imposed without consent. Among the most damaging of these impositions was patriarchy, a foreign social order enforced through colonial rule, law, and religion, and weaponized to dismantle Indigenous systems of balance, governance, and care.

Colonialism did not merely occupy land; it restructured society. In many Indigenous nations, women held central roles as leaders, decision-makers, knowledge keepers, and stewards of land and kinship. Authority was relational rather than hierarchical, rooted in reciprocity, accountability, and collective well-being. The imposition of European patriarchy disrupted this balance, replacing it with male-dominated governance systems that devalued women’s authority and severed them from power, land, and status. This was not accidental. It was strategic.

The Indian Act is perhaps the clearest legal expression of this violence. By stripping Indigenous women of their status if they married non-Indigenous men, while granting status to non-Indigenous women who married Indigenous men, the state codified gender discrimination into law. Women were forcibly removed from their communities, excluded from governance, and rendered legally invisible. This erosion of women’s rights and identity fractured families, destabilized nations, and normalized the idea that Indigenous women were expendable. The consequences of this continue to reverberate today.

The weight of colonialism, residential schools, stolen children, broken treaties, forced displacement, and patriarchal governance did not disappear when policies were repealed or institutions were closed. Trauma does not end on paper. It lives on in families, in bodies, in memory. It echoes through disrupted kinship systems, through the loss of language and ceremony, and through the severing of sacred relationships to land that were never meant to be owned, only stewarded. Patriarchy intensified this harm by attacking women at the center of community life, leaving generations without protection, continuity, or safety.

We see the consequences everywhere. Indigenous women and girls are disproportionately subjected to violence, exploitation, and disappearance. This crisis did not emerge in isolation; it is the predictable outcome of systems that stripped women of power, protection, and voice. Poverty, racism, displacement, and gender-based violence converged into what many have rightly called a “perfect storm.” When women are pushed to the margins of society, entire communities become more vulnerable. 

Health inequities remain stark. Mental health struggles weigh heavily, particularly among youth who inherit both trauma and expectation. Too many young lives are lost not because hope is absent, but because safety, dignity, and opportunity have been systematically withheld. In the justice system, Indigenous peoples, especially women, are overrepresented not because of individual failure, but because the system itself was designed to control rather than protect them. Incarceration becomes a continuation of displacement, another expression of a colonial patriarchy that punishes instead of heals. 

And yet, this is not a story defined only by harm.

It is also a story of resistance, reclamation, and resurgence, led in large part by Indigenous women. Women who challenged discriminatory laws when doing so came at great personal cost. Women who carried culture, language, and ceremony through generations of attempted erasure. Women who are now reclaiming governance, restoring matriarchal systems, and rebuilding communities grounded in pre-colonial values of balance and collective care. These efforts are not about returning to the past; they are about restoring what was broken so that a healthier future can be built.

Indigenous leadership continues to guide conversations around environmental stewardship and climate responsibility, reminding us that the land is not a resource to dominate, but a living relative to respect. In a time of ecological and social crisis, these teachings challenge the patriarchal logic of extraction, dominance, and control. They offer a different worldview, one rooted in responsibility rather than entitlement, and survival rather than conquest. 

Reconciliation, if it is to mean anything, must confront patriarchy head-on. It cannot exist alongside systems that continue to privilege dominance, hierarchy, and exclusion. To dismantle colonial harm, we must dismantle the structures that sustained it. This is not about blame; it is about responsibility. It requires listening without defensiveness, action without delay, and accountability without conditions. It asks us to support Indigenous self-determination, to honour treaties, to trust Indigenous-led solutions, and to recognize Indigenous women as central to healing, justice, and nation-building.

I am deeply opposed to patriarchy because I have seen what it destroys: balance, dignity, safety, and future possibility. I believe liberation, true liberation, is collective. It is not only about correcting the past, but about protecting the generations to come. I think about the world my daughter will inherit, and I am afraid of what remains unchanged. I do not want her to grow up in a society that continues to normalize inequality, silence women, or excuse violence as inevitability. I want her to inherit a world where power is shared, where care is valued, and where justice is not conditional.

A reconciled Canada would not be one that forgets its dark history, but one that refuses to replicate it. It would be a place where Indigenous children grow up safe, supported, and proud of who they are; where women are protected, honoured, and heard; where cultures flourish without fear; and where the land is cared for with humility rather than domination. Reconciliation is not a destination. It is a lifelong responsibility, and one we cannot afford to abandon.

In memory of the children.
 In honour of the survivors.

In commitment to dismantling patriarchy, and to building a future rooted in justice, balance, and care; for all of us.

— Sincerely, Boris