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Canada and Indonesia's 'unity in diversity': Reality or slogan?
So what is the connection between Canada and Indonesia?
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The video also includes snippets of Jokowi and Trudeau’s interactions throughout the summit. (President Joko Widodo's YouTube/File)
T
he very first time I visited Canada in 1991, I fell in love with it. I had just presented a paper at a conference in Seattle and decided to hop over to Vancouver, only two and a half hours away.
Despite being there for only four days, I quickly decided it was one of my favorite cities. The fact that green spaces are an integral part of the city is amazing. Vancouver even has an urban forest — how cool is that? Canadians are also among the world’s friendliest people and I feel lucky to have a number of Canadians as close friends.
This year, on July 1, Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of the establishment of the Canadian Confederation in 1867. In Ottawa, around 500,000 people gathered on the lawns of Parliament Hill to admire a fireworks display and listen to the melodious crooning of legendary balladeer Gordon Lightfoot, who I have adored since I was a teenager.
Daniel Ziv, a Canadian filmmaker, said that, “Canada has become a beacon of genuine multiculturalism in an otherwise increasingly isolationist and tribal world.” So why did the First Nation, Inuit and Métis, the land’s original inhabitants, feel there was nothing to celebrate? Well, because they had already been living on the land now called Canada for tens of thousands of years, so they considered the notion of “Canada 150” pretty insulting.
It is not just about dates. The new government of the Dominion of Canada continued colonial policies of seizing land, putting the natives on reserves, taking their children and putting them in “residential schools” to try to eradicate their indigenous culture and language. Like in the United States and Australia, the “indigenous problem” of Canada continues to be an intractable one.
This is why reconciliation with indigenous peoples is a theme of Canada 150. The other three are diversity and inclusiveness, environment and youth.
So what is the connection between Canada and Indonesia? For one, there is the color of our flags (red and white). Size is also something we have in common. Indonesia has a large population (263 million), over seven times that of Canada (36.6 million), but Canada has five times our land mass. We are among the world’s largest democracies, are diverse and multicultural — in fact, Canada could adopt our Bhinneka Tunggal Ika (unity in diversity) slogan.
