UPDATE: The Ow, Canada Challenge will be ending on Day 8. Forty-eight hours after the last topic and prompt are posted, I will archive the challenge. I’m shortening the challenge due to two reasons which I explain in this 14-minute video posted to Instagram (if you’re a patron, I share two additional reasons).

The challenge will be reimagined, then republished at a later date. If you’d like to know when it’ll be ready, add yourself to the announcement list by filling out the form below.

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I did not celebrate Canada Day this year…

In the past, I’d put out the flag on my lawn, deck myself in all red, then gather with family members and friends to celebrate the birth of this nation.

But Canada Day 2021 was different…

In the weeks leading up to Canada Day, the grim news of the bodies of Indigenous children were discovered in mass graves on the sites of former residential schools. It wasn’t just one; there were several sites. Each report of more mass graves found felt like a dagger in my heart. I could feel a wave of hopelessness wash over me.

Why? My image of Canada as a polite, progressive, and post-racial society was crumbling. Even though I’m a Canadian who is Black and I have faced racism in this country, I was proud of the fact that it’s not THAT bad here compared to other places.

Many cities and towns across Canada decided to cancel or downscale their Canada Day celebrations…

Some of my friends and colleagues said that they’ll be in deep reflection. When I asked them what deep reflection meant, many admitted they weren’t sure. “Maybe I’ll read the stories of survivors,” said one. “I’ll do more research on residential schools,” said another. “Wasn’t there a reconciliation report? I’ll read that,” said another.

Reflection, however, isn’t just about reading or talking about something…

Reflection is about going within, asking yourself poignant questions, and sitting with the discomfort of what your Inner Oppressor, that part of you that pressures you to submit to settler colonialism culture, reveals about your unconscious biases.

It’s a hard thing to do. Seeing the ugliness of your inner terrain can be shocking and scary. Yet, in order to truly be in solidarity with Indigenous people in Canada, we have to take the steps in rebuilding our compassion, sensitivities, and empathy.

Since 2017, I’ve guided mainly settlers and descendants of colonizers on a journey using guided prompts and reflective journaling to explore their unconscious biases…

I call this Inner Field Trip® and it was created after a blog post containing nine writing prompts went viral. The blog post came out of my own Inner Field Trip® experience, where I woke before 5am for 365 consecutive days to deconstruct the narrative I’d been led to believe about my social, ethnic, and biological identities (SEBIs for short).

After the blog post went viral, I created a community on Patreon where I continue to design and share guided prompts with my patrons. To date, I have authored 300 guided prompts and have collected thousands and thousands of testimonials on how the Inner Field Trip® has helped workshop attendees and patrons stumble along bravely in their quest to courageously live a justice-led life.

Enter the Ow, Canada Challenge…

If friends and colleagues were not well versed on what they could do to reflect, I’m sure many Canadians were confused as well. I really believe that Canadians want to do better. As a person born and raised in Canada, I want this country, my country, to live up to its reputation as a nation of kind, nice, and compassionate people.

But first, we need to see that the residential school system was not a dark chapter in Canadian history; it was an never-ending horror film that was designed to create generational terror for Indigenous people.

I decided that I can be in solidarity with Indigenous people in Canada doing what I know best – designing guided questions to help settlers and descendants of colonizers reflect on the connection between past decisions made by the colonial government in Canada with the issues that we’re now forced to confront today regarding the treatment of Indigenous people.

For this challenge, I selected 13 key events that can help us understand how the residential school system could have even come into existence in the first place…

There’s a lot I could’ve included, so I focused the challenge on key events that fostered the creation of the residential school system, starting with the year Canada became a dominion in 1867 and ending with a report that raised the alarm of the harm Indigenous children were experiencing at these institutions.

I chose 13 due to Canada’s geography (10 provinces and 3 territories). Given that most of Canadian history has been written through a colonial lens, I also looked for aspects of resistance to show that Indigenous people were not passive in the ongoing dispossession of their lands. If you go through the challenge, you’ll see that Indigenous resistance was met with colonial violence which made it even harder for Indigenous people to stop the ongoing land theft, forced assimilation, and genocide.

Along the way, I’ll provide tips on how you can stay the course without wallowing in shame, guilt, or anger. Feeling those feelings does not make you bad, but if you’re not careful, those feelings can cause you to withdraw and use anxiety and exhaustion as an excuse to disengage.

Here are 3 outcomes if you participate in this challenge…

Outcome #1 – To pressure our elected officials and other leaders to address the 94 calls to action in the Truth & Reconciliation Report

There is no need for more summits, conferences, or think tanks to talk about what to do. Indigenous people in Canada have shared 94 calls to action (English | French) for reconciliation. Some of the calls to action have been completed, others partially, but many have not. After completing this challenge, I hope that you’ll feel galvanized to reach out to our elected officials and other leaders to prioritize the completion of these calls to action.

Outcome #2 – To continue the work of inner reflection so you become a better ancestor

One reason why so many of us are unable to feel for others is because we have disconnected from the fullness of our humanity. Being human isn’t only about the good stuff that happens to us (this is know as toxic positivity); it also includes the not-so-good stuff too. It’s my hope that when the challenge ends, you’ll continue to seek ways to make the practice of inner reflection part of your daily routine, just like meditation, prayer, even breathing.

Remember – it has taken generations for your unconscious biases to take root, it’ll take more than one challenge to uproot them.

Option #3 – To amplify Indigenous activists, authors, historians, filmmakers, artists, and residential school survivors

The Ow, Canada Challenge is simply an introduction. It’s not an in-depth curriculum, course, or teaching. It is my hope that when you complete the challenge, you’ll continue your learning by seeking out Indigenous people who are experts around Indigenous issues and use your settler privilege to elevate their voices.

How to participate in this challenge?

Follow me on Instagram, then turn on notifications.

Instagram is the only place that the challenge will be shared, so follow me. If you don’t have an Instagram account, you can still participate. Bookmark my Instagram profile and make a note to visit my profile each day.

Day 1 starts on July 12, 2021.

I will post Day 1 on my profile by 9am Eastern on July 12, 2021 (use this site to convert to your timezone). A new post will be shared every weekday morning (Monday to Friday) until the last one on July 28, 2021.

Schedule 30-minutes in your calendar.

You’ll need 10-minutes to research the event and 20-minutes to journal reflectively. If you want to be successful completing this challenge each day, I highly suggest scheduling a 30-minute, can’t miss meeting with yourself. Try to schedule it at the same time each week day so it becomes a regular habit.

#owcanadachallenge

This is the hashtag to use. After you journal, please leave a short summary (not a word-for-word transcript of what you journaled) in the comments area of the post on Instagram. If you plan to share a longer reflection on your socials, use the hashtag #owcanadachallenge so I can find it.

A note to patrons – If you’re participating and you don’t want to post publicly, login to Patreon, go to the private Discord server, and converse with other patrons in the channel called #owcanada.

The prompts are reflective journaling prompts, NOT discussion questions.

If you want to do the challenge with a friend, you are more than welcomed to share this post on your socials. Just remember that the questions are not to be used to spark discussion; they are to be used to journal unedited, uncensored, and unfiltered using pen/paper or keyboard/screen. After you journal, then yes, you and a friend can get together to share what was revealed or what you discovered. Journal first; discuss after.

Who should participate in this challenge?

Canadians, from coast to coast, especially if you found yourself saying any of these (if you’re Indigenous, you may want to skip over the bullet points below as they may be triggering):

• “That’s in the past; let’s move on.”
• “I’m a hard working Canadian, the government should be held responsible, not me.”
• “I’m a recent immigrant and I fled violence. Every country has its problems. Canada is still better than what I left behind.”
• “But why didn’t Indigenous people fight back? Why did they give up their children so easily?”
• “We still don’t know how those children died. Let’s wait for more evidence.”
• “Why is everyone being so sensitive? It is what it is.”
• (I’ll add more as I stumble across them)

Even if the above statements and questions NEVER crossed your mind, if you’re Canadian, I invite you to participate in this challenge.

British people and citizens of the British commonwealth should participate in this challenge as well. Canada ceased to be a colony of Britain in 1867 when it became the Dominion of Canada, however, Canada did not become fully sovereign until 1982. This means that a lot of the harm committed against Indigenous people on Canadian soil was done in the name of the Queen and the British Empire. If you’re a British subject, I suggest you, too, participate in this challenge.

French people and citizens of the La Francophonie should participate as well. Since les Canadiens were one of the founding people of the Dominion of Canada and interacted with Indigenous people in the Maritimes provinces long before dominion, this challenge is for you as well. I’m deeply aware of the irony in calling in French people when this challenge is in English only (at least for now). Although French is one of my ancestral languages, il fait longtemps que je parle français, et je ne suis pas capable de communiquer ces concepts en français. Je m’excuse 😞

NOTE: If you’d like to help in translating the instructions and daily prompts en français, I’d welcome that. Please get in touch.

Global community – If you’re not Canadian or a citizen of the British commonwealth or La Francophonie, I invite you to participate as well. Not only will you learn about the treatment of Indigenous people in Canada, but it is my hope that this challenge will prompt you to seek out ways to reconcile with Indigenous people on the lands you reside on.

Who am I?

My name is Leesa Renée. I’m a historian, writer, mental wellness advocate, and Lead Tour Guide of a community called Inner Field Trip® where I guide Highly Sensitive, Deep Feeling, and Neurodivergent people on a journey to explore unconscious biases using guided prompts and reflective journaling.

Share this challenge

If you’d like to do this challenge with a friend, colleagues, or group, you can tag /share this post on Instagram.

If you want to tell your Facebook, LinkedIn, YouTube or other social network followers to join, share the link to the post on Instagram on your socials.