What no one told me about the land that would become my home
When Ashish Barua's daughter brought home Métis beadwork, it made him realize that as a newcomer, he'd been taught virtually nothing about Indigenous history and culture.
Learning Indigenous history was not on my to-do list as a newcomer to Canada until my daughter opened my eyes
Ashish Barua · for CBC First Person
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This First Person column is the experience of Ashish Barua, who lives in Prince Albert, Saskatchewan. For more information about CBC's First Person stories, please see the FAQ.
My daughter came home from summer camp with a piece of art — six little flowers, dot-painted in red and yellow. She set it on the dining table like she'd been waiting all day to show us.
"It's Métis beadwork. Do you know there's a story behind it?" she asked, clearly proud of herself.
I was curious. She told me Métis hunters used to bead their gloves in patterns unique to their own family. During a hunt, a man might drop his glove beside an animal he'd killed as a gauntlet to prove it was his. Later, his family would spot the pattern and know it was theirs.
I wasn't sure she had it right. I looked it up that night, half expecting she'd mixed up some detail.
She hadn't.
My 10-year-old taught me that. I'd lived in Saskatchewan for a couple years after moving to Canada in 2024 — Saskatoon first, then Regina, now Prince Albert. But I'd never once heard this.
I was proud she'd learned about Indigenous history at school and at camp. But it also bothered me a little. Why hadn't anyone taught this history to us, the adults?
Before that evening, my knowledge of Indigenous Peoples in Canada was sparse, and not always kind. I'd absorbed local stereotypes the way you do when you're new somewhere — a comment here, a headline there, a passing remark nobody bothered to explain.
I never sat down and decided to believe any descriptions of Indigenous people in particular. Those viewpoints just settled in, quietly, the way secondhand furniture ends up in a house nobody remembers buying. I think a lot of newcomers arrive carrying some version of this reality. Nobody hands it to you on purpose. It just comes with the move.
Various settlement services we used had covered the basics of making a move: getting a health card, a lease, a driver's licence and teaching how to survive a winter that hits faster and harder than anything I'd ever known. But nobody mentioned I'd moved onto treaty land.
Nobody said this year marks 150 years since Treaty 6 was signed. Nobody told me Prince Albert is Métis homeland too, with its own history running under the one I could see.
So I looked into that history myself, signing up for a course called Advancing Reconciliation that was offered through the First Nations University of Canada.
I expected something dry, but it wasn't. I learned about the treaties, what the Crown promised, and what still hasn't been delivered to Indigenous Peoples. I learned how much of what I thought I knew about Indigenous people was wrong or missing context.
I come from Bangladesh, a country that was under British rule for nearly 200 years, and then under Pakistan's rule for around 24 years. I'd read that history my whole life without ever once piecing it together. My country had faced colonization, just as Indigenous People did, but I'd never actually connected those two things before.
None of this was ever hidden. This history was all just sitting there. What was missing wasn't the information. It was someone putting it in front of me early on and saying, "This matters. You should know it."
My daughter went to a powwow this year through her school. I didn't go. At the time, it barely registered, just another school thing, another event. I couldn't have told you why it mattered.
But a few weeks ago, I stood in front of Passage Home, the new bronze sculpture down by the Saskatchewan river in Prince Albert. It's shaped like a travois, the kind once pulled by dogs and horses across the plains, and it's meant to symbolize carrying home the Indigenous children who never made it back from residential schools. The city unveiled it in August to mark the 150th anniversary of Treaty 6.
A year ago, I might have walked past it.
Now I stood there longer than I meant to. Inside the sculpture, there are small shoes, standing in for the children who never made it home. I thought about a glove dropped beside a fallen animal, so a family could find their way to it. I thought about a course I'd almost skipped, a powwow I didn't go to.
Standing there, it struck me plainly. You can't really make a home somewhere until you understand the history behind it. And no one was going to hand me that understanding; I had to go find it myself.
I hope the next person who moves to Canada to learn that sooner than I did.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ashish Barua moved to Canada from Bangladesh in 2024. He lives in Prince Albert, Sask., with his wife and daughter. He enjoys exploring the province's parks and lakes, learning about the land's history and watching his daughter grow into her own love of sport and art.
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