On the very day the Vatican is returning sacred items that were stolen from Indigenous nations; nations whose languages were erased, whose ceremonies were outlawed, whose families were torn apart, and whose movement was restricted by reserve systems and broken treaties, our country is once again giving its loudest megaphone to right-wing extremism.

People who are openly racist and unapologetic are getting airtime, while the people who are grieving generational trauma are being gaslit, dismissed, and attacked for defending their own survival.

And on this same day, we have a premier chastising the courts for doing the job his government promised to do: Enforcing Indigenous rights under DRIPA. Instead of honouring the truth that the courts exposed, he is framing it as a loss of control. That is gaslighting. That is avoidance. That is the old colonial playbook reappearing in modern language.

At the same time, Mark Carney tells Alberta that the pipeline will be built, no matter what, and tells British Columbia that “conditions must be met” while actively manipulating what “conditions” even means. We know how this works: a flurry of PR exercises will be packaged as “consultation,” even when hereditary chiefs—some not even of legal adult age are pushed to sign vague letters that get spun into consent.

This is happening while blatant racism makes any real conversation about Indigenous rights nearly impossible. But that doesn’t change the fact that we are living through one of the most intense and consequential fights for those rights in our lifetime. Many people have no idea what is unfolding. Others are happy to perpetuate prejudice because it fits their worldview.

Some claim that stopping a pipeline carrying the dirtiest fossil fuel on Earth, loaded onto megatankers, in a Cascadia subduction zone—would “punish the poor,” while ignoring the fact that countries like Norway actually are using their resources to benefit their citizens, not foreign corporations and authoritarian governments.

We are being fooled daily and told to be grateful for it.

These are decisive times. We have to stay alert to what governments are doing behind the scenes while performing reconciliation in front of the cameras. We must choose not to be fooled anymore, even if it means being attacked by trolls and bigots for speaking the truth.

Because if those trolls are going after you, it’s because you’re naming what they cannot allow to be said: that Indigenous rights are real, that title is real, that history is real, and that this country is being asked, finally, to honour what it has promised.

Eby says B.C. may revise DRIPA legislation, worries court is 'in driver's seat'

Indigenous artifacts from the Vatican collection returning to Canada today