Since January 2017, fewer than 20 residential school survivors or members of their families have approached their province to reclaim their Aboriginal name, has learned. The duty, when it was an important recommendation of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. “It’s a low number,” says Me Christina Gray, an Indigenous lawyer from the Ts’msyen, British Columbia, formerly a member of the Aboriginal Legal Services clinic in Toronto.
“It is important for the Aboriginals to be able to change their name”, explains Me Gray, who, like several other Indigenous experts in Ontario contacted by The duty, knew little about the province’s offer. “The government needs to do more to promote it,” she said. Ontario is home to nearly 375,000 Aboriginal people, the largest population in the country.
Ontario has abolished the fees associated with a name change for five years, that is, until January 2022, in response to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission’s Call to Action 17. The latter, one of 94 recommendations in the final report, calls on “all levels of government to allow residential school survivors and their families to take back the names that have been changed by the residential school system by exempting them from paying fees. ‘applicable administration’.
“Survivors and their families who sought to recover their names taken from them by residential schools found the process to recover them to be long and expensive. We believe that measures should be put in place to alleviate the burden imposed on people seeking to recover this important part of their heritage, ”reads the final report.
In June, the federal government itself responded to Call to Action 17 by allowing Aboriginal people to change their names, following a similar measure put in place in the Northwest Territories. Quebec, too, now wants to allow all Indigenous people to use their names free of charge as part of family law reform, while in Ontario, Nova Scotia and Alberta, this is reserved for residential school survivors. Nine Albertans have resumed their names since 2019, according to a government spokesperson.
Stigmatized names
Thousands of children lost their Indigenous names upon arriving at residential schools, in what was characterized as cultural genocide by the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in 2015. In its book Recollections of an Assiniboine Chief, published in 1972, Daniel Kennedy (Ochankuga’he) describes an interaction with an interpreter at his boarding school who trades his name since no “civilized language” could pronounce it.
“There is a real stigma in this country about using a name the colonizers cannot pronounce,” says Western University professor David Kanatawakhon-Maracle, who proudly uses the Mohawk surname Kanatawakhon. Since twenty years. “I kept my Christian and Colonial name since, if I didn’t, the government could get messy,” says the Mohawk linguist.
“When people say to me, ‘I can’t pronounce the name,’ I find it very disrespectful, since it’s an important part of my culture. My Mohawk name is very important, ”says the professor, who now helps his native students pronounce their traditional name.
A question of identity
David Kanatawakhon-Maracle believes that many Aboriginal people are happy to have mingled with Canadian and Western culture over the years. “Giving themselves an indigenous name would make them visible and different,” he thinks. “Many Aboriginal people are assimilated into Canadian society and its structure. Even if they want their Aboriginal identity to be recognized, it is difficult to distance oneself from the culture with which we have assimilated, ”explains the professor.
By changing their name, Aboriginal people must “rebuild their identity,” says Mr.e Alain Bartleman, Toronto lawyer from the Chippewas of Rama First Nation. “Since the majority of these people were very young when their name was changed, I imagine it’s difficult for them to (re) change everything,” he adds. “There can be a lot of trauma associated with changing the name at the residential school, and maybe having to change it again would be difficult for some people,” says Mr.e Christina Gray.