Canadian Muslims Need to Reclaim Relations with Turtle Island’s Indigenous Peoples
By Nabila Huq
Sep/Oct 2024
Abdullah Hakim Quick, Ph.D., a historian, social activist and religious leader, writes in “Deeper Roots: Muslims in the Americas and the Caribbean Before Columbus” (Ta-Ha Publishers, 1996) that evidence exists of Indigenous peoples and Muslims interacting long before Columbus arrived. However, historical records of Muslims’ continuous presence in North America are missing.
The record of their continuous presence in Canada begins during the later part of the 19th century. Many of us may also know that this country’s first recorded Muslims looked like stereotypical settlers (a Scottish revert family). Settler is a loaded word, for it flips between being used as a synonym both for “immigrant” and “colonialist.” Did this family have any intention of being colonialists? We probably don’t have a record of that.
The First Muslim Immigrants
What we do have is the memoir of Canada’s first Muslim politician. Leaving Lebanon to avoid conscription in the Ottoman Army, he changed his birth name — Bedouin Ferran or Ahmad Ali Ferran — to Peter Baker. In his book, “Memoirs of an Arctic Arab: A Free Trader in the Canadian North: The Years 1907-1927” (Yellowknife Pub. Co., 1976) he detailed his building mainly business relationships with Indigenous peoples. But if we pause to think about contemporary Muslims’ positionality about Indigenous peoples in the 21st century, we see that Muslim immigrants learned English and/or French, or are studiously learning one of the official languages, and gave little thought to communicating with Indigenous peoples, whereas Baker mastered a conversational ability in several of their languages, realizing that it was up to him to understand his clients’ language. Despite talking of savage Indians and half-breeds somewhat thoughtlessly, he also recounted the warm hospitality he received and his keen interest in Indigenous governance system.
Unfortunately, Baker ended his memoir without touching upon his life in public office; otherwise, we would learn through his first-hand account what he did for his Indigenous-majority constituents while serving as an elected member of the NWT Council (1964-67; now the Legislative Assembly of the Northwest Territories).
There are more accounts of early 20th-century Muslims who warmly reflected on their relationship with Indigenous peoples.
Hilwi Jomha Hamdon, whose husband ran a store in Fort Chipewyan, recounted a hilarious experience to Murray Hogben when her husband decided to invite an Indigenous chief for dinner. The chief had initially declined the offer because he’d assumed her to be “pretty cranky” because of her “narrow eyebrows, and that means among the Indians that you’re not good natured” (“Minarets on the Horizon: Muslim Pioneers in Canada”, Mawenzi House, 2021).
After her husband assured him that this wasn’t the case, he accepted the invitation. This story proves that we can openly discuss negative stereotypes and learn about one another if we keep an open mind. Like Baker, the Hamdon family learned the language of their Indigenous clients and neighbors, and a spontaneous friendship developed among them. The two groups showed no awareness of a latent settler-colonial relationship. This friendship bears no indication of a power relation on either side.
Such a reciprocal loving relation is also evident in Arab-born Canadian artist Jamelie Hassan’s account of her family’s relation with the neighboring Oneida community. Hassan remembers that while growing up in Southern Ontario during the 1950s, her father would take the family on Sunday drives to Oneida settlements and how its farmers would present them with handmade gifts and produce.
She states in Ashok Mathur (ed.) et al.’s “Cultivating Canada” that “earlier Arab travelers, at the time of their arrival to Canada in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, did not represent the powers of the British Crown. In fact, these travelers were fleeing from military occupations and the threat of war. Their own histories were likewise shaped by losses due to colonialism” (Jameli Hassan and Miriam Jordan, in “Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity”, Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2011, p. 140).
Are We Following This Tradition?
Ironically, a discourse of immigrants’ complicity in settler colonialism has emerged during this supposedly post-colonial era. Maybe a colonial paradigm shift on the world stage shifted the paradigm between this country’s diasporic immigrant groups and Indigenous peoples. Once identifying with each other as co-colonized by the same colonial powers, diasporic groups can now affiliate themselves with independent nation-states and begin a post-colonial journey, whereas a post-colonial era still has not arrived for Indigenous peoples.
However, this hypothetical remark doesn’t imply that diasporic and Indigenous groups were on equal terms prior to the onset of this supposed post-colonial phase. Racialized immigrants have almost always been given preferential treatment over Indigenous populations. Exceptions exist, such as the treatment of Japanese Canadians during WWII.
Muslims need to focus on what their relationship is with Indigenous peoples now. They need to reclaim the relationships established by Baker, the Hamdons and the Hassans, especially now when Muslims stand united in solidarity for Palestinians.
Palestinians and Indigenous peoples have built a legacy of solidarity at least since the 1970s (“Solidarity Between Palestinian and Indigenous Activists Has Deep Roots,” The Palestinian Chronicle, Feb. 18, 2020.) Examples are Mohawk flags at Palestinian demonstrations and Palestinian flags on Six Nations land, the Niagara Palestinian Association (NPA) distributing flags and scarves to organizers of the Six Nations reclamation in 2006, along with bringing in food and reinforcements (Mike Krebs and Dana M. Olwan. “‘From Jerusalem to the Grand River, Our Struggles Are One’: Challenging Canadian and Israeli Settler Colonialism,” settler colonial studies 2.2 [2012]).
One of the most recent examples of such solidarity comes from early Nov. 13, 2023, when The Bearhead Sisters from Paul First Nation carried keffiyehs while singing the Canadian national anthem in the Stoney Nakoda Language. This occurred at Roger’s Place at the Edmonton Oilers Night. The scarves were a gift from Issam Saleh, a Palestinian home builder in Edmonton (Richie Assaly, “Why Some Indigenous Advocates and Palestinians Feel They’re ‘Natural Allies,” The Toronto Star, Nov. 17, 2023). They also wrote on their Facebook page, “We stand with our Indigenous people from all across the world. Tonight, we’d like send our thoughts and prayers to Palestinian Community.”
If Muslims hold the cause of Palestine’s liberation sacred, then they also need to share in the legacy of solidarity that Palestinians have built with Indigenous peoples in Turtle Island. Muslims must revisit this history and recognize that this solidarity is an integral part of Canada’s history. All Muslim community organizations, masjids and individuals need to educate new Muslim immigrants and ensure that all of us join this legacy.
I mentioned earlier that settler is a loaded term. Ojibwe Anishinaabe writer Patty Krawec tells us, “Being a settler or a colonizer is not something you are; it is something you do… If you are going to stop being a settler and start being kin, that’s where we start. With what you do.” (“Becoming Kin: An Indigenous Call to Unforgetting the Past and Reimagining Our Future”, pp. 178,179, Broadleaf Books, 2022).
We have long stayed as settlers. It’s time we return to being kin.
Nabila Huq is a PhD candidate in Cultural Studies at Queens University, Kingston, ON.
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