Christmas Hills to Banff

In July 2017 I took a flight halfway around the world with my partner, Sara, on my way to a new country, where I’d been invited to write about a place I’d left behind. I arrived in Vancouver, Canada, or Turtle Island as it’s known to First Nations people, after a 15-hour flight from Sydney. I was on my way to the Banff Centre for Arts and Creativity for a two-week residency. I research climate change and Indigenous knowledge and would be joining a program on environmental reportage. I would also be meeting with the activist and writer Naomi Klein to discuss issues of climate justice raised in This Changes Everything, her important work on the subject.

The long trip had exhausted us and we had time to spend at Vancouver airport before our next flight, to Calgary. I bought a weekend newspaper and sat down with a strong cup of coffee. I’d arrived in the country in the week following Canada Day (1 July). It was the 150th anniversary of the birth of the colonial nation and the paper provided a commentary on First Nations protests that had taken place on the day of national commemoration. A widely reported action was the erection of a tepee in front of the national parliament in Ottawa. The organisers of the demonstration explained to the gathered media that the event would be the first day of a ‘reoccupation’ ceremony to ‘counter Canada’s 150th anniversary celebrations on the basis that First Nations people have little reason to celebrate colonisation’. I was struck by comparisons to the Tent Embassy protest in Australia’s national capital, Canberra, that commenced in late 1972, followed by several like-minded occupations over following decades, including the Camp Sovereignty Commonwealth Games protest of 2006 in Melbourne, which I had been involved in and had written about.