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“Home on Native Land” – Changing the Words of Canada’s National Anthem

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With You.LeadNow.ca I signed a petition with the hope to change Canada’s national anthem. Here’s the petition:

To: Minister of Heritage Pablo Rodriguez

O Canada: it’s time to change the national anthem

Singer Jully Black stirred controversy when she sang a version of “O Canada” in which she swapped the words “our home and native land” for “our home on Native land”.

Black’s spontaneous lyric change reflects the reality of Indigenous Nations in this country.

First Peoples are the title holders to the vast majority of lands and waters in Canada.

Many Canadians already substitute “and” for “on” in singing “our home on Native land.”

I join Jully Black in calling for an amendment to the national anthem so that the lyrics honour the sovereignty of First Nations, Indigenous, and Inuit peoples.

In singing “Home ON Native Land” in classrooms across the country, children will be taught that, though they make their homes here, they do so thanks to Indigenous Nations whose laws, customs, and governance systems have sustained the land and its inhabitants since time immemorial.

Over 50% of Canada’s lands and waters belong to Nations who have never signed a treaty or surrendered their territory.

89% of Canadian lands known as “Crown Lands” exist on territory that Indigenous Peoples have never ceded or surrendered.

In signing historic treaties, Indigenous Nations did not give up land ownership.

Signatories to the numbered treaties understood that the land would be shared.

Despite that, land set aside for Indigenous Nations makes up just 0.2% of land in Canada.

It would be alienating and colonial to sing “God Save the Queen” today — though that is what people sang in Canada until 1980.

It is just as colonial, now, to erase Indigenous jurisdiction over ancestral lands by using the phrase “our home and native land”.

The times they are a-changing — and so should our national anthem.

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I stand with Indigenous Nations who are leading the Way towards better relationships with One another and with the land and waters we all call home: On native land.

A free online series called, Home on Native Land, was developed to help us Canadians understand — with a lighthearted but oh-so-serious look at — some of the laws of our ‘home on native land.’

Excerpted from the Home On Native Land website:

Home On Native Land is a self-guided course about Indigenous justice in Canada with 10 videos, cartoons & lessons that take us on a walk down the back alley of history — and the frontlines of legal action — with Anishinaabe comedian Ryan McMahon.

It helps us understand what leading First Nations thinkers, artists, and — yes — comedians reveal in their reflections is fundamental knowledge for anyone who is committed to living in a fair country.

While we may all have heard about residential schools, treaties, and reconciliation, how much do any of us know about the Indigenous Laws that have been around for far longer than the Canadian constitution?

Though they’ve been ignored and often trampled over the past 150 years, Indigenous Peoples have ways of relating to the land and to One another that allowed people to live on these lands and waters for thousands of years without disrupting the ecological balance.

Those laws — upheld by Treaties and validated in case after case in the country’s courts — offer a path forward not only for cultural understanding, but for our very survival in a time of climate crisis.

This free 10-part course on Indigenous justice in Canada and discover the myths, absurdities, and possibilities that are baked into the laws of this land.

Join forces to become part of putting reconciliation into action.