This article originally appeared in The Hub.
By Karen Restoule, July 1, 2025
This year, I’ll spend Canada Day like I do every year, at home in Dokis First Nation with family, enjoying the hallmarks of Canadian life. It’s a time to reconnect and reflect on the blessings that shape our lives here in our shared country: clear and flowing waters, land generous in its beauty and bounty, and the enduring strength of kinship.
Reflecting on the past year, public discourse has felt increasingly fractured. Across the country, more people are shouting about their rights. As a society, we’ve become increasingly consumed by individual rights. This shift should concern us all. A society built on rights without a sense of responsibility, reciprocity, and consideration for others eventually comes apart. Many have forgotten that rights are intended to protect a way of life, not replace it.
This may be an effect of our post-Charter era. Courts and tribunals have become the default avenue for resolving grievances, reinforcing a hyper-individualized understanding of justice. In social settings, Canadians now sound more like litigants than citizens, focused on what we are owed, rather than what we owe.
As someone who walks with one foot in two worlds—being proudly Ojibwe and proudly Canadian—I see this dynamic from both sides. I navigate multiple value systems: one that is focused on responsibility to self and family, and another increasingly preoccupied with entitlement.
Traditional Ojibwe governance was built around responsibilities—to ourselves, our families, and our Nations. That worldview calls on each of us to take ownership, protect what is sacred, and leave things better than we found them.
Canada Day shouldn’t just celebrate what we have. It should remind us what we owe. Strong countries are built not on demands, but on contribution, shared sacrifice, and love returned in equal measure.
Karen Restoule is director of Indigenous Affairs at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, strategic advisor on complex public affairs issues, and Ojibwe from Dokis First Nation.
