Indigenous and Muslim communities find common ground - and power

Muslim and Indigenous Winnipeggers find comfort in shared experiences

Voluntary blindness.

Those were the words Montréal Imam Hassan Guillet used to characterize Québec Premier François Legault’s denial of anti-Muslim racism after a white nationalist entered a Quebec City mosque and shot dead six men on this day eight years ago.

His remarks were not surprising to the victims families, nor the 19 who were injured who said they felt forgotten, especially by political leaders in the aftermath of this tragedy.

Forgotten seems like too kind of a word to describe a government who consistently enact policies that harm your own community though. Guilet was right to insinuate Legault’s intentional denial of reality.

Acts of violence like this must not be overshadowed or forgotten, just as violence against other maligned communities, like the Indigenous peoples, deserve enduring recognition. Both have been harmed in different ways. And both share the risk of being erased from collective consciousness, instead of being honored as integral parts of our national memory.

There lies a natural allyship then, between Muslim and Indigenous people, in acknowledging their shared histories of marginalization and working collectively to ensure the harm inflicted on their communities serve as catalysts for justice, reconciliation, and national reflection.

Nowhere has this been more apparent than in Canada's first national Muslim-Indigenous conference in Winnipeg last weekend, organized by three grandmothers from both communities who work as social service providers and key connectors.

Indigenous leaders Dr Diane Redsky and Dr Sandra DeLaraone stand behind Shahina Siddiqui at the Indigenous-Muslim conference in Winnipeg on January 25-26th, 2025.

“We are in the beginning of the awakening of a revolution,” Elder David Budd said, likening the conference to the rare visible alignment of seven planets astronomers reported this month and the Seven Indigenous Ancestral Teachings (Bravery, Respect, Humility, Truth, Love, Wisdom and Honesty). “This gathering is all about unity and humanity - showing what’s possible and making changes in the world. We’re on the right track. We are coming together as one.”

The histories of each community may be distinct but there is also significant overlap. While Indigenous histories are tied to colonization, land struggles, and cultural preservation in their ancestral lands, Muslims in Canada often come here from their own settler-colonial societies, and struggle with integration, anti-Muslim hatred and cultural preservation.

“Often we are just looking at the symptoms when we have to look at the cause,” conference organizer Shahina Siddiqui said. Just as the Indian Act and the residential school system were part of systemic efforts to "civilize" Indigenous peoples, based on the assumption that their cultures were barbaric and needed to be replaced, so too have Muslims been characterized in the same way, she added.

“Ten years ago, Canada wanted to bring in the Barbaric Cultural Practices Act. Do you see the similarities?”

The Barbaric Cultural Practices Act introduced by the Conservative Party in 2015 was widely criticized as Islamophobic due to its framing over forced marriages, honor-based violence, and polygamy; depicted in ways that aligned with longstanding stereotypes about Muslim-majority societies.

Siddiqui, fondly referred to as “Aunty Shahina” by Winnipegers, is founder of Islamic Social Services Association (ISSA) Canada. “When I first began working with the Indigenous community, Elder David told me: ‘This is not your burden. You are not the colonizer.’ I told him: ‘When I took on the oath of Canadian citizenship I took on that burden.”

Far from being a corporate-sponsored diversity initiative filled with empty platitudes or performative statements, this gathering brought together hundreds of people from across the country all making a deliberate choice to better understand one another. It was the result of years of trust-building between elders from each community.

“There are people that didn’t want this to happen,” Siddiqui said, her voice breaking as she described multiple threats she had received over the last six months from saboteurs. As she paused to process both that fear and the significance of the current moment, her fellow organizers, Indigenous leaders Dr Diane Redsky and Dr Sandra DeLaraone, rose to stand behind her in respect and solidarity and brush a large eagle feather along her back. In First Nations tradition, eagle feathers signify the connection between The Creator, the owner of the feather, and the bird from whom the feather came.

“We believe there is an energy there, and that the eagle's main energy is love,” Elder David Budd explained to me afterwards. “So… the energy being felt by the person speaking their truth could be anger, sadness or pain. Hopefully, the eagle feather will help balance or neutralize it.”

Cultural exchanges like this are one of the most impactful ways to combat the political polarization that threatens to divide Canadians, whether it stems from far-right extremism or institutionalized racism. Violence against marginalized communities must never be accepted or forgotten, and the January 29 National Day of Remembrance of the Québec City Mosque Attack and Action Against Islamophobia serves as a poignant reminder of this truth. As Canadians, let us heed the wisdom of this unique, elder-led movement in Winnipeg, and use it as an opportunity to reflect on our past and current actions with honesty and humility.