deeper understanding

apparently, france has asked canada for advice on how to make multicultural peace. they're having some trouble, in france, with what it measn to be 'french'. see, immigration happens when you need people in your country. canada made multiculturalism the 'thing to do' because we needed more people, fast, and shipping them in was the easiest. it was convenient, too, because there was no preexisting consensus on what it meant to be 'canadian'. it was very easy for trudeau to say that canada meant multiculturalism, because there were no other handy definitions to hold up in opposition. canada means multiculturalism; why not?

france has a difficult task. there are not enough french people anymore. they're "below replacement rate"; that means that they're not making enough babies. so, easy, ship in people from overseas, make them french too: instant population growth! sustained productivity! also, enough young people to sustain our elderly in their dotage. the french have had a definition for 'french' for ages, though, and it has never included their former colonies, for example. so now, the task is to redefine france to include all of these new people that have never been capital-F-French before. it's a fucking hard project. the benefit to having no agreed upon national identity is being able to avoid the horrible growing pains that we are seeing right now in france.

wait, further, we don't know what this experiment will lead to in canada! we should be waiting for a good hundred years before going into the cultural consulting business. we're only on the second generation of official multiculturalism now; all sorts of things could be lurking in our future. who knows what time bombs my generation has been planted with?

i'm hung up on the creation of national identity in part because we've been reading about louis riel again in class. the metis rebellion represents the first real roadblock to westward expansion in canada. louis riel fancied himself "the prophet of the new world", and studied theology. the dispute is often seen as a 'racial' dispute, but there are major threads of regionalism and class mixed in there too. the rebellion is often seen as a fight to preserve native traditions of stewardship and such, but the land system that the metis were initially protecting was the seignurial system, developed by french settlers along the banks of the st. lawrence:long strips of land, extending out from the river, so that everyone has a bit of riverfront property.
louis riel was hung as a traitor, convicted of treason: what does that mean? to be treasonous is to betray, implying that riel had already declared allegiance. allegiance to what?

wait, what do these words mean? i.e. it is one thing to say 'trans-inclusive', and it is another thing entirely to know why we say it. 'multiculturalism' and the associated racially diverse government advertising campaigns are the same.

i had a good three hour long conversation with a colleague today that i have never really talked to. it was a day full of self-actualization, personal worth from professional work. i do my job well, and it means a lot to me to have the respect of others who also do their jobs well. it's like the valley!