Colonization Road

Since Europeans arrived on these shores, roads have been built to bring settlers across the country, connect them with resources to create industry and ultimately to establish a nation. Many of these interconnecting networks are called Colonization Roads. For Indigenous peoples, these roads embody a powerful and ironic reality; colonization is still so powerful, we name our roads after it. Join Anishinaabe comedian, Ryan McMahon as he travels across Ontario learning about Colonization Roads, the ways in which they have dispossessed Indigenous people of land and access to traditional territories while creating space for settlers in the colonial experiment that has become Canada.

With his brand of hard-hitting comedy, Ryan speaks with well respected Indigenous and settler lawyers, historians, researchers and policy makers who provide history, context and solutions for colonization roads and their impact. Ryan will look at the history of the roads, from the first settlers lured by Free Land Grant advertisements to the treaties signed in the name of Indigenous sovereignty and nationhood with the newcomers.

http://www.cbc.ca/firsthand/episodes/colonization-road