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We built a life from nothing- white settler colonialism and the myth of meritocracy
https://www.policyalternatives.ca/si.../12/McLean.pdf

The myth that Canadian society is created on individual work ethic ignores how racially dominant groups gain access to social and political power. This discourse also masks how racialized groups are denied access to these same resources and opportunities. The myth of meritocracy reinforces liberal individualism, providing the public with racist explanations for the vast inequalities that exists between Indigenous people and white settler society.

The access my family had in the early 1900s to land, citizenship, public education, mobility rights, bank loans, and government relief during famine secured their upward mobility and our middle-class status. The political economy of white settler status has been handed down from one generation to the next.

In the same historical moment that my family benefitted from their position as white citizens, Indigenous people faced policies of genocide. This included (but was not limited to) the ongoing theft and dispossession of lands, racist and sexist Indian Act legislation, the violence of residential schools, the regulation of Indigenous bodies through the Pass System (Williams, 2015), disenfranchisement, and government enforced starvation (Daschuk, 2014).