How Ukrainians share Canadian soil with Indigenous
This Canada Day, Amber shares her journey: raised Ukrainian, she later embraced her Indigenous roots while navigating prejudice and the weight of carrying two histories.
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Editor’s Note:
Happy Canada Day to our readers!
In celebration of this day, we share a story exploring how the lives of Ukrainian settlers and Indigenous communities have intertwined over generations, shaping modern Canadian society through shared survival, coexistence, and identity.
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KYIV, Ukraine — “Oh, what? Are we hiring white women to pump gas around here?”
Those were the words Amber Glover heard on her second day working at a gas station in the town of Grenfell, southern Saskatchewan, densely populated by the Plains Cree First Nation community, to which she rightfully belongs.
Under his skeptical gaze, she straightened her back and replied, “I’m a band [a First Nations community] member. I’m the store manager and I’m the only one pumping gas here right now, so the store keeps working.”
It was not the first time Amber had been forced to explain who she was.
With her First Nation blood and Ukrainian looks, Amber has spent much of her life navigating assumptions from both sides. For her own kids, she envisions a different world.
Dozens of nations shape Canada’s diverse culture. About 1.36 million, or 4 percent, of Canadian citizens have Ukrainian descent. Their ancestors started to arrive in Canada from villages in the 1890s, crossing the ocean to escape from acute poverty. Most of them got cheap farmland in the prairies of Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta as part of Canadian state policy. Without any knowledge of English and sometimes illiterate, they were living side by side with Indigenous people, who had already been devastated by European disease and systemic marginalization. Over time, both First Nations and Ukrainian settlers transformed from poor and excluded ‘aliens’ in Canada into visible and recognized social groups. Thousands of people have both Ukrainian and Indigenous roots, fighting for freedom that is not easily attained.
Countries like Canada are not defined by one origin story but are shaped by generations of migration, displacement, and coexistence.
After the paywall:
How Amber is looking for her Cree roots after being brought up as Ukrainian;
How first Ukrainian immigrants lived side by side with the First Nations in harsh Canadian prairies;
Why is it difficult for Amber to live as a mixed-origin person;
What makes someone truly free.
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