Originally published in TEACH Magazine, 75 Years of the Canadian Citizenship Act Special Issue, 2022
By Kelly Boutsalis
“You never get a second chance to make a first impression” is a phrase often attributed to Will Rogers, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation. For many newcomers to Canada, their first impression of the Indigenous peoples living on their ancestral lands in Canada often comes in the form of an outdated study guide for the citizenship test.
When the Citizenship Act came into force in 1947, it allowed people to become legal Canadian citizens for the first time. Under this Act, citizenship could be granted to permanent residents of Canada who, among other qualifications, showed they possessed sufficient knowledge of what it meant to be Canadian.
Kelly Boutsalis is a Mohawk freelance journalist from the Six Nations of the Grand River. The bulk of her work focuses on highlighting Indigenous stories, and her words have appeared in The New York Times, The Walrus, The Narwhal, and more.
