An Open Letter to Canadians

To Canadians who care —and all who walk these lands

I first visited Vancouver in 2006, at nineteen.
I came as an uninvited guest.

The land welcomed me.
The ancestors, too.
The trees. The crows. The moss. The ocean’s breath.
Even the raccoons peeking through the blackberry thickets—
it was like the whole land whispered, you’re safe here.

I had come from Turkey—
a land of ancient beauty and intensity,
but also of deep compression.
Crowded cities.
Millennia of trauma, woven into every brick and bone.
I didn’t know how much I had been bracing—
until I arrived here
and my body… exhaled.

Something was different.

The space.
The stillness.
The wildness.
The kindness—not the performative politeness, but something quieter.
I felt it.
And my body began to come back to life.

It was the peace of nature—
And it was the teachings I began to encounter through Indigenous voices.
Ways of relating to the land that weren’t about domination,
but about communion.
Ways of listening that my great-grandmothers had given me glimpses of as a little kid. 

These teachings—these lands—
healed something in me.
They became an antidote to the oppression etched into my skin.
The internalized silencing.
The inherited fear.
The fracture I’d carried between myself and the world.
Here, in the presence of wild forests and ancient knowing,
I found space to become whole again.

Long story short: I came back.
I returned to do my MA in political science.
I’ve lived here for 15 years now.
I became a citizen.

I realized things weren’t perfect.
But I knew I could be a contribution.

Coming from a country with unstable politics,
where human rights were fragile,
where being a woman meant contorting yourself into impossible shapes just to stay safe—
Canada, with all its complexity, still held a very real possibility for healing.

Yes, its atrocities toward Indigenous peoples run deep—seven or eight generations back.
But something else was also present:
Space.
Wilderness.
Land-based wisdom that hadn’t been fully silenced.
A chance to remember a different way of being.

But lately…
I’ve watched something shift.

People growing bitter.
Clinging to righteousness.
Afraid to let go of their positions.
Starting to fear each other.

I offer this letter not as a judgment,
but as a gentle invitation.
A remembering.

Start by acknowledging the beauty around you.
Not to make it precious or significant—
but to let it breathe.

Connect with nature—
not as an escape or a weekend task—
but as a friend, a teacher, a mirror.
Let the land show you how to soften.

Let the fir trees regulate your breath.
Let the hummingbirds reawaken your joy.
Let the mycelium remind you: we are all connected.

The eagles aren’t just symbols.
The crows aren’t just background noise.
The salmon, the cedar, the morning fog—
they carry wisdom. They remember.

Stop fighting shadows.
Who or what are you fighting?

The sense of belonging you long for won’t come from trying to be a “better Canadian.”
I say this as someone who studied nation-building and lived it.
Nation-building often depends on creating separation and sustaining illusion.

But you belong with the Earth.

You are already on sacred ground.
And the land, the trees, the creatures—they are waiting for you to wake up.

If all you focus on is how “fucked” Canada is, how doomed the world is—
then you are already contributing to the problem.

Be aware.
Notice the propaganda that wants you to forget your power.
Stop buying the story that you’re helpless.

Go outside.
Feel the wind.
Notice the strength in diversity.
The generosity of the land.
The plants who offer you medicine.
The birds who sing even when the world seems heavy.

If you’re a white settler:
Connect with your ancestral lands.
Your songs, your food, your stories, your rituals.
Your body needs it.
Without that, you carry an anxiety that burdens the rest of us—
a passive-aggressive panic that makes you feel attacked, or collapses you into helplessness.
Some of you resent those of us with intact cultures—because we remind you of what you think you’ve lost.
And then you overcompensate, or you perform superiority, or you shut down.
We see it. We feel it.

But we also know:
You do have something to offer.
When you drop the performance and let yourself be real—
you become a powerful part of what’s possible.

To the immigrants from elsewhere:
You stand at a threshold.
You get to choose what you carry forward—
what you leave behind.
You don’t have to recreate the old pain.
You don’t have to perpetuate the systems you fled.
You’re in between worlds—what an incredible place to create from.

To First Nations and Indigenous Peoples:
Thank you.
Thank you for your wisdom, your resilience, your presence.
We are here now.
How can we contribute?

And to all of us:
Let us remember—
Anger, blame, shame, bitterness, and avoidance will not build the future we want.

Go say hi to your neighbour.
Stop bonding over misery and complaints.
Stop gaslighting yourself and others.
We are not powerless.

We have a real opportunity to pioneer something new.
To live in a way the world hasn’t seen yet.

The possibilities we seek—
the real, sustainable solutions—
will not rise from more fighting, blaming, or separating.
They won’t come from clinging to righteousness or performing wokeness.
They will come from the land.
From stillness.
From our kindness, our generosity, our creativity.
From remembering how to listen.
From the courage to soften, to connect, to imagine something new—together.

It begins here:
With calming your nervous system.
With syncing your rhythm to that of the trees, the wind, the rivers.
Let nature show you how to regulate.
Let it co-regulate with you.

You’re not bigger.
You’re not smaller.
You are.
Be curious.
Have wonder.
Let go of the doom narrative.
If we choose differently now,
we will not only be okay—
we will thrive.

Notice what the land offers you.
The berries. The rain. The silence. The watchful owls. The stubborn dandelions.
Let it in.

Use your rights as citizens—but don’t expect politics to fix it all. 

Politicians simply do not have the incentive to do so. 

That is not where their interest lies. 

Change begins in us.
With the small, daily, small choices we make.

Reach out from generosity, not strategy.
Connect out of curiosity, not ideology.

And ask yourself:
What kind of world would I like to live in?

Because—
it’s not too late.
If we start choosing something different now. 

Is now the time?

with a sense of possibility, and deep gratitude for the land that holds us all,

—Nihan Sevinc

Nihan Sevinc is a Turkish-Canadian writer, facilitator, and creative coach based on the west coast. She helps people come home to their bodies, their creativity, and their unique connection with the Earth. Her work supports individuals, families, and teams in cultivating nervous system resilience, spaciousness, and possibility in how we live and create together. She is grateful to live and create on the unceded traditional ancestral territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish), and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.