By: Miguel Padilla
North America is beautiful—from the glistening mountains of Cascadia, the warm beaches of California, to the concrete jungle of New York. Yet there is one thing, above all else, that encapsulates the true beauty of the region—multi-laned highways—a peak in human engineering and practicality. Unfortunately, Canada does not have it down like ‘Murica. Looking at Vancouver, the Trans-Canada Highway reaches a maximum of 12 lanes, 6 in each direction—truly disgraceful and untrue to the North American spirit; unlike the marvelous Katy Freeway in Houston, Texas, with a max of 26 lanes, is a pilgrimage site to any true, red, white, and blue patriot. American civil engineering simply cannot be beat.
But is there a more efficient way?
Roundabouts, though common in Europe, were actually invented in the United States, more specifically, in the heart of Washington D.C.. It’s a truly magnificent, efficient, and beautiful solution to the problem of traffic congestion and stops. However, America doesn’t want to go back, nor recognize the importance of roundabouts not just to its history, but to its biggest problems. Americans don’t want that change, no matter how much they want solutions to their problems, to make their lives easier. “It’s too complicated,” they say—that is roundabout thinking.
It applies to discussions too.
Indigeneity is viewed in a roundabout way, “it’s too complicated,” when in reality, the simple worldview exists, our implicit biases often tend to complicate the matter. Partaking in discussions of settler colonialism and/or indigenous erasure through genocide or ethic cleansing becomes “too sensitive”, “unimportant as there’s nothing we can do about it now”, or “I had nothing to do with it.” Non-white or recent immigrants (like Hispanic people in California, who make up around 40% of the state, or Chinese people in Vancouver, BC, who make up around 20% of the metropolitan area) tend to feel no obligation to discussions of indigeneity, when it is equally as important to understand the history, culture, and people who made up the majority of the lands we live on today.
It is easy for non-white and recent immigrant groups to slip away from these discussions, but when it comes to the dominant group, which in both Canada and the U.S. are European descendants, more specifically from Northern and Western Europe, these discussions tend to, in their perception, “challenge their power.” Obviously knowing that they silently benefit from a system built upon for them for over 200 years at the expense of indigenous groups tends to lead to a defense mechanism. Let’s not forget that it wasn’t until 1924 that Native Americans could become citizens of a country built on their land, and their citizenship is upheld by one singular act through Congress. It wasn’t until 1947 that First Nations people in Canada became citizens of a country built on their land, and not until 1960 that they were eligible to vote. This is not ancient history, but “it’s too complicated,” because it is ultimately a better way to end the discussion without admitting benefit from these very oppressive systems—systems where the Native American poverty rate can be 25.4% and little attention is brought to it.
So if North Americans are already used to roundabouts in discussion, debate, etc. about Indigenous issues, why not get used to roundabouts on roads? Let’s discuss the foundation of our nations’ civil engineering in the same ways we discuss the foundation of our nations’ people.