We’re all “settlers”
Mark Milke and Tom Flanagan argue that the distinction between “settlers” and “indigenous” people in Canada is false, as all humans originated in Africa and migrated to the Americas in waves. They contend that the “settler” label, often applied to Europeans, ignores the contributions of all groups to building Canada and the significant financial support and tax exemptions provided to indigenous communities. They also suggest that these factors should be considered in reconciliation discussions, challenging the notion of a one-sided historical grievance.
This piece is reposted here with the kind permission of the Aristotle Foundation for Public Policy, a new think tank that aims to renew a civil, common-sense approach to public discourse and public policy in Canada.
We’re all “settlers”
Mark Milke and Tom Flanagan
National Post
November 23, 2025
The settler-indigenous distinction is false. We all originated in Africa.
If Canadians care to understand why our country is increasingly fractured, one key driver is the notion that non-Indigenous Canadians — “settlers” as they are called — should be grateful to live anywhere in the Americas.
The “settler” label is mostly directed at those of British and European ancestry. But it can apply to anyone whose families arrived from anywhere — Africa, Asia, the Levant, the Pacific — who were not part of the prior waves of migration to the Americas.
According to the most recent scientific knowledge, human settlement in the Americas began about 15,000 to 20,000 years ago. These pioneers of settlement must have arrived from Asia by boat and hopscotched along the Pacific coast because the interior land was glaciated. They migrated as far south as modern-day Chile, but it is unknown how far inland they penetrated and whether they survived to merge with later migratory settlers.
Another wave of migration started around 13,000 years ago when an ice-free corridor opened through Alberta between the two great glaciers covering North America. This made it possible for people from the now submerged land of Beringia to move south through Alaska, Yukon and Alberta across North America.
