[dc396]

> Who is “us”?

Canadians, of course.

> Surely we need to acknowledge that Europeans invaded Canada in the first place?

No. Europeans (and others) "invaded" North America. The sovereign country called "Canada" didn't exist until the mid-1800s. Even the name didn't appear on maps until the mid-1500s and the indigenous peoples who lived in North America at the time certainly didn't consider themselves a part of a unified nation by that name.

> I do wonder what causes all of us to view a certain set of borders as the “correct” one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Westphalian_system

[cmrdporcupine]

Yeah. It's all such a mess, and if anything the European colonists (French and British) in what became Canada -- while murderous and genocidal to the first nations -- were strategically "softer" on them than their American counterparts who were openly officially genocidal.

e.g. When the treaty of Ghent was signed ending the War of 1812, the chief (and really only) "victory" for the Americans was the fact that the British gave up defending/supporting the indigenous people in the midwest who had (under Tecumseh and with the support of the British to some degree) fought off American settlers. And so the Americans were free to go in and massacre and wipe out the remaining pockets of indigenous resistance in the Americas.

& Iroquois/Mohawk under Brant fled north to Canada, where the British granted them land along the Grand River valley here in Ontario.