It’s the one-year anniversary of Mari Amirbekyan’s grandfather’s passing and her family is having a commemorative dinner in his honour. Sitting around a table back home in Armenia, everyone is sharing memories of him—remembering the hikes he would take, the ice cream he would buy for them and, of course, the father figure he is to so many around him.

The conversations and the shared love in the room fill her with a new sense of connection—one she didn’t know she could tap into—and a new appreciation for her Armenian heritage.

“We were just bonding over what that small [Armenian] community had given each other and I felt very at home there for the first time in a while,” she said. “I hadn’t realized that I could connect with my family in that way…this couldn’t have happened anywhere else but right here, on the land that he grew up on and raised us on.”

Amirbekyan was born in Yerevan, Armenia but left when she was just two-years-old. She’s since lived in many different cities across the U.S. but eventually landed in Toronto and went on to study at the University of Toronto, before moving back south of the border.

She’s been travelling back to Armenia for years since she was eight-years-old, despite leaving her homeland when she was a child. Through these visits, Amirbekyan has grown more connected to her family as well as the land.

“I was always taught to be careful with the land and I was always taught to look at our mountains that we have there [in Armenia], they are very sacred to us…We feel extremely connected to the mountains themselves and we feel like…they’re part of our history,” said Amirbekyan.

She went on to explain how it feels when she visits home—when she’s in the place she belongs—rather than on borrowed land. “Being Indigenous to that area is very special and I like being able to talk about how I feel when I’m back home, versus when I’m on somebody else’s land.”

According to the United Nations, Indigenous peoples “have in common a historical continuity with a given region prior to colonization and a strong link to their lands. They maintain, at least in part, distinct social, economic and political systems. They have distinct languages, cultures, beliefs and knowledge systems. They are determined to maintain and develop their identity and distinct institutions and they form a non-dominant sector of society.”

“I need to be vocal about it, and this is who I am and these are my roots”

Lindsay Fulinara feels a deep connection to her heritage when she’s back in her native land, the Philippines. The first-year business management student at Toronto Metropolitan University (TMU) was born in Toronto but raised by two first-generation Filipino immigrant parents.

Fulinara travelled to the Philippines this past summer break and she explained the deep connection to her heritage, especially now that she’s older.

“We went home in May and I visited my family…I think that’s when I felt very connected to my country. I was like, ‘okay, this is where I’m from’,” said Fulinara. “I still consider the Philippines my home, because that’s where my family comes from, that’s my heritage. I feel like a home for me doesn’t have to be a place. It’s always the people, and those are my people.”

Having been brought up in a multicultural area in Toronto, Fulinara emphasized how she never felt particularly isolated from her culture but instead felt like she was encouraged to embrace it—something her parents in particular instilled in her.

Fulinara’s parents wanted her and her sister to feel connected to their roots. “Yes, we’re born in Canada but our whole family is in the Philippines, like you’re Filipino and don’t be ashamed of where you come from,” she said.

With family being such a big part of her upbringing and the values she holds, Fulinara said that too is just part of her culture. “I feel like that’s a lot of what being Filipino is. It’s to be family-oriented, sharing, being hospitable to other people,” she explained.

Siby Diomande, a fourth-year business management student at TMU, shares similar sentiments as Fulinara. He’s also someone who is physically far from their native land but continuously feels a strong connection to their heritage.

Diomande is from Ivory Coast, a country in West Africa with a population of approximately 31 million people, according to the World Health Organization.

Diomande, who was brought up in a multitude of countries, was raised by two Ivorian parents and said he’s never felt at home anywhere but the Ivory Coast, despite never living there himself.

“I’ve always gone there, that’s probably the place I’ve travelled to the most. So I don’t really feel disconnected from it,” he said. “Both of my parents are from there, there’s that cultural aspect of it, like they were raised there their entire lives, so they passed that down to me and my siblings.”

While living in seven different countries and now attending school in Toronto, Diomande has often visited family who still live in the Ivory Coast, with his most recent trip back having been in December 2024.

“I would say that’s just the place that means the world to me. So, regardless of the fact that I haven’t lived there, I’m always going to care for it more than any other place on earth,” he said. “I feel like something about being from the Ivory Coast has a lot of pride attached to it.”

The feeling of pride and connection to land is a shared sentiment among native people around the world—people like Sara Glyana, who was born in Iraq to an Assyrian family, sharing the same feelings towards her heritage and homeland.

According to the Underrepresented Nations & Peoples Organization (UNPO), Assyrians are “one of the Middle East’s oldest surviving Indigenous populations. Spread across Iraq, Syria and Turkey.” UNPO also adds that the Assyrian community continues to experience threats to cultural identity, representation and security.

Glyana, who immigrated to Canada when she was 16, has remained “deeply rooted” within her community and her culture, despite the population being so small. “Assyrians, they obviously were Indigenous to Iraq and some parts of Syria…but over time, we are merely a minority,” she said.

“I’m always going to care for it more than any other place on earth”

Similar to the sentiments shared by Diomande, Glyana expressed the pride that comes with being Assyrian and wants everyone to see her community’s beauty in it the same way she does.

“I need to defend this, and I need to be vocal about it, and this is who I am and these are my roots…[Since] I moved here, I think I always go the extra mile when I introduce myself, you know, I’m Iraqi, I always claim my nationality. I’m Iraqi but I’m an Assyrian Iraqi,” said Glyana.

With Assyrians being persecuted and “structurally marginalized across the region” according to the UNPO, Glyana said she has had a bittersweet relationship with the land.

“[There’s a] very strange fondness of the land among Middle Easterners in general…because obviously the land carries…our history there and it just still feels like this was the land where your ancestors walked,” said Glyana. “But at the same time, there is a little bit of sadness that’s just buried. I tried to suppress it because of the war and just the persecution…a large amount of our history was destroyed.”

In contrast to Glyana’s connection to her land, assistant professor of social work at TMU and academic coordinator, Indigenous knowledges and experiences certificate for the Chang School of Continuing Education, Shane Young, explained how land relationships are often complicated, especially for those who do not have as much of a connection.

“I think if we’re looking at the Indigenous experience, and maybe some folks who do not have a connection to land but are maybe yearning for…the sense of connection to land, that’s going back to that blood memory, the memory and experience of ancestors, which lives in the fabric of their being,” said Young.

Similar to the persecution Assyrians experience, the Armenian people have also gone through tremendous grief with the Armenian genocide. Amirbekyan acknowledged the pain that the genocide has caused for her community and how it unites Armenians today.

The Armenian genocide was the “extermination of Armenians in the Ottoman Empire and the surrounding regions during 1915-1923,” according to The Armenian Genocide Museum Institute Foundation. The genocide took nearly 1,500,000 Armenian lives, which is estimated to be 65 per cent of the population at the time, as stated by The Genocide Education Project.

“The genocide is a massive part of our identity, and everybody, every single Armenian that exists today is a descendant of somebody who survived or somebody who left,” said Amirbekyan. “So it’s something that despite there being so many different groups of Armenians globally, we can all relate to it.”

Although the genocide has had many effects on the community, Amirbekyan wishes people would see more of the culture and personal identity, beyond it.

“Sometimes I worry that [the genocide] is also a tiring point,” she said. “I kind of wish, not that we didn’t talk about it as much, but that it wasn’t such a prominent definer of our identity, because we have so many other beautiful and positive things that make us Armenian.”

In his research, Young focused on a multitude of topics, including Indigenous identity. Young explained how Indigenous identity can be disrupted through external forces.

“Just thinking about the many colonial disruptions of the Indigenous identity and experience in this country, and I would even further say globally…those are in our history, but also, how do they tie into current reality? So we could talk about intergenerational trauma,” said Young.

Young further explained that Indigenous recognition can be important for many communities because of what government recognition can provide, stating that “even internationally, I think not having that global recognition at the local level can mean not having access to [supports ext.], but even on the international level, not recognizing is also problematic.”

Recognition of the Assyrian people is something Glyana has always had to grapple with, especially because of the lack of recognition from the Iraqi government of Assyrian identity. 

Because the population of Assyrian people is relatively small in Ontario—standing at about 17,000 people according to the Statistics Canada 2021 census—Glyana always goes the extra mile to represent her culture and her identity but that only goes so far if there’s a lack of acknowledgement. 

“Not nearly enough [recognition] in the mother lands and not worldwide either…I would say my frustration is mainly with my country, with Iraq, rather than worldwide…if Iraq and the surrounding/neighbouring countries don’t acknowledge their own Indigenous population, other countries [worldwide] will have no idea.”

The pride of culture and identity, along with land, is felt amongst Indigenous people globally, today and for the many previous generations that have preserved and passed down the culture. 

Amirbekyan reflected on her grandfather, “He bonded all of us, and he always reminded us to take care of the land that we live on…my grandpa was extremely proud to be Armenian. And so I think that was something that he wanted us all to feel.”