The River Remembers
I grew up in the city; surrounded by concrete streets, modern holidays, and a language that wasn’t mine. For the longest time, I didn’t even realize it.
I spoke Nepali fluently, but the first words I learned were not those my ancestors once spoke by the riversides. The language of my community; the Majhi people, had already begun to fade. I didn’t hear it at school, on the streets, or even within my own home. As I grew older, I began to understand that my mother tongue wasn’t just disappearing; it had been colonized.
I come from the Majhi Indigenous community of Nepal. For generations, our lives were deeply connected to rivers. Rivers and riverbanks were our source of shelter, food, and income. We built our lives along the flowing banks. But beyond language and livelihood, one of the most powerful aspects of our community was our own system of governance: Majhesaba.
Majhesaba was our traditional council, a grassroots justice and leadership system passed down through generations. It was made up of respected elders who came together to resolve conflicts and make decisions about land, marriage, and communal matters. It didn’t operate like the formal state courts do today. There were no lawyers or paperwork. Instead, it relied on trust, oral tradition, community knowledge, and fairness.
It was self-governance in its truest form; leadership that emerged from within, not imposed from outside. Majhesaba safeguarded not just our rights, but our values. Like so many other Indigenous systems around the world, it was eventually replaced, ignored, or erased.
Development projects claimed our land. National policies redefined our customs. And soon, our young people grew up knowing more about the state’s institutions than our own.
That’s where Canada comes in, not just as the country where I study, but as a mirror.
Learning about the history of Indigenous peoples in Canada, including First Nations, Inuit, and Métis, I felt an unexpected deep connection. Despite being separated by seas, our communities correspond to a shared tale of tragedy. The patterns may differ in appearance, but their impact is startlingly similar. In Canada, Indigenous children were separated from their families and placed in residential schools, where they were punished for speaking their language and taught to feel ashamed or haunted to follow their culture. Thousands never returned home. This was not education; it was cultural erasure disguised as care. Just like in Nepal, language and knowledge systems were intentionally broken.
Traditional territories were turned into “reserves,” fenced off by colonial governments. People who once moved freely, guided by seasons, ceremony, and relationship to the land, were suddenly confined. In Nepal, our rivers were our lifelines, until they were redirected, developed, or sold. We too were pushed into marginal lands and labeled as “backward,” despite having lived in harmony with nature for generations. And just like in Nepal, those who knew the language of law, paperwork, signatures, contracts, used it to their advantage. Treaties were signed in bad faith, or not honored at all. Our people, who placed trust in oral agreements and collective ethics, were betrayed. Knowledge was turned against us.
Even today, Indigenous communities in both countries face poverty, identity crises, health disparities, and underrepresentation. At the root lies the same wound: disconnection from land, language, and self-governance.
But amid all this, I hold close the memory of an elder who was like a grandfather to me. He lived in our home in the city, far from his village and family, not by choice, but by necessity. Until his passing, he dedicated his life to seeking support, finances, and opportunities to explore and document our “Majhi Ethnicity.” He wrote books, organized programs, and worked tirelessly to preserve what was slipping away. He actively collaborated with Indigenous organizations across Nepal and played a key role in initiating the first Indigenous upliftment organization dedicated to the Majhi people. He saw the danger of extinction looming over our identity, and he acted, not for recognition, but out of love for his people and culture. His quiet resistance, lived through research, advocacy, and storytelling, became a powerful act of survival. Even in death, his efforts continue to inspire. His final words to me were a simple but profound request: to continue the work he had started, to carry forward the mission of protecting and honoring our identity. And there are countless elders like him around the world, growing up with a strong sense of identity, only to watch it slowly fade. They have struggled to preserve it, carrying the weight of loss while sharing messages of pain and resilience, and holding onto hopes that never truly extinguished, only waited to burn brighter.
Yes, there are efforts: funding, UN Declarations, and land acknowledgements. Governments have offered reconciliation in various forms, compensation, apologies, policy reforms. And while those are necessary, I’ve come to recognize a troubling pattern: money is offered, but identity is still denied. Language loss, spiritual disconnection, and the dismantling of traditional governance structures remain unhealed. The same systems that caused the harm are still the ones defining the solutions. But often, the core of true healing, restoring Indigenous leadership and systems like Majhesaba, remains untouched.
Today, I see my identity not as a memory, but as a movement. I am an Indigenous woman, born into a world that tried to make me forget that. Whether in Nepal, Canada, or beyond, Indigenous peoples may speak different languages and live on different continents, but our struggles are carved from the same blade. And our healing must rise from the same roots: land, language, self-governance, and cultural pride. It’s not enough to feel grateful for inclusive policies or international funding. We must ask: Who still holds the power? Who gets to decide? Until Indigenous systems are not only remembered but respected and reintegrated, our fight for justice continues.
So today, when I speak my truth, I speak for the rivers that still remember my culture, for the elders whose stories live in my heart, and for the younger generation, who deserve to grow up knowing who they truly are. I carry the silence of a fading language, and the whispers of my ancestors. But now, I do not carry them alone. Because this is not just a Majhi story or a Canadian story. It is a global Indigenous experience, an old pain with many voices. But where there is pain, there is also resistance. Where there is memory, there is hope.
Preety Majhi