What is your superpower? I am Ukrainian

I have been living in Canada for the past eight years and have been actively involved in the diaspora community throughout that time. While living in Toronto, I helped organize various cultural events and festivals where we hosted Ukrainian journalists, artists, and poets. It was incredibly fulfilling to be part of a team of dedicated volunteers committed to creating a space where Ukrainians could stay connected to their roots, come together, and celebrate our culture and traditions. During that time, I also worked as a teaching assistant at a Ukrainian Saturday school. Most of the kids who attended were not born in Ukraine and, often, were not even second-generation Ukrainians. It was fascinating to see how many families in Canada felt a strong commitment to preserving their heritage through their children, engaging them in cultural practices like pysanka making (traditional Eastern egg decoration) and Ukrainian dancing.

Last year, I had an insightful conversation with one of the participants at the pysanka workshop we hosted. I shared with them that the first time I made a pysanka was five years ago in Toronto; my family had never really practiced the traditional method of decorating eggs with wax and other techniques. They mentioned that during the Soviet era in Ukraine, cultural practices survived largely because of individuals who immigrated to the United States, Canada, or elsewhere and maintained their commitment to honoring their heritage. Many people like myself are now rediscovering our Ukrainian identity through immigration. I am grateful to those who continued practicing Ukrainian cultural traditions abroad, as the reality is that while russia attacks us physically, it is also engaging in the erasure of our cultural identity by banning our language, bombing museums, killing our poets, and forcibly deporting our children, adopting them into russian-speaking families.

When I first moved to Canada, it wasn’t particularly "cool" to be Ukrainian. Naturally, within the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora, the sentiment was different, but many Canadians’ understanding of Ukraine was shaped by narratives of a "brotherly nation" with russia, a “smaller russia,” or an unfamiliar country somewhere in Eastern Europe. After the re-invasion in 2022 and the incredible bravery shown by Ukrainian soldiers and citizens, suddenly, being Ukrainian became something people admired. The slogan “Be Brave Like Ukraine” flooded European and North American streets. When Ukrainians showed the world that we wouldn’t surrender and that russian soldiers wouldn’t take Kyiv in three days, the world began to listen to us more closely.

Now, almost every time I meet someone new and share that I’m Ukrainian, it turns out that their great-grandmother was Ukrainian or that someone else in their family has some connection to Ukraine—and I love it. I love that being Ukrainian is something to be proud of, and I believe we should never underestimate the role the diaspora plays in maintaining that sense of “Ukrainianism”.

The bigger question is: what does it mean to be Ukrainian Canadian, and how does “Ukrainianism” manifest itself? Or, how Ukrainian are you? I’ll be the first to admit that there’s always a performative aspect to being a member of an ethnic group abroad. At the end of the day, many of us made the choice to leave our homeland and live full-time somewhere else. But what about those born abroad who feel a strong connection to Ukraine—are they considered more or less Ukrainian than someone with a Ukrainian passport? These are tricky questions, and the answers are complex.

I’m no expert on the topic; I’m simply sharing my reflections as a way to answer these questions for myself and to process my experiences. I don’t think it should be a competition over how much of your heritage is Ukrainian. Instead, the question we should be asking ourselves is: What have I done to proudly call myself Ukrainian?

            Through many of the events that I hosted as part of Carleton Ukrainian Students’ Club I have met people don’t have Ukrainian heritage but who show up because they want to learn about our culture or they simply want to support us. I have met people who have Ukrainian heritage but only recently started to learn the language as a way to connect to their ancestral homeland. Not that long ago, I saw these post randomly on twitter and they really resonated with me. Unfortunately, I did not save the name of the author.

As we approach 1,000 days of the full-scale russian invasion of Ukraine, Ukrainians around the world continue to stand united, demanding that the world hold russia accountable. This is more than a fight for territory; it is a fight for our heritage, our language, and our very right to exist as Ukrainians. From the soldiers in the trenches to expats like myself, what drives us is our superpower of being Ukrainian.