Exactly

And, of course, this was long ago and far away and perpetrated by a few bad apples, if indeed it was perpetrated at all. Nothing like you and me, who RESPECT the First Nations People and would never dream of being dismissive and calling them liars and claim they have no grip on reality. We are so pure we just have to open our mouth, or tap our keyboard, and we can talk our way out of the ugliness, um, sorry, the perceived (smirk) ugliness.

Never mind the girl in the hotel I worked in just a few years ago, who never got her free drink until I picked it up for her, because she couldn't brave the drunken louts in the lobby, who let her have it every day, such a dumb injun, and they so good white cowboys. No, I must be imagining that. Maybe I'm a lttle bit injun, too...

one comment

ME2 said:

"Let's take language as an instance. How on earth could anyone expect native peoples to compete on any level if they couldn't speak English?"

Maybe they could talk to some of the other ethnic groups in Canada which seem to manage just fine without having every single person speaka da Englisha to find coping strategies.

Merry Christmas Port Alberni Style

Way back in the early 60"s when i was just a kid-my family used to go over relatives in Port Alberni for Christmas.

One Christmas there was a young girl from the local residential school. The children would be "lent" out to local families for Christmas.

We did our usual Christmas thing-gifts, food etc. She was very quiet and didn't really interact with us kids and then was taken back to the school. We made no attempt to include her in our fun.

Over the years i've reflected back as to what her life was really like. Is she still alive? Was she abused/tortured? Was our Christmas just another painful memory for her?
I unwittingly participated in a racist/ culture destroying activity.

My uncle who arranged for this visit, a "good Christian man", favourite Sat. night activity was to sit outside the local bar and watch the "drunken Indians" being thrown out.

Anyways, I've gone on and have been active in anti racism work.
I hope the young girl-forever nameless in my memory-went on and somehow managed to find some peace in her life.

ME2

I won't say that there's no chance that any victim exaggerated any, or that not a single victim invented any abuse where there wasn't really any, but are you serious???

"Let's take language as an instance. How on earth could anyone expect native peoples to compete on any level if they couldn't speak English? And considering that almost every group spoke a language that was unintelligible to other groups, how could a school assemble sufficient teachers to teach students from a dozen unique language groups?"

I come from up north, the banks of the mighty Skeena. Back in the day you would have had to go pretty far from there to steal a kid who couldn't speak Tsimshian. And even still they managed to trade with Haida and Nisga'a without the gift of English.

Down here in the Fraser Valley, back in the day if you stole all the kids within horse riding distance, 99% of them would have spoken Halkomelem.

North America wasn't like Europe, where the hairy smelly barbarians (including my ancestors!) spoke a different kind of gibberish in every other valley. Here there were nations, and there was plenty of room for them to be vast.

Sure the odd school here or there might have been in a border area, but where in the hell would you have been able to steal kids from "a dozen unique language groups"??

"Furthermore, how could native peoples grasp subjects like Mathematics, Science and so on, when there were no native words or concepts to explain them even if teachers could be found?"

That almost makes me laugh. How could *you* understand math, when you don't even speak Arabic?? And if you don't speak Latin then you must be hopelessly ignorant in matters of science.

"I'm not a racist, but..."

a very wrong perspective

After reading this amazing in-depth review of a much-needed book, finding the comments below from ME2 is rather incredible.

First, do you read worldwide news? Ireland finally just acknowledged the widespread horrific abuse you are diminishing. So, whether anyone thinks its "overblown" or not doesn't really matter... reams of evidence show that it happened; it was brutal; apologies and restitution were and are overdue.

So much for the good nuns and brothers. Where were they when this stuff was happening?

Second, as for Canada, this same analysis applies. False memory syndrome does not cause men and women in their 50s to commit suicide, and for the record, they are and have been doing that. Is it just possible that their stories are credible -- that it really was that bad? Reams of evidence, inquests, and commissions suggest that it was in fact a whole lot worse than anyone ever suspected. Did some escape that fate? Are some still not willing to come to terms with what happened and go on pretending it didn't happen to them? Yes, and possibly. The last residential school closed in the 1970s so there are a lot of schools, a lot of time frames, and a lot permutations many denominations went through in the decades in which these hell holes were open.

The book reviewed here is merely making some of those stories accessible so the average Canadian like ME2 can stop living in denial just because they met a few people who said it didn't happen to them, or it wasn't THAT bad. The reason we do studies and commissions is to find out the extent to which something has happened. At which point, your micro-observations on a subject, frankly, become irrelevant.

Get over your own tiny view of the world. A whole lot of bad stuff happened, and now it's time to deal with it.

You ask the average liberal,

You ask the average liberal, university educated Cdn, how native indians were likely treated by Christians, in any context, throughout Canada's history, and s/he would say, awful--beyond awful, and would instantly summon to mind the horrors described here. And they would be right in their assessment.

And if you asked him/her how native indians treated their own children before Western "advance," what would they say? "With dignity," "with respect," "in the spirit of the warrior," or some other, some such. Would they ever consider that the upbringing might have been as bad, or even worse? No way--regardless of the truth of the matter. If such a thought entered his/her head for but an instant, s/he would have half a chance of going completely mad. We cannot bear the thought, the momentary consideration, because we are still so simple we cannot distance ourselves from concluding that if native indians were--on a mass scale--horribly abusive to their own children, before anyone else got to them, that somehow Christian education/abuse would be redeemed, that somehow they are not so worthy of societal respect and support.

There are truths that cannot bear the light of day, for liberals to consider. Hope they brave doing so, before a conservative turning nation makes opportune use of their soft spot, the weakness in their defence.

The right can make the left

The right can make the left seem primarily interested in using native indians to make Christian conservatives look bad. They can show the left as actually being rather uncomfortable with native american way of life, when it isn't "massaged," domesticated, into a prefered "storyline." And the left can/will be left thinking that it defended native indians, assuming them constitionally/communally in tune with harmonious rhthyms (or some such)--the antithesis of everything right wing, closed-minded, oppressive/overbearing, foul; when they cannot but sense they've glossed over so much (what they truly will assess/react to as) "stink," they'll grimace, if not turn away, and they'll (i.e., they and their steadfast concern to/interest in defend[ing] native indians against further oppression) be done for.

The left is not beyond blaming the victim, unfortunately. One should sense this in its over inflation/estimation of native indian' history, way of life. The left is healthy, way healthier than the right, but it is not that healthy. I'm doing what I can to get it there.

I am curious, though, if there is any dynamic in a culture oppressed/traumatized/bullied by Europeans, that would get you to turn away from them. I hope there isn't any. I can't imagine you turning away, but I could imagine a moment of recoil, self-doubt--and the gasp of horror! this would produce amongst those depending on YOU to be the one who never fails in the defense. For their sake, make sure you can read accounts of native indian' life that don't make them seem Earth's noble warriors, pretend for a moment that all such is true, and not experience a moment of doubt as to their worthiness of ongoing, expanding societal support, respect, and love.

Patrick

"We cannot bear the thought, the momentary consideration, because we are still so simple we cannot distance ourselves from concluding that if native indians were--on a mass scale--horribly abusive to their own children, before anyone else got to them, that somehow Christian education/abuse would be redeemed, that somehow they are not so worthy of societal respect and support."

Child rearing in pre-contact North America is worth looking into. I'm sure it wasn't a Disneyland cartoon. I'm with G West though in missing the point of comparing that to the residential school regime. "It was for their own good" makes me gag actually.

Alongside ME2's "Cultural genocide? Hogwash.", I'm very disheartened to find these attitudes even here. I'm optimistic that these viewpoints are a dying breed. We've got some atonement to do, and that starts with admitting mistakes - not excusing them.

mikev: I'm most certainly

mikev: I'm most certainly not saying residential schools were "for their own good." No abuse is ever to be redeemed (and hell, I'm a free-schooler--a true hippie). I'm saying that those interested in redeeming, maybe not residential schools, but western heritage, could begin to point out how the left has (rather sillily) tended to establish a rather romantic estimation of native indian "traditions," seeming to make a NECESSARY link between the desecration of a NOBLE past with need for our collective atonement. No link was necessary--abuse is wrong, in any circumstance. But it's been forged--primarily to set up the right wing, to set up Christians, so they seem especially cruel/evil, and to make it so that it seems we inhabit a world with beings so fantastical and perfect, they make the world seem one especially ready to loose oneself in--a wonderful counter to depression. Destroying the life of another person is never to be redeemed. But this isn't quite the argument they've set up: as I'm trying to explain, it seems to me the argument that's gone around, the particular need for atonement, does not just concern, is not just in, the ill intentions of Christian settlers, but in how they destroyed a simple, noble, essentially perfect people that had found a harmonious way of living with the Earth, we of the West have barely learned to approach. In my mind, if this truth is exposed as myth, as in error, as a near total falsehood, we will not be left with a left that thinks like you and G West do, where they can still very readily say, okay, but that's doesn't excuse you, us, from a collective need for atonement, from expanding societal services to reduce current suffering/exploitation. We will be left with a left that begins to doubt just how much effort they want to spend defending a culture they actually find a bit repugnant.

Think about how many of the left view the GG eating seal' meat "occasion." Do you not sense some of them saying to themselves, I don't know how long this practice has gone on--it could even have been for a millenium, this could never, ever have been how it's been sold to us--a demonstration of culture's harmonious relationship with nature. Some, in my judgment, are coming close to saying to themselves that, no, that's just deer hunting pathos, unredeemable cruelty--savagery, even. They'll never fully admit this, let it perculate too long in conscious thought--because few have the resources for this not to lead to considerable self-laceration, a quick turn against a right that unfortunately no longer is quite so easy to estimate as being quite so very wrong. But deep down they'll be suspecting Blood Meridian-all-is-savagery-Cormac McCarthy got it down right, and abandon the field of fight to those like Ignatieff, so moved to make Canada seem clean, united, uncomplicated, again.

ME2 can say whatever he/she wants to.

I'm from the Sunshine Coast. I have many Sechelt friends and a Quadra Island FN was married to my cousin.

Not too long ago the Sechelts' first destroyed and then burnt down their residential school. The emotion involved and the happiness on their faces says it all to me. Besides which, the Sechelt language is nearly gone. Stamping out someone's language is reason enough to try to make amends, never mind the other accusations.

My cousin's husband struggled for many, many years to recover his life after his experiences and happily, managed to succeed.

I believe every word the FN say about residential schools and for a long, long time was ashamed to be white.

It was even worse...

I have spoken to survivors of the RS at Alert Bay who say there are bodies buried under it.

my apologies Patrick

Sorry for assuming the wrong thing with your posting. It actually sounds like we have a lot to agree on.

I'm not worried so much about the masses having their myths exposed. That's the progression of things, you wouldn't want to try to keep secrets. We show what kind of people we are by how we handle the truth. Our track record isn't exactly commendable, but I've got to be an optimist that eventually we'll learn something and improve our ways.

Let the people see raw organs dripping with blood being eaten with gusto. That's a lot prettier than what has happened behind the scenes to most of the crap you find in the supermarket. Even an occasional whale hunt wouldn't bother me much, a lot less than Japan's "scientific" fleet anyway. Heck, let's even bring back head boards for babies to get that attractively sloped forehead, just like Chinese foot wrapping or those Burmese neck rings or those lip plugs in Africa. Why not, people should be proud of their culture, and other people should learn to deal with it. And if "the left" loses some people whose multiculturalism doesn't go any further than a handful of annual festivals, well no big loss then.

imho.

here it is

"And if you asked him/her how native indians treated their own children before Western "advance," what would they say?"

Well I guess you might count me as one of those roly-poly libs, and I would say it has no bearing on the matter at hand, how they treated their kids before. Whichever way that was, it obviously enabled them to survive and do so well, and in any case it is none of our business, never was, never will be.

We, on the other hand, purport to subscribe to the golden rule, and that entails not taking from other people because one can. End of story.

no pithy subject phrase

No pithyiness at all, I'm afraid.

"We will be left with a left that begins to doubt just how much effort they want to spend defending a culture they actually find a bit repugnant." You are referring to First Nations culture here, Patrick, but here's my thesis (well, my incoherent ramblings, perhaps)...that this is really the dilemma of the entire western world in realtion to our own culture. The right wants to return to "the good old days", perhaps, but whatever they want, they too, resent the turn the culture has taken. The left bewails that the "golden rule" no longer seems to apply - and I sense some truth in the longing for "Canada [to] seem clean, united, uncomplicated, again."

Canada may have been clean, one time, but it has never been united and uncomplicated - yet much of the world sees this as Canada's gift, this complexity. That is, too what I offer up - the best we can do as humans is to struggle through the complexity to find the resolutions that mean progress - we may never know again the certainty of social/economic/political rules that were simple and straightforward.

But if the genocidal treatment of First Nations were to come to an end today - you know, in the magical hypothetical sense - I doubt that many would be so repelled at the evolution of culture. One remembers the burning of witches without believing that current Christian thought endorses it.

me2

Dorothy is on the right track: how the natives treated each other is not relevant to how the Europeans and, later, the Canadians treated them. Rape, murder and torture are wrong no matter who does it.

BTW: Another book to read is Kevin Anett's Love and Death in the Valley. It describes the United Church's complicity in the residential school in Port Alberni.

And don't worry ME2, Kevin is from good European stock, so I'm sure he wouldn't lie or exaggerate.

Shoah Reprised

Until recently, if you asked most Canadians how first Canada's First Nations people were treated in the past, there was no answer, because no-one knew. People did know of the discrimination and poverty and reserves, but very few, if any, realized the extent and severity of the forcible kidnapping of First Nations children and being held captive in the Residential School System.

But history has a habit of returning from the grave, so to speak. And the truth of what befell thousands and thousands of First Nations children has come out.

Some of the postings above are so naive and uniformed they are virtually laughable. However, comments by ME2 and others may be forgiven because they have not heard first hand what it was like for a six year old Kwagulth girl or or boy to be taken from the safety of their family and grimly sent "away" to one of the Christian schools, where their lives were forever altered. Daily referred to as 'filthy Indians', 'dirty Indians', and looked upon with contempt and hatred, the details of what their lives became are heart breaking. No, not all of the kids were sexually assaulted. But they were treated as subhumans, and their self image destroyed.

I invite skeptics to leave the safety of your city and head out into the world of First Nations and speak with anyone who survived this experience. Then come back and comment on this tragedy. Until then, it would best if you avoid commenting about facts you clearly know nothing about.

ViveanLea: Don't want to go

ViveanLea: Don't want to go too far adrift here, but I think that during times of war, Canada can end up seeming quite uncomplicated. The Canada that caged away the Japanese, was probably feeling united and virtuous.

Yup, cultural genocide, alright

Trying to deal with you folks on a rational basis is like trying to catch feathers in the wind, so I'll ditch what I have prepared and offer the following, which I've offered here before, and then drop it.

Prior to contact, most FNs spoke very distinct languages, so distinct that they were unintelligible between tribes. Any interpretation needed for trading was effected through captured slaves or in many instances though "wives" that Nobles had acquired from Nobles in other tribes.

That all changed with the arrival of the White Man, and when particularly on the Coast after the bitter inter-tribal warfare had been suppressed, tribes began large-scale trading with each other as well as with the trading posts.

That saw the development of Chinook, a sort of pigeon-english which incorporated many English and native words into a common language used up and down the Coast and into the Interior until English replaced it.

Some 40 years ago, I was privileged to hear a talk by Haida Grand Chief Solomon Wilson, in whose unassuming presence I later and for the first time experienced the feeling of being in the presence of genuine nobility. He was a Res graduate - in the 20s, I'd guess, and it was in his talk I first heard about the variation in FN languages.

He said that while at school he could converse – other than in English - with only three others - all Haida – and that the same was the case for his other schoolmates. (And I've read the same was true for Interior tribes).

He told us that he was chief informant for John Enrico, the linguist who compiled (for the Haida) the only lexicon of a Coastal language free of Chinook. He told us that Enrico said that by the time he had finished, the chance to recover other languages was lost, with the passing away of informants along with the fact that many tribes were now speaking mostly and some almost entirely Chinook.

So the Res destroyed the native languages by supplanting them with English? And so, cultural genocide? Just HORSE SHIT for the terminally gullible. You deserve Suzuki and he deserves you.

LoLwut?

"Trying to deal with you folks on a rational basis is like trying to catch feathers in the wind, so I'll ditch what I have prepared and offer the following, which I've offered here before, and then drop it."

Just because your p.o.v. on a topic (for which you are relying on hearsay and anecdote) isn't shared doesn't make us irrational. When you start questioning the smarts of obviously intelligent people, any credibility you might have goes down the toilet.

Truth Hurts Along With Denial

The vitriol contained in some of the comments above is almost as frightening and disconcerting as the denial and the stories, told and untold, that are out there.
Perhaps the most specious arguments are the dismissive over-simplifications wherein the person resorts to "I know someone who says the system helped them" or "it wasn't as bad as all that" or "the intentions of the many were good and there were just a few transgressors". These attempts to quantify or minimize what clearly took place pay great disrespect to the victims and like it or not, there were many.
Having personally witnessed abuse in other "well-intentioned" institutional settings let me say this, no one emerges unscathed. My attempts to bring what I had witnessed out into the light were met with the full force of the system to try and silence me, to deny what I had seen, to shoot the messenger. I am still haunted by what I witnessed and by my inability to stand up to the denials and accusations that were pointed at me in an effort to silence my testimony.
Anyone with a genuine interest in the search for truth should look at the experience of Kevin Annette, a man who was ostracized and has paid a high price for trying to bring the truth to light. His sanity and ethics have been questioned and his documentation (there is a mountain of evidence)dismissed by many. His steadfast determination to fight the individual and collective denials has cost him dearly personally and professionally.
Parsing the actual numbers and broadcasting the denials does nothing to advance the understanding of something that for most people (including the survivors) is just to difficult to talk about or even contemplate. There is resistance on all fronts especially form people like Me2, who would rather tell his own stories, split hairs and leave the facts behind. I hope Kevin saw Mr. Harper's (until recently) fruitless efforts to effect reconciliation as some vindication for his many painful years of fighting to bring the truth to bear.
The fact that the majority of us somehow have managed to escape or avoid this type of of life-shattering, culture-crippling institutional abuse is no consolation to those who died as a result and the survivors who have remained silent or passed on this legacy of pain to their families and future generations.
So deny, deny, deny and when that fails, minimize or justify. Some day the truth will out for all of us, left right and center. I can only wonder, what will Me2 have to say then?

ME2 again

You say that because residential schools replaced native culture with the English language that all the victims should be thankful? Trying to read your writing without punching in my computer screen is like... well... not as bad as being a residential school victim I guess.

So according to your expert opinion, in BC there were a bunch of savages who constantly made war on each other and never communicated with anyone outside of their tribe. Then white people showed up and peace blanketed the land and trade "began" and flourished. Ooookaaay. And then you have the gall to say something like "Just HORSE SHIT for the terminally gullible".

What do you know about native languages? Does your expertise include knowing how many languages were spoken on the coast of BC? I have a feeling that if I told you there were 3, that you would just say "HORSE SHIT for the terminally gullible" again. There were 3 groups - Tsimpshian, Kwakiutl, and Salish (5 if you include the islands - Haida and Nootka). Now get out your map of Europe and show me any part of comparable size that had less than twice that many. And then tell me again who did the constant warring, and maybe even who had more slaves, and why not who had more unwilling wives (rule of thumb).

Idiot. You deserve to be trapped in your own mind.

ROFLOL

Calm down folks, in days to come, after all the treaties are settled, it will be safe for researchers to corrobate what I have written above without being hammered by the unreasoning politically correct.

And then I expect to hear all you guys chime in with "Yeah, that's what I've been saying all along!!"

So you're welcome, I'm glad I've made your day.

weak argument

It's a weak argument to claim that fear prevents your pet theory from being publicized.

genocide

”Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”

This is the definition of genocide as was brought into use by Lemkin, and it is the definition used by the United Nations , as follows:
“...any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
(a) Killing members of the group;
(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
(c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
– Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, Article II.”

The first quote was taken from Wikipedia, and the second from the United Nations web page …’cultural’ genocide is redundant since this definition of genocide includes it. Canada was a signatory to the convention in 1948, and ratified it in 1952.

Attempting to force the minority to speak the language of, and otherwise adopt the culture of the majority was genocide. The conditions in which natives currently live - the disgraceful housing, lack of safe drinking water, assuredly the delay in getting flu anti-virals to first nations' reserves - is genocide.

So much to toss onto the flames....

History teaches us of the use of infected blankets in an intentional attempt to kill - genocide.
BUT
I am tired of having to accept the blame for the actions of those I am not related to. When do we 'get on with it'?

The Reservation system was designed to keep FNs outside of the economic world, and outside of the responsibilities that create equality among people. Sign over land to the people who live there. Full and free title - with both the benefits and the responsibilities of ownership. We should stop saying we need to take care of you. If the FNs want equality, then they need to accept the responsibilities. They need to stop asking for the world, we need to stop giving it to them.

Do we not learn of value by learning the cost associated with it?

Pick a date, all reserve land reverts to full and free title. And no more free rides. (ok, a transition period) Toss in some crown land. Is it not true that 110% of BC's land area is under land claim? Not even the FN's agree on what is 'theirs', and given (as I was taught) they didn't believe in ownership...?

It is also time to accept that FNs, just by ethic heritage, are not now nor were they ever better caretakers of the natural world. No, they did not destroy their close-by environments with pollution, but only because their level of technology did not allow them a population density that overwhelmed the environment. They did not drive bison (salmon, whales, and so on) to extinction only because they didn't have the technology. They didn't develop an agricultural way of life that allowed them to live in one place long enough for them to destroy the local environment. Native communities threw their garbage out their windows - but 200 years ago it was all bio-degradable, and when they rotated back to the same location 3 seasons later, the environment had self cleaned.

They had societies full of class-based exclusions. they had wars. They had slaves.

I have experienced the same environmental destruction from FNs folk as from any other group (except maybe oil-sands supporters), from littering to oil pollution. I was involved in anti-logging and land claims standoffs and listened to the FN folk tell me straight up that the issue was not saving forests - it was about who gets to control the economics of logging. That was when I grew to respect land claims - they have the right to self-determine the use of the land they live on, and the responsibility to pay for their mistakes.

As to culture, we non-FNs can always go back to our comfortable culture - some place free of fear, free of harassment. Well, FNs can't.

We can't undo what is done, but we'd better acknowledge it.

Too many taboos, too many hard questions no one will ask. We'll never get through this until we take off the rose-coloured glasses. Both sides.

ShortSummer

You appear to have been reading Tom Flanagan..

Suffice to say there are a good many other academics who don't accept his analysis...however, I've been through all this before so I'll leave it at that. This debate turns rancorous at the slightest provocation and I’m just not into that tonight.

You read like a reasonable person - I'd only add that it may not be particularly helpful to base your 'opinions' on a few isolated anecdotes and the theories of a man who is, for all intents and purposes, supporting the same kinds of fundamentally racist views that motivated the Christian Brothers. Basically, he believes that we (the white majority) have to ‘save’ the benighted natives from themselves by turning them into free enterprise capitalists.

Fundamentally, I don't think converting all of the current native reservations into fee simple land tenure is going to make much difference and it sure as hell isn’t going to address the poverty, the alcoholism, the diabetes and the recidivism of native populations who are currently starving on those lands now (with a few obvious exceptions) all the while eating up several billions of dollars each year from the department of Indian Affairs.

I don’t know what the answer is – I do know that turning the Rez into the ‘private fiefdom’ of a few so-called ‘elected’ native leaders and their families isn’t going to do the trick. You might care to ask a few First Nations women how that’s worked out, the Nis’ga for example.

As to your other point, as I posted on another Tyee thread, part of the current difficulty in this area stems from the determination of the Campbell government (acting at the behest of his corporate masters) to provide 'certainty' relative to resource and utilities developments throughout the province.

The CEO and his friends don't want anything getting in the way of corporate profiteering - that, in a nutshell, is the impetus behind the so-called 'New Relationship'. It has less than nothing to do with actually addressing the real deficits of First Nations citizens and their future as citizens of this nation and province.

And, as I’ve written before, anyone who thinks the costs of the ‘treaty’ negotiations that have already taken place are going to suddenly disappear when the ink is dry on a few more deals hasn’t been paying attention.

The meter is running on those deals – and the clock is ticking. Those bills are being paid now by the senior governments but, when each deal is finished the total charges are going to be paid by the new ‘native governments’ themselves – with interest.

Just remember, that fee simple land can be mortgaged – will have to be mortgaged to pay the bills – and, when the profits don’t materialize, the land can be re-possessed.

And then where are the former residents of the Rez?

It can't be about 'saving'

GWest, you point out some fundamental pieces of wisdom. At least I think so anyway.

To add... as it were... I am so tired of this concept that "we" need to "save" anyone - we certainly continue to prove we can't even save ourselves.

To continue to believe that we need to save.. arrogance has a hard downfall.

As to my view of the reservation system - partly formed from my years of living on two - and partly from time spent visiting reserves from Northern Ontario, Saskatchewan and Alberta.

I can't say as I agree with Mr. Flanagan, as I haven't read his work. My views have been formed from seeing the mess that is the product of 100 years of government / bureaucratic ignorance and insensitivity toward those who live 'on reserve'. Hummm, what is wrong - where to start? Water? Housing? health care? meaningful economic activity? the list is long.

I mentioned a transition period. Limits of space (sorry Malthus) left out issues of self-governance - of which you have raised some of the ugly realities.

In simple terms, what we have doesn't work We have over 100 years of proof. What will work, well that is the harder question. How do we (actually, we are only part - unless 'we' includes the FNs) get to somewhere new, somewhere sustainable? That is the hardest part.

I don't support a free-enterprise system, what I believe in is the pride and responsibility of being able to say 'this land is ours' - no more of 'this land is held in trust for us because you don't think we can care for ourselves'

Those who benefit from the current system will fight change. Those who see profit will direct things to their desired outcome - as GWest has pointed out...

And when we say the Government pays the bills, we need to rephrase - we are paying the bills, and we will continue to do so...As the bills get larger, our ability to pay ... well there are limits - we refuse to fund health care properly, or to support the elderly respectfully as it is.... What we have created isn't working. So what will work? How do we protect those who need protecting?

More racist maunderings

Thank you for joining in here, ShortSummer. As GWest notes, there can be no solution to this rancourous debate if all it results in is kindergarten name-calling (and I regret for succumbing to the temptation, though I won't apologise for it).

Re the reservation system, it was set up with purely moral intent, and with the fully considered support of native leaders of the time. Without it FNs would have been scattered to the winds, unable to maintain tribal cohesiveness.

A major flaw in the system was ensuring communal ownership of Treaty and Reserve lands, which was done to ensure that the land could not be alienated for short-term gain by people and leadership unaware of or uncaring of the value of titled land ownership. This was not because FNs were "stupid", but rather becase private ownership which was never a part of FN traditions, since all land was held by the tribe, and held only because it could be defended.

The "flaw" arises because these lands cannot be used for surety, since the lender cannot seize the land if an FN borrower defaults on a loan.

In response to this complaint, the Federal govenment has over the years advanced hundreds - if not thousands - of millions of dollars in "forgivable" loans to finance FN ventures of hundreds of kinds. Very, very few have succeeded. This is again not because FNs are "stupid" or incapable of learning, but merely because running a successful business demands a cultural mindset unknown to traditional FN cultures - a mindset which even today they commonly refer to as "greed".

Right from the outset of the current land claims drive, I've wondered at the tremendous support our business and financial elites have given to FN land claims, since as a group their aims are inimical to those of us wage slaves here or elsewhere.

It is not too hard to imagine how, if FN claims to all publicly-owned land and resources are allowed, how they would inevitably wind up in the hands of our elites. All that would be required is for all the goodies we presently give to FNs because they are "Queen Victoria's children", and which presently isolate FNs from economic reality, to be cut off. In jig time these assets wuld be sold or borrowed upon, and wihin a generation would be in the domain of "Free Enterprise".

Look what's starting to happen now. Do you really believe Campbell's a philanthropist?

great posts

The failure rate of all new business is over 50 %, although it is slightly lower for women and First Nations, I believe. But be that as it may, the fundamental problem is in the 'cultural mindset': rather difficult to sell the culture that we are living in as manifestly better - except in certain material things - than life on the reserve. To clarify that, while First Nations would expect to have clean water and decent housing etc., it is doubtful that there are other aspects of our culture that they would want to emulate.

In essence, we are purporting to 'save' First Nations people as we drown in the cesspool ourselves. This is not an attempt to change the direction of the discussion, or to minimize the realities of the scars of First Nations people, simply to say that imposing one dysfunctional culture on top of another will have the predictable effects it did in the past.
If there is a remedy, surely it lies in deeper insight into 'culture', as opposed to economic activity.

sexual abuse in Catholic schools

I found ME2's defenses interesting: a few bad apples do not a collective offense make, true.

But the Church and the churches have a long and recent record of covering up the actions of a 'few bad apples'.

The Church in America has had to pay millions in compensation to victims of abuse, which the hierarchy knew about and did nothing about: they covered up their buddies' crimes.

So, is it "Recovered Memory Syndrome"? That would mean a lot of patients with delusions of persecution.

the religions of the oppressed

As for the churches' history of oppressing minorities of other religions, I can't think of a better book than Vittorio Lanternari's classic "Religions of the Oppressed".

In a part of Africa, the saying went: "First you had the Bible, and we had the land. Now you have the land and we have the Bible."

More racism

While I agree with your view re religion and colonisation, Iftekhar, it does not address the undelying issue that sours all discussion concerning "Indian/White" interactions in Canada.

That is the charge that all participation on the part of the "dominant culture" has been done with malice aforethought, with the objective of eradicating FN cultures and traditions, posed today as "cultural genocide".

That cannot be addressed without placing those events completely in the context of the times, without appealing to the spurious arguments of "should've, could've and would've" based upon purely modern sentiments, thereby validating guilt and "reribution".

Had cultural genocide been the goal, it would have been done far easier and more surely had they followed the methods then employed by ALL other conquering/colonising peoples - including FNs – by using massacre, enslavement, or just plain dispossession..

The British were the first people to acknowledge that coloured people had souls (don't laugh, that was a huge step), and that led to their abolishment of slavery 35 years before the Americans. They were also the first to insist upon Treaties with Aboriginals, recognising that they too had rights. Some racists, these Brits!!

A little-known fact of history is that a prime reason for the American Revolution against the British was resentment for the treaties the British made with tribes on the East Coast giving them their traditional prime agricultural lands, along with the huge territories ceded in the West.

Following the successful Revolution, they immediately began breaking the treaties, and meeting resistance, began the brutal "Indian Wars" and the forced relocations. Aboriginal advocates cite those atrocities as our history too, but they deliberately lie, for our record - except for the few instances to-be-expected in human affairs - is one of honouring treaties.

The more recent record of treaties in BC is more convoluted, and is now being sorted out in our Courts. But if that is to be seen as motivated by racism, why should we finance their appeals, and why should we modify our own rules of evidence by allowing hearsay evidence in the form of "Oral Hisrory", even while that evidence remains disputed by similar evidence from competing tribes?

Sorry folks, your willingness to believe absolutely anything that supports your beliefs and reject anything that doesn't, flows entiely from your too-convenient and mistaken belief that the "White" culture has been and remains completely suffused with racism.

In your eyes that justifies your ad hominem srategy of villianising anyone who challenges your falsifications. In case you don’t realise it, all that does is add to the difficulties facing “reconciliation”.