Well said, Bob Rae of Canada, about our First Nation, Brothers and Sisters in Canada: Thank you: Im not someone who is opposed to development. I do not have a philosophical view that any or all such development is evil or wrong or immoral. I dont share that perspective, but I do share a perspective that says we have not yet as a country fully embraced who we really are, or understood the fact that long before European settlement arrived in any part of the country were people living here who lived here for thousands and thousands of years, he said. (The same STATEMENT of FACT, also works for the Native Nations, in the United States of American). That Indigenous people had a language and government and economy and way of life which had endured for generations and was never respected by the people who came. The people who came somehow thought their economy and religion and government was superior to the one they found. And there was a sense of racism and a sense of contempt for the culture that already existed and had the deepest roots in the country from one coast to another coast. And history now records a history of violence of disease, of discrimination, where peoples very existence was denied. Where it was asserted in legal terms that this was no mans land. That we can claim sovereignty because no one actually lives here. When you consider the brutal untruth of that statement, you realize some of the bridges we have to cross to get to equality and understanding. When Canada became a country in 1867, one of the first pieces of legislation that was passed was the Indian Act, a piece of legislation that defined who Indigenous people were. Where they could live, where they could go, what they could go. They were not allowed to vote. In some cases they could not leave the little reserves that had been assigned to them. When the movement of the economy and the railroad came further and further , the buffalo disappeared. Within the space of a decade, the animal that had been the basis of the economy was wiped out. And people were starved into submission and signed a treaty.
Posted on: Mon, 26 Jan 2015 22:22:24 +0000
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