Comments on: Aboriginal self-government long past due

By: Patricia Stephens-Brown

Patricia Stephens-Brown — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 19:28:01 +0000

I agree, most Canadians don’t understand the perspective of indigenous struggles. Why is this you ask? Well history was written by those colonizing white folk and it is from this point of view that most of us were taught. There was little treatment of respect and dignity as the nation of indigenous peoples, found in this “newly discovered” foreign land, was unsettled, displaced and oppressed. Only recently did the Canadian Federal government acknowledge their rights. What will come if this remains to be seen. Their desire to protect the natural resources of the land is one lesson we might want to listen to!

By: Avery Cooper

Avery Cooper — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 14:24:04 +0000

Here, here!

There’s an excellent book on the market about this subject, written by Marie Wadden, called “Where the Pavement Ends: Canada’s Aboriginal Recovery Movement and the Urgent Need for Reconciliation” (Douglas & McIntyre, 2009). It seems to me that the Canadian government is still trying to pigeon-hole Aboriginal peoples into its way of functioning. What’s worse is, I really think the average Canadian has no real grasp on Aboriginal issues and struggles; until I read Wadden’s book, I admit to being oblivious to Aboriginals’ points of view. Loosen the reigns, Canada!

By: Samantha Maclean

Samantha Maclean — Thu, 21 Jan 2010 20:05:04 +0000

After years of invading and occupying non-White countries and their peoples with white male Commanders-in-Chief at the helm, the USA has “changed” and is now invading and occupying non-White countries and their peoples with a blackface Commander-in-Chief. Call me hopelessly cynical, but somehow behind Bernd Christmas’ proposal and pseudo-anti-racist rhetoric against the very label “Indian Act,” I sniff a similarly fraudulent revolution being prepared in which government-corporate mismanagement and ruin of aboriginal people’s lives by White masters is supposed to be transformed by a no-less-ruinous transfer into the hands/under the direction of aboriginal masters… like, say, Bernd Christmas perhaps?