Editor:
Why are Indians still Indian? Doesn’t everyone in the world undergo cultural change whenever better goods and better ways are theirs to have?
Doesn’t a complete change of living essentials as well as other goods, entertainment and knowledge make a people completely different from what they were?
North American Aboriginals voluntarily abandoned their old lifestyle because they saw advantage in new things and ways. So, having dumped their old ways, why are they still “Indian?”
The descendents of Canada’s indigenous peoples are no more different from the rest of us than the rest of us are from each other, yet their generations have been legislated, coaxed, coerced and coddled into staying “on the rez” by government policies that stink of condescension (racial prejudice with a smiley face).
Who wouldn’t expect them to be able to adapt just as everyone else does?
Bigots, that’s who. White liberals believe that “First” Nations people must be kept and helped because many Indians live a poor life.
Hey, do-gooder: it’s your fault they are in a bad way; you have been keeping them down with all that “help.”
You brought on the nonsense about what land ownership means, what culture is, how “special” they are – and we all know what you mean by “special.”
Do we expect immigrants to live here generation after generation as people not capable of making it on their own?
Of course not; so why do we pretend that our neighbours of indigenous ancestry can’t make it on their own?
We owe each individual status Indian (not tribes, bands or chiefs) an apology and reparations for the years they have lived under Canada’s governmental racism with all of its unfortunate meddling in their lives.
We must free them as quickly and painlessly as possible.
Hopefully, they will then overcome the legacy of “ward of government” status — but that will be up to them as it should have been all along.
Eric Doll
Logan Lake
