In my opinion, this is what has been happening for the last two hundred or so years to the aboriginal population in Canada. The present generation is fed up with the Canadian government, and they are demanding retribution for the broken promises and abuses they as a people have suffered, including individual compensation for those who were taken as children away from their families and forced to live in residential schools run by the Catholic Church. The goal of these schools was to teach native children the language and culture of the white colonists. Many of the children suffered abuse at the hands of those entrusted with their care and education,
This people group has been mislabeled as Indians for a few hundred years now, due to the geographical errors of Christopher Columbus and other explorers. The explorers were a few hundred thousand kilometers off when they thought they had landed in India. In a letter to the editor published in our local newspaper recently, a native leader quipped that he takes no offence at being called an Indian. He was just thankful that Columbus did not mistake North America for Turkey. I think that the current politically correct designation is First Nations peoples, since this group is made up of many tribes.
Today, the majority of the First Nations people in Canada live on reserves - tracts of land which were set aside for them through treaties made with the Europeans who claimed the rest of the land as colonies a couple of centuries ago. The idea was to allow First Nations groups enough space to continue their ancestral way of life: a self -sustaining lifestyle of hunting and gathering. Today there is much legal dispute about which lands were actually granted in those treaties. Living off the land in modern times has become virtually unsustainable, and the majority of families living on these reserves have turned to government handouts and welfare as a way of life.
Unemployment is a widespread problem on reserves. Chronic unemployment has led to chronic alcohol and substance abuse problems. Alcohol and substance abuse lead to violence, which in turn leads to broken families, high suicide and homicide rates. Native offenders make up the largest percentage of the population of the correction system in Canada. The living conditions on many reserves have deteriorated to such appalling conditions that they more resemble that of Third World countries than the standard of living enjoyed by the rest of the Canadian population.
How did the problem get this bad? First of all, the Europeans who made the treaties with the native population could not have foreseen that this seemingly vast and empty continent would one day be populated from coast to coast, or that the value of the land promised to the First Nations would become astronomical, or that restitution for the broken treaties would be demanded by the great- great grandchildren of those who were robbed of their land and their way of life. Our generation is attempting to redress the wrongs committed by our ancestors. It has been a monumental undertaking, since much of the land in question currently belongs to private citizens, so agreements must be made to determine the cash value of the land and then to distribute the money fairly.
I am in no way saying that our present government and the present leaders of the Roman Catholic Church do not owe retribution to those whose dignity and way of life were taken. Obviously the First Nations people are still suffering. I can attest to the rundown housing and living conditions on reserves, having visited several myself, including several in Northern Manitoba, where conditions are even worse. But, in my opinion, if the taxpayers of Canada keep footing the bill for new housing, the people lose the incentive to maintain their homes. Incentive comes with ownership. I know that the problems are complex, and that generational poverty is not easily addressed, but I don't understand why the unemployed people on the reserves are not employed in building and maintaining their own homes and infrastructure, instead of relying on the government to provide a better way of life for them.
The experience of a people group suffering poverty and racism as a result of wrongs committed over several generations is unfortunately not an isolated incident. History is replete with examples of wars, invasions, genocides, and empire building. Human beings are capable of atrocious behavior towards one another. Is there any possibility that our generation could redress all of the wrongs of history? Can we go back and give each piece of land back to those from whose ancestors it was stolen? How far back could we go? Even among the various tribes of the First Nations there was warfare and invasion long before any Europeans showed up in the Americas.
