These days, an elected official who engages in anything less than lockstep, verbatim repetition of the official narrative regarding residential schools, land acknowledgements and so, no matter how well explained and carefully considered their argument might be, is guaranteed to be branded a racist or potentially removed from their post.
“Over the past 70 years it has transitioned to native, Aboriginal, First Nations, Indigenous,” Coffey said. “I find that reductive, and it dismisses the rich cultural diversity and unique identities within Indian communities.
Coffey also praised both the intentions and the outcomes of Canada’s former residential school system.
Still NO PROOF any residential school issues, other than natural deaths “without malice or intent” took place. Best evidence is the FACT that native Elders and impartial native investigation has been moot. At the time child deaths occurred, as they do today, It was unfortunate, but “AT THE TIME” given sad and challenging living conditions, on reserves and remote native communities, many were “sent” to these schools and places, as food and care was available through charitable and church based organizations.
You have to view “all through” the lense of the time. Send them away for faith and sustinence, or a better life, or destitution and starvation where they were.
Pay attention to all voices, it was not sentence or assured death or mis treatment…in many cases, it was the best option and path of hope.
Agreed, and more than that. Residential schools were the only escape children had from family abuse by one or both parents, or siblings, into a structured environment. So perhaps the question becomes: how many childrens’ lives were saved by residential schools rather than becoming incidental casualties in family abuse, battery and alcholism.
You are right to note the difficult problems of remote and northern communities. Residential schools were the only escape from this.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s, when people began to discuss residential schools, endless Indian women would call radio talk shows praising their education. Eventually they must have been convinced to shut the frig up to keep the gravy train rolling. Incest and sexual assault was and maybe still is routine on some reserves. The protection offered by residential school must have been comforting to many.
Jeez. A brave and honest Canadian politician! Where’d he come from?
… probably from flyover Canada. Regardless … he. must. be. destroyed.
How do you Canadian’s tolerate your cancel culture? You’re all so nice. Ohhhh … I see. This man wasn’t “nice” to the Indians. He didn’t tow the narrative. He didn’t use the “approved language”. So his fellow “nice” Canadians canceled him.
“We’re so nice” is just a coward camoflaging his yellowness with a screen of superiority.
“Jeez. A brave and honest Canadian politician! Where’d he come from?”
And why can’t the apparent next Prime Minister of Canada speak the truth like this, instead of shamelessly voting to accuse ALL CANADIANS of genocide?
how about we have that debate in a public setting, livestreamed. let’s have Michelle Stirling Tom Flanagan, Hymie Rubenstein and Jordon Peterson on one side, Pam Palmeteer and whoever activists the AFN wants to pick on their side… it shouldn’t take too long to show who is full of crap. Facts and archival records trump rhetoric any day.
Do you have a problem with oral history where the right memories were worth $1/4 million without direct evidence and the wrong memories are ostracized? The Indians themselves, at the time, called the payments arse money.
Makes me wonder what we’ll be calling them when in the year 5674, Zork and Grok, two space aliens from the Andromeda galaxy arrive requesting they be taken to the leader. Will we still be playing hockey then? Will there still be a pandering land acknowledgement before puck drop?
A brief history of voting rights in tier 2 Canada will show how this country has used race as criteria for voting for almost 90 years since its founding, and that is was a “Progressive Conservative” gov’t which extended that right to include the final excluded racial group, the Inuit / Eskimos… in 1960
https://electionsanddemocracy.ca/voting-rights-through-time-0/brief-history-federal-voting-rights-canada
Canada’s “group think” is strong. include the vax/jab in this too.
I use another word for group think.
It is SOP for the woke to vilify, insult and dehumanize any and all who do not march in lock-step with them.
Racist, sexist, transphobic, ableist, whatever.
This is not confined to the Indian narratives in Canada, its pretty much ubiquitous all over the western hemisphere, oh, and Australia.
The politicians do it.
The teachers do it.
The Hollywood glitterati do it.
The urinalists do it.
Every single DEI dept. or consulting agency does it.
When the Cree in Hobema acknowledges they are on Traditional Blackfoot Confederacy land and the rest of the Cree acknowledges they are in the land of whoever they booted out in the late 17th Century, I’ll discuss possibly doing land acknowledgments. The white liberals forcing this crap have no clue of history.
A late friend who was a Huron told me how people of his generation had a hatred of the Mohawks and Iroquois because historically they would do attacks to murder all their tribe’s adult males, enslave their women, adopt their healthiest children and left the others to die.
He similarly told me tales of the over two century wars in northern Quebec between the Cree and the Inuit.
The Cree and Assiniboine in the Athabasca Valley and area should apologize to the Sarcee for stealing their land. The Peace and Slave Lake Cree should apologize for stealing the land of the Beaver (Dene) Indians. And how about compensation, as they signed no treaties?
“Mountainview”? What mountains are they viewing from Manitobastan?
Chiefs said they listened to his speech and started crying. But no, they didn’t hear a thing he said.
Disingenuous and ignorant liberal racists won’t listen to anyone not of their faith.
From Dauphin one see the Riding Mountains to the southwest and the Duck Mountains to the northwest. They are impressively scenic. No, they’re not really mountains, but you don’t realise that until you drive though them.
I demand reparations be paid to the descendants of the tribes the BC coastal Indians enslaved. Totem poles are now considered a symbol of inter-tribal imperialism/colonialism, akin to a swastika.
Should have wiped them off the face of the earth, I guess, because their bellyakin is undignified and their blatant lies, pathetic.