I see a bunch of you skipped early Canadian History class. What do you all know about the alliances and agreements among the British, French and Indians that forged this country?
Let's start with Treaties. Treaties established over the last several hundred years were business partnerships between Indian leaders and the British and Dominion governments who recognized their aboriginal rights to the land but wanted more Indian land for settlement and development (trains, roads, navigation and mining mostly). So they made a bunch of deals with the existing Indian Bands called Treaties. FNs surrendered certain aboriginal land rights (not all) to the government as investment capital in exchange for a long-term return on that investment that included education funding, annual payments (called Treaty annuities), and the maintenance of aboriginal rights to the land for gathering, hunting, fishing, trapping (which the government refused to maintain and defend after all, allowing white men to clean out the fur bearers and large game). If First Nation governments had not agreed to establish Treaties, Canada would be quite different than it is today. Existing treaty rights like education, new treaty negotiations and universal health care are among some of the reasons why we provide billions of dollars a year to FNs as part of this business partnership.
There's a lot of other BS in this thread about Attawapiskat from guys posting "facts" from rants by Ezra Levant. He's the biggest right wing hate monger in the country and is notorious for making up his own version of the facts. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ezra_Levant
Like the $9million stock portfolio that Chief Spence and her partner supposedly have. That's the bands trust portfolio of annual royalties from the multi-billion dollar DeBeers diamond mine, held in trust for future generations. Not quite what Ezra claimed is it?
http://www.thestar.com/news/canada/politics/article/1312182--walkom-the-real-story-behind-attawapiskat-s-problems
Actually I think you missed the history lessons. Or at least you are interpreting them as you see it.
You are talking about some "business" like deals or something like we are leasing their land.
Treaties were setup for many reasons and leasing the land from the FNs wasn't one of them.
They were setup to preserve FNs culture, to have an ally against US that always had tendencies to "drop in".
Treates were setup so that FN we not eliminated which happened in the US and so on.
Last I remember FNs were losing out the land to the "guns" anyway.
Indians knew that Europeans were going to settle in the land whether treaties existed or not so they did one smart thing they could.
They agreed to treaties that would preserve some land for them. And when you look at it, they have an excellent deal.
And yes the moneys given to them are "handouts". Basically a welfare system that is keeping them just above water. Barely.
If they knew better they would not take that money and would learn to become self sufficient.
Sandman, to talk about "sovereign peoples", "use of the land" is to truly not understand the politics of the day.
Now I may sound like I'm anti FNs, which is not true at all.
I would rather they face reality and get with the times.
The times of free roaming the land, hunting and gathering are long over (although I missed those days too
) and they should get over it already or they will go further and further into oblivion.
Look a the Osoyoos band. They didn't take government handouts and made themselves prosperous thanks to, in large part, a few good men.
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Topic: Idle No More? (Read 25474 times)