Anyone is welcome to submit a Guest Blog Entry to torontomike.com. I received the following entry earlier today.
This might be unpopular, and it's definitly touchy. Why are reservations in such horrible shape? How is it that most other communities in this nation are able to maintain their public services? Could it be that all of the services that we take for granted take money to pay for, money that we all pay in taxes?
Yes, the aboriginal peoples of Canada were here first. Yes, the European colonists and their progeny abused the natives horribly, marginalized their culture, did just about anything else that you can think of that today would result in charges of genocide and massive human rights violations.
I hate to be totally insensitive about this but...it's over. Canada is a country of a thousand cultures. I don't see why the native culture couldn't survive if the reservations were dissolved, the treaties scrapped, and all these people just become citizens of Canada like the rest of us.
I admit, I'm ignorant. I don't understand. Someone please educate me why this culture cannot seem to survive without our help, but refuses to be a part of our culture as well.
Mike H.
You're right, that is a touchy subject.
John Stackhouse wrote an excellent series of articles where he investigated our "quiet apartheid that segregates, and thus weakens, native and non-native society". Not surprisingly, his final installment in the series is entitled "End the segregation". Integration seems to be the only sensible course of action on 2005. In my humble opinion, segregation promotes racism.
