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Originally Posted by opendoor
The politics of assimilation with regards to the First Nations peoples of Canada has been a complete an abject failure. Various levels of government spent 100+ years in an attempt to force assimilation through residential schools and whatnot and they all failed. Given that, expecting an entire group of marginalized people to assimilate based on the will of the majority or the government is a pipe dream. First Nations people and culture exist and they'll continue to exist. Any solution that doesn't accept that reality is doomed to fail.
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Black, Chinese, Indian, etc. culture continues to exist as well. "Assimilation" is the wrong word, imo. Integration would be better. The institutional racism against blacks, for instance, has decreased significantly over the past several decades as they integrated into what used to be "white" society. There is still far too much racism and bigotry, and the native population would be starting well behind the eight ball, but in the long run, two peoples can only come to understand each other by learning to be together.
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Given that, the solution to this issue isn't really clear, but the only real way to move forward is on the premise of First Nations people having some form of autonomy over areas of land that are large enough for them to live off of. How much land that is, and where it is will be a subject of long debate and negotiation, but to me that's the only realistic way forward. Obviously measures will have to be taken to ensure that the current corruption that exists in the band system will not simply be transposed onto the new one, and that too will be extremely difficult but there are ways to try and avoid that, and some of those options have been brought up here.
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I get your comments about respecting native rights, etc., but the problem I have with maintaining the reserve system is that simply having the land is worthless. It would be worthless to any one else too, unless an economy that can support the community can be formed. In most cases, this is not likely, and the result is a perpetuation of the current situation.
But even if it is decided to keep the reserve system, there is still the problem of forcing change against those who monopolize the wealth and power. And frankly, that force needs to be internal to those communities.
Overall, I agree with Jammies that dismantling the reserve system is the way forward. But there is no easy way to get from the starting point to that point. And the will has to exist within the native community to even make the effort before it is even worth discussing.