Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
What is it that we expect natives in isolated communities to do for income? For work? Their pre-contact ways of living are long gone, and they're never coming back. Trapping is a way for a few people to earn subsistence living. Then you have logging, fishing, and working in mines - same as other isolated, small towns in rural Canada.
We expect people who have lived in outport villages in Newfoundland, logging towns in Northern Ontario, and mining towns in the interior of B.C. for generations to integrate into our city-centric, modern lifestyle. We encourage their young people to leave, get and education, and pursue their future in cities. If anyone complains, we scoff and say old white people have to adopt to the new world.
So why, besides some abstract sense of guilt or atonement, do we encourage native Canadians to continue to live in declining communities that offer no opportunity for the young?
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Since when don’t we encourage it?
Is there anyone who really thinks that allowing First Nations people to keep their way of life and traditions is the same as outright discouraging young people from seeking any opportunity at all? That’s plainly ridiculous.
There are plenty of First Nations people who seek work and life outside of their communities. Fixing (or completely demolishing) a broken system and settling disputes over land rights, while making amends for cultural genocide, is not “encouraging native Canadians to continue to live in declining communities.”
Part of the problem is exactly this, it’s all or nothing for some people. It’s keep people the way they are, or tell them they need to leave it all behind and westernise with no apology or sympathy warranted. The fact is, if Canada was better at integrating and recognising their culture and their communities historically and now, this problem wouldn’t be where it is. And continuing not to do that is certainly a far cry from “encouraging young people to seek opportunity.”
It’s fine rhetoric “we’re encouraging young people! (by considering the First Nations angle closed and stopping any further concessions) but meaningless and ultimately no better a solution than what we currently have.