In the end, it’s not up to white people to “save” First Nations or pretend we know what is best.
Pay the debt when and where it needs to be paid, but stop the white saviour complex and the racist colonial “we know better than the savages” attitude. Let them live their lives. If they want to move to the city and join the oil and gas industry, sure, if they want to stay on their land and farm? Sure. Fix whatever it is we’ve done to make the current system unsustainable, and then let them live they way they choose to live as long as they feel it’s possible.
A little respect for these people and their culture goes a lot further than thinking every undoing is their own fault and only we can save them. That’s the attitude responsible for some of the biggest black marks in Canadian history, so stop succumbing to it.
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