Quote:
Originally Posted by Resolute 14
To be more accurate, I don't think what we are doing here is a worthwhile process because it will fail to achieve any meaningful progress as a means of reconciliation. Here's the thing: reconciliation is a two-way street. What is happening now is not.
As to the rest of your post, lets face the elephant in the room: our politicians will agree to renaming bridges and removing statues and putting "Native-inspired" art along highway overpasses because it's the path of least resistance. First Nations leaders will praise the same for the same reason. And everyone pats themselves on the back in celebration of how progressive they are.
Meanwhile none of this will achieve the slightest thing in resolving the actual issues that lead to the high drug use, high suicide rates and other systemic issues that you mention. The problem is that the reserve system sucks. We've created this awful system of segregation that has been entrenched for over a century and we've put most of these reserves in the middle of nowhere where there is no opportunity.
And nobody actually wants to deal with the reserve system because doing so will be ugly. It will create new wounds on top of old and will take multiple generations to come to terms with. And it is entirely understandable why many would not even want to try. But we're not going to actually achieve reconciliation until we come to a point where we are actually neighbours. And by that, I do not mean in the sense of Calgary and the T'suutina being adjacent municipalities. I mean when a family of First Nation descent lives beside yours and you and they work together while your children play together and go to school together and think nothing of it because that's what kids do.
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Yep this about sums it up.