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Originally Posted by Sliver
One encouraging thing I've noticed as a father is how much better my kids' education on indigenous people has been in elementary and middle school versus mine. I had no knowledge of residential schools until well into adulthood. I remember learning about first nations people and culture and it was all the 'noble savage' trope.
In the 80s and 90s we friggen listened and laughed to Brocket 99. I hope we wouldn't have found it funny had we known, A. We were being racist and B. Why first nations people have so many more challenges than your average white guy. I know my kids wouldn't laugh at that...they'd be horrified.
Once you have a generation that can appreciate why there are unique difficulties and challenges for first nations people you can begin to address them. I think there has been too much baked-in racism in Boomers, early Gen X and whoever it was older than Boomers (the greatest generation?) to meaningfully address the problems. Hopefully younger Gen Xers and Millennials can start to move things in the right direction for healing and atonement.
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I'd like to see that increased awareness and education turn to action and better living conditions for indigenous canadians. I'll be honest I'm a bit pessimistic when it comes to the response we've seen to this event because I worry that flags at half mast, orange shirts and "awareness" won't translate. Or maybe it will just not as quickly as I'd like. I will admit to being very weary of anything that resembles lip service or that attempts to solve a people problem with quick and easy solutions. We're talking about a literal cultural shift here and that can be very difficult, especially in the prairies where the rift between indigenous people and other Canadians is very deep.
I can say that as a youngster in Saskatchewan, I remember learning a ton about indigenous people and their history, including field trips which were quite memorable to me. It wasn't until I was older that it seemed to fade and the systemic racism washed some of that away.