It's ironic that back in the 80's, Canada would not trade with South Africa due to apartheid, yet today we still have, with the native reserve system, de facto apartheid.
One day the system will have to end; nothing is forever and the time for reserves has long gone. The idea of reserves was flawed to begin with - you cannot expect people who were, in the main, hunter/gatherers, and whose culture was derived from that way of life, to take up sedentary, aimless life in (relatively) tiny wedges of land and to preserve their values. The high rates of drug abuse, alcoholism, suicide and violence are the results of this original flaw - there is no future on the reserve because the system denies change, institutionalizes dependency, and defines you as what you are born instead of what you could become.
I personally think that the solution would be to allow anyone alive today to continue on the reserve, but future residents (and those who currently live there, and choose to do so) would get a lump sum at 21 paying out both their land claims and treaty rights, and would then lose their treaty status. Then, 99 years from today, all treaty land reverts to the government.
Unfortunately, this would undoubtedly need to be imposed by the federal gov't, as it is unlikely the native leaders (or population, for that matter) would agree to these measures. Despite knowing that the system in general is destroying Native lives, it is human nature to resist the loss of privilege.
Somehow the gov't would have to convince the rest of Canada that not only is this the right way to go forward, but that it is an important enough issue to invoke the tyranny of the majority. The country would be fiercely divided, and it would take generations before the furor would be forgotten.
I doubt the time is yet right for this, although if something like the proposed train blockade blows up into full-scale confrontation, you never know what might happen...
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