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Politics : Canadian Political Free-for-All -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Gulo who wrote (259)	11/12/2000 10:20:43 AM
From: PMS Witch	Respond to of 37059

Thank-you for spelling out some of the difficulties we face in dealing with First Nations people fairly. Obviously, the matter is far more complex than many non-natives, including me, realize. My original opinion was based on the presumption that promises were made and not kept. As you've pointed out, many promises were implied, interpreted, assumed, and given such a foggy cloud surrounding the matter, I wouldn't be surprised to discover that a few were fabricated from lawyer and activist imaginations too. Obviously, this is not an easy challenge. The best I can hope for is some genuine, honest, and compassionate negotiations carried out by reasonable, well-informed, and creative people on both sides so that a workable and just solution can be reached. Cheers, PW. P.S. I also must add that I do not support the wholesale, dependency fostering, Santa Clause like transfer of hard-earned tax dollars to people who believe they are entitled to suckle on the Ottawa teat for all eternity because their great-great-great-grandfather was promised some help adjusting to life with fewer bison. I say this in recognition that I feel that both sides share some responsibility in the matter. I may have given the impression in earlier posts that I view the present tragic condition of our First Nations people as entirely our (non-natives) fault. I wish to be clear that I feel both sides have contributed to the current mess and the co-operation of both sides will be required to find fair, just, and workable solutions.

To: Gulo who wrote (259)	11/12/2000 1:09:57 PM
From: marcos	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 37059

Well said, Gulo ... your solution i would moderate somewhat, to allow indian status to all with any proven indian blood, then a sizable and increasing percentage of canadians would qualify [including myself, my wife, and our progeny], and the inevitable and ultimately necessary assimilation would be speeded and eased. The main bar to integration is the difference in approach to land tenure ... indians throughout the Americas take a collectivist view of land rights, this is at the heart of disputes in southern México as much as in the Nass Valley ... before european contact and technology this was fine, there was not the capacity to develop a 'tragedy of the commons' in most cases, and there was room to move in such cases as occurred. No one owns anything on an indian reserve, there is the right to consume, subject to dictate of chief and council, but not the right to protect and develop with the longterm in mind ... not far from here there is a place where i've seen valuable old-growth fir sawn up into firewood when its market value as peeler-quality sawlogs was twenty-five times that of its firewood value split and delivered - the timber could have been sold standing to someone who would have traded cash plus six to ten times the volume in firewood, done all the work, and still made something for his time and effort ... but that was not possible, the man whacking it up into firewood had the right to do that, but not to sell or trade it ... when in the course of the discussion on this i suggested that some adjacent areas of previously ravaged and very fertile land be planted and tended in a responsible and lucrative fashion, i was told 'We are not farmers' ...... 'we are not farmers', lol ... choice is between farmers and wastrels, imho. Same thing in Chiapas, and this legitimate point is used as justification by the Paz y Justicia paramilitary types for their self-serving genocidal strategy ... the indians take the position that they have a right to settle in any place where others are not currently resident, they practice a slash-and-burn agriculture so they move on after a few crops ... 'they want only a little land with which to fill their bellies', in the rhetoric of el Sub-comandante ... in one case the government finally, after much pressure from environmentalists, declared a formal biosphere reserve around the incredibly beautiful and unique area of Lagos de Montebello, and within months groups came to challenge the prohibitions ... i saw air fotos from this time, there were fresh openings and smoke rising all along the unroaded side of one of the largest lakes .... very very bad PR move, and definitely not in their best interests. Race-based governments cannot work in the long term, the concept is anathema to the democratic ideals of one-man-one-vote and equality before the law ... such treaties which violate this equality must ultimately be abrogated ... there is a great deal to learn from the indian way, just as from the european, but in the end we become a race together, as the great Vasconcelos says, una Raza Cósmica, a cosmic race - [sorry this is spanish, don't know of a translation] [and there's nothing racial about the concept of 'raza' here, it is entirely cultural, the great majority of mexicanos take pride in considerable indian blood] - analitica.com