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Funny dinner last night: the plight of aboriginals in Canada

 So last night at dinner, we had new acquaintances joining us. The wife is a well-known aboriginal activist. And the husband is an actor.

Her family arrived in Canada in the late 19 century although she is white, her grandparents were black. She has made a mission in life to represent the rights of aboriginals and their miss treatment by the white majority.

The arguments were strange, because Canada has largely devolved the responsibilities of tribal affairs to the tribes themselves in a sense the Canadian government’s only involvement is paying the tab, and yet the government is accused of poorly managing the process

Watching the conversation I was struck by an impossible vision of the world where European descendants were responsible for the success of aboriginal policies, but we’re not in charge of their implementation.

Canada does not have the best history of treating aboriginals correctly although it should be pointed out that life on the frontier whether you were aboriginal or white or whatever was difficult for a long portion of history. It is also often forgotten that before the federal government took interest in aboriginal Health and welfare and the first part of the 20th century that life expectancy was shockingly short. Call it what you will,it remains that it was seen as socially unacceptable for the government to do nothing about the terrible health dismal lifestyle of aboriginal populations in the country . 

So Canada took action at best they could but generated tremendous hardship for communities and peoples.  Since 1975 the government has taking hands off approach where they provide the fund and the communities choose the way this money was used and distributed among its population. Of course some of this money has been poorly managed in fact, the vast majority of the money has been poorly managed, but it also speaks of desperation living in inhospitable climates 

The issue for me is that you cannot have it both ways.  You can’t want to have your own nation, your own system, and your own territory control only by you and yet expect something from outsiders that you purposefully exclude.

That was the breakdown in communication between us last night he who has the gold rule, but he’s also the one who’s responsible you cannot deflect responsibility for your actions when you are the ultimate arbiter that’s just the reality of life

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