As to the people who accuse me of beign a racist, they are the ones who refuse to give up their old ways and come into this century where people live together in peace and harmony.
I live in a multicultural nation where it is our national policy. Someday we will overcome our historic mistreatment of our aboriginal population, that may take a generation, but I am optimistic.
Now you are starting to sound like a racist far right winger who tries to hide their racism by talking about "progress" and "this being modern times" when you make statements such as
" refuse to give up their old ways and come into this century where people live together in peace and harmony." What are our old ways Don?
Is trying to maintain ourselves as a distinct and proud people, who have the god given right to exist as such in the face of a colonial invasion and society that wishes to now assimilate us into non existence, racist of us?
You are obviously no Indian, but you do speak from the standpoint of a black civil rights movement sorta of person, even if you are coming across as a racist when you speak of integrating into larger society.
In the civil rights movement it was the goal for blacks to integrate and become part of the mainstream society like everyone else.
This was and is very much the different from NDN's, as we have always had the goal to be left alone and excluded from being forced into the mainstream society.
To do so would mean, and does mean, no longer existing as a distinct people, and assimilating into extinction.
It is of no real consequence when other people have or do come to these lands to become an American or Canadian, since across the water their people will live on and not face vanishing from the planet.
For indigenous people here, and across the globe, doing so does and has meant extinction.
The Indian did not come here from some other place in recent history and chose to be an American or Canadian, but rather has been here by creation stories since the dawn of man, or by white man's Bering Straight theory, at least 10 to 30,000 years if not longer.
The American Indian should not have to integrate and fade into the larger society, and saying that does not make myself or anyone else who believes that a racist.
It means we have the god given right to love Indian people, and the right to wish to see them exist as a distinct and proud people far into the future.
The Indian did not come here from across the water to be an American or Canadian, but those people came here to be of those new nations.
What is so wrong with the American Indian existing from Alaska to the tip of South America, that we must vanish from the face of the planet forever so that you colonials can have some pseudo perfect country, that in reality is just the pursuit of $$$$ in the first place. If it were not, you would not keeping bringing up taxes like you have.
