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Comment by requin246 | Hacker News Reader

The issue with assigning guilt from the actions of ancestors is that not everyone is guilty.

I’m first generation Canadian. Is it fair that I should pay for the sins of your great grandfathers when mine weren’t even in the country? Canada accepts 300k immigrants per year. Since the closure of the residential schools, (very roughly speaking) 9m people have entered the country so it’s not a small number we’re talking about here.

There’s also the added issue that not everyone supported the residential schools. What if my ancestors protested the system? Should I still pay reparations?

I agree the quality of life on the reserves is a real problem that needs to be fixed but pushing the blame on the children of the settlers (or not even their children!) is not a good solution.

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I am also a first generation Canadian. If you became a citizen at least in the past 10 years (not sure about before), you perhaps remember the Discover Canada guide[0], which we were asked to study prior to taking our citizenship oath. It discusses the multicultural nature of Canada and gives special mention to the unique status of its indigenous peoples. When we choose to become Canadians, we accept the same responsibilities that Canadians whose ancestors were born here have. That includes sharing responsibility for reconciliation, and perhaps also reparations for the impact of poor decisions that were made in generations past.

One outcome of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission report (published 2015) was a proposal made for a change to the oath of citizenship to clarify this responsibility[1]. That change has now been made. It was used for the first time on June 22[2]. Hopefully this will help new Canadians to better understand what becoming a Canadian means.

There is no intention here to assign guilt. There is simply an understanding that as Canadians we have a responsibility to the indigenous peoples of the land that we now inhabit.

[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/co...

[1] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne...

[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/immigration-refugees-citizenship/ne...

Hey Alison, I just wanted to thank you so much for this comment, you both taught me something, and I very very much appreciate that this is clearly not just a footnote for you. Thank you. :)

Personally I think it's rather naive to immigrate to a country and then not to expect to inherit what comes with that, both the good and the bad. I think everyone who claims themselves as a Canadian hold this responsibility equally, I don't really care what generation Canadian you are or where you immigrated from, you don't get to pick and choose your Canadianness, we're all in this together. Isn't that part of the beauty of Canada? To embrace each other, tackle hard problems, and move our society forward?

If you pull the thread all the way back - if it’s morally right to pay reparations, wouldn’t it also be morally correct in the same vein to give the land back?

How do you actually pay reparations for taking someone’s land?

If you pull the thread all the way back - if it’s morally right to pay reparations, it would also be morally correct in the same vein, to give the land back. That is correct. If they wanted the land back, and I had to move, I wouldn't be opposed to that, and I'd imagine my opinion is more common than one might expect.

That said, I'm not sure how useful the point is. I've very rarely heard a native person say they would like that. I have heard that proposed, usually drunken and angry over beer. When I was a kid my dad had the Chief of Couchiching First Nation over for dinner. In my 17 year old wisdom, I eagerly explained how sad it is that natives don't want to go live in Toronto. He said, natives would love to be in Toronto, if Toronto was a little more like a reserve. I think they have unfortunately long accepted they've been colonized, the treaties were not honored, and their culture was destroyed. Meaningful reparation at this point is unlikely to be about land or money, it's about Canada accepting it cannot be Canada without real change to re-incorporate the culturual growth that was strangled.

Hey pal, I almost wonder if our Dads know each other. Our upbringings were so similar, just a couple of provinces apart.

My version of that story was when the Chief of the Peter Ballantyne First Nation came to visit us. I spent the first couple years of my life on the PBFN. I was about your age and had the same questions about how great it would be if they moved to my city. he explained that on reserve, he can just be a man. He can be good, he can be bad, he can make mistakes and he can have successes. In a city, it doesn't matter what he does, he's just 'a fucking Indian.' If he makes a mistake, he's a 'dirty fucking Indian'. If he has success, he's a 'fucking Indian sucking at the teet'.

I also remember him cracking a joke. "Do they know this isn't India?" :)

I've never heard a proposal to give back the land unless people have been sipping. And I say silly stuff too when I sip so who can judge. The most radical idea I've heard outside of those settings is to treat current lands as sovereign nations that have an equal standing with the rest of the nation. The goal seems to be peaceful and respectful coexistence.

I think we can all (or at least should all) be able to get behind that. Wouldn't peaceful coexistence be a pretty amazing way to live??

“treat current lands as sovereign nations that have an equal standing with the rest of the nation”

This isn’t as radical as you may think. It’s been a stated goal for a long time. I’m always surprised how the actual meaning of these words don’t seem to make any impact on Canadians. Perhaps phrased another way, such as, “When I have an Ojibway passport…” might catch people’s’ attention.

Tangentially, they do have status cards, I worked at a wal-mart up north for a summer after high school and I used to have to type the number on the card into the cash register to override the tax on the transaction of people with a status card. The same wal-mart that banned people with a status card from buying mouthwash because they labeled the natives drunks and didn't want to propagate the issue. Yah seriously, that happened.

Yeah, that’s the thing. It’s not radical at all. It’s almost a word for word quote of what early Indian agents said to get people to sign. It asks Canada to abide by the treaties it signed! Crazy and radical thinking, hey??

Weirdly, in the Canada of today, that’s considered extremely radical. But it’s also considered radical to think First Nations should have clean drinking water.

If you’re interested in one heck of a read, learn about a Cree Chief named Big Bear. He quite literally saw into the future - I think his words make him one of the few genuine political visionaries of his era in Canada.

If you’re or anyone else is interested, I have a bunch of books. My email address is in my profile - some of these books are hard to find and I’m privileged enough to be able to afford them. I’d be happy as anything to mail them out to anyone interested, provided you give them wings and give them away to someone else. :)

This isn't really about blame, or individuals (although I do wish we pursued criminal priests and nuns half as thoroughly as we do aging nazis). It certainly isn't (or shouldn't be) about descendants inheriting some kind of blood-guilt. This is about the necessity of reconciliation, and justice.

The Canadian Crown made solemn promises in the form of treaties. Either Canada stands by a promise, or it doesn't. We are all bound. If you don't feel you should be held to a Canadian promise, you might reconsider your conception of being Canadian.

> It certainly isn't (or shouldn't be) about descendants inheriting some kind of blood-guilt.

But they did cash their inheritance checks.

> The Canadian Crown made solemn promises in the form of treaties. Either Canada stands by a promise

What about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expulsion_of_the_Acadians

What about it? I believe we should honour our treaties. It is shameful when we don't. Did I suggest otherwise?

Sorry -- that was glib. The expulsion of the Acadians stained the honour of the British Crown. War and insurrection complicate the history, but it was not fair-dealing.

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